Pavel’s mother, Anna Shevchenko, is a different case. She now has to deal with the fact that her son is a blind man with a prosthetic leg. Compounding her grief, she’s also recently lost another close family member. However, she’s been so caught up in helping with her son’s rehab that she barely has time to process the second loss. This makes the trauma complex and difficult to heal.

Anna isn’t doing well. She needed the help of Svitlana Kutsenko, a clinical psychologist. Kutsenko works at Super Humans, the most advanced prosthetics hospital in Ukraine. She provides treatment to the essential but little-discussed population of patients with psychological trauma.

Psychological trauma of the sort that Anna is dealing with comes about when a person witnesses or experiences extremely stressful, disturbing or traumatic events. People who have psychological trauma may have symptoms such as intense feelings of sadness, despair, anger, guilt or fatigue. They may have nightmares, flashbacks or difficulty concentrating.

Tragically, Russia’s war on Ukraine has caused uncountable new instances of psychological trauma.

How does a clinical psychologist help victims of psychological trauma?

To see the kind of help a clinical psychologist like Kutsenko can provide, let’s look at how she’s helping Anna.

“When I have a new patient,” Kutsenko told me, “often the symptoms that I hear might begin with, ‘Help me, I can’t sleep,’ or, ‘I can’t communicate with other people because I get angry too easily.’”

A session might start with these kinds of symptoms, but soon enough she and her patient get into much more complex issues, ones that are closer to a person’s identity, such as, “Why is this happening? Why did they do this to me?”

To Kusenko, these latter kinds of questions are often the ones that matter most. “People get suicidal when their lives don’t have meaning. We find that suicidal thoughts come because of questions of meaning, not because the individual is more anxious than usual.”

Anna is feeling powerless and in despair. “Sometimes the best I can do for her,” acknowledges Kusenko, “is say to her, ‘What you’re going through is a nightmare. You have the right to be in the mental state you’re in right now. What you’re feeling is a normal reaction to totally abnormal circumstances. No human being should have to face this kind of challenge.’”

Kutsenko can’t make the mother’s pain go away, but she can listen to her, be there for her and validate what she’s feeling. She can also rejoice with her when Pavel passes a milestone in his healing, such as being able to take his first steps with his prosthetic leg.

Kutsenko’s goal is not only to help mitigate Anna’s immediate pain, but also to help her move to a place where the scars will not control her life. Kutsenko knows that Pavel’s resilience in the face of his severe injuries is heroic, yet it is Anna who embodies the silent, enduring agony of a caregiver who must witness her child’s suffering daily.

Anna’s battles are fought in the shadows of her son’s visible scars. Both Pavel and Anna bear immense burdens, but it is perhaps the unseen wounds of those like Anna, who grapple with the relentless echoes of trauma and loss, that linger longest.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post In Ukraine, Wounded Soldiers’ Families Suffer Just as Much appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The West has progressively raised its involvement by supplying long-range artillery, advanced air defense systems, tanks and air-launched cruise missiles, as well as sea-based weaponry, to hit Russian targets. Satellite intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) has been provided to Ukraine for more accurate strikes.

Western escalation is brewing

The New York Times has , somewhat surprisingly, that the CIA has been “financing” and “partly equipping” several underground bunkers near the Russian border. Their goal is to gather vital information on defenses and equipment, as well as assist the Ukrainian military in directing fire. Despite strong warnings from Russia, the Dutch have their decision to supply 18 F-16 aircraft to Ukraine.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg Radio Free Europe that Ukraine’s right to self-defense includes attacking legitimate Russian military targets outside Ukraine. Elsewhere, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that UK and French special forces are on the ground in Ukraine to operate the advanced equipment supplied to Kyiv.

Scholz seems opposed to the supply of long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine. If these warheads are used for strikes inside Russia, it may draw Germany into direct conflict with Moscow. However, the exchanges between German officers suggest a huge disconnect within the German establishment. They seemingly discussed the efficacy of using Taurus missiles to target the Crimean Bridge and ammunition dumps to its north. They also deliberated about how to launch these strikes without directly involving the German government, suggesting that the missile’s manufacturer, MBDA Deutschland GmbH, could act as a front.

Another potential step could seriously exacerbate the situation. On February 26, at a summit of 20 European leaders in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron the possibility of putting European troops on the ground in Ukraine. This disregards Russian warnings that such a move could trigger a direct war between NATO and Russia.

The US, Germany, the UK, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, among others, have ruled out the possibility of sending their troops to fight in Ukraine. Macron, however, believes that the people decrying this idea today are the same ones who decried the supply of tanks, aircraft or long-range missiles to Ukraine two years ago. In the face of rebuffs and political opposition at home, Macron insists that what he said was fully contemplated and that the intention is to put Putin in a “strategic dilemma.” He did not explain what that could be or why it would be only one-way.

Ukrainian support and Baltic aggression

The thought behind the proposals to increase EU military support for Ukraine is that European countries must take more responsibility for their own security. This is especially true considering the possibility of Donald Trump being re-elected as US president in November. He Europeans that if they do not ramp up their defense spending, rather than relying on the US for security, he will leave them to fend for themselves against unstated Russian threats. EU members are now increasing their defense budgets even when their economies are under pressure. Germany and the UK are facing a and social unrest is spreading in several European countries, as indicated by widespread from farmers.

France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, Italy, Denmark and Canada have bilateral security agreements with Ukraine. What these precisely entail is not clear. However, it seems the objectives are to give assurances of support to Ukraine, should there be a change in the US administration; to give Kyiv confidence that despite flagging public support for the conflict in European societies, aid will continue and to signal to Russia that the EU’s investment in the conflict will continue regardless of Ukrainian losses and the war of attrition favoring Moscow. There is also a hint that Ukraine’s entry into NATO may not be imminent. Kyiv needs assurance that individual European countries are willing to commit themselves to Ukraine’s defense.

The Baltic states are the most vociferous in pushing for a confrontation with Russia, both within the EU and in international conferences. Many countries of the Global South believe that the Russo-Ukrainian War is a European affair. This has adverse consequences for them economically because of the disruptions it is causing in food, fertilizer and energy supplies. The Europeans argue this conflict goes beyond their continent and involves the international community as a whole, claiming that it violates the UN Charter, international law and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states. This is not a convincing argument; European nations are themselves guilty of such transgressions, and there is no guarantee that this will not continue in the future.

Russia has not attacked the Baltic states, which are members of NATO and have the bloc’s troops stationed on their soil. These countries are hardly central to international geopolitics, have a combined of only six million and have negligible military strength. Given their deep grievances against Soviet rule, their desire to drive an increasingly dangerous conflict in Europe, along with Poland, Finland and Sweden, is concerning to non-Western countries.

Russia may not escalate its warfare

The argument that Russia will attack other countries if it defeats Ukraine is fictitious. Putin has been in power for 24 years now, NATO has expanded five times and the bloc’s troops and US missiles are stationed close to Russia’s borders. Russia has only aggressively responded to Georgia and Ukraine. In both cases, Putin that Russia would take action if these two countries were drawn into NATO.

Putin’s repeated that Russia has no intention of attacking any European country are being dismissed, as they do not fit the narrative of Moscow’s threat to Europe. Why Russia would enter into a conflict with NATO is not explained. As for Russia’s imperial ambitions, it has refrained from tightening control in erstwhile Soviet territories in Central Asia. Armenia is the most recent example.

The other argument Europeans champion — that a Russian victory over Ukraine will embolden China to intervene militarily in Taiwan — is equally trumped up. The Taiwan issue long predates that of Ukraine. China will judge the rapport between Taiwan, the US and its regional allies, then make its decision based on that. Washington has itself to the “One China” policy, though it is against the use of force by Beijing to conquer Taiwan. China also has to take into account that the US is its biggest trading partner.

The prevailing belief among European nations is that, considering Russia’s past reactions to the West’s incremental support for Ukraine, Moscow is unlikely to escalate militarily. Even if the West continues to do so by supplying Ukraine with additional weapons to potentially damage mainland Russia, they likely will not exacerbate the conflict. This may explain why Europeans are undeterred by Russia’s formidable nuclear arsenal. But this could be a serious misjudgment, potentially leading the West to drag the world into a nuclear nightmare.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The West Risks a Disastrous Nuclear World Conflict With Russia appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The assumption of the US political elite that Biden had a viable plan to defeat Russia and restore Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders has proven to be one more triumphalist American dream that has turned into a nightmare. Ukraine has joined North Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Libya, Syria, Yemen and now Gaza as another shattered monument to America’s .

Biden has no Plan B

This could have been one of the shortest wars in history, if Biden had just supported a peace and neutrality agreement negotiated in Turkey in March and April 2022 that already had popping in Kyiv, according to Ukrainian negotiator Oleksiy Arestovych. Instead, the US and NATO chose to prolong and escalate the war as a means to try to defeat and weaken Russia.

Two days before Biden’s State of the Union speech, Secretary of State Blinken the early retirement of Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, one of the officials most responsible for a decade of disastrous US policy toward Ukraine.

Two weeks before the announcement of Nuland’s retirement at the age of 62, she in a talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) that the war in Ukraine had degenerated into a war of attrition that she compared to the First World War and admitted that the Biden administration had no Plan B for Ukraine if Congress didn’t cough up $61 billion for more weapons.

We don’t know whether Nuland was forced out, or perhaps quit in protest over a policy that she fought for and lost. Either way, her ride into the sunset opens the door for others to fashion a badly needed Plan B for Ukraine.

If we don’t find another solution soon, we may be headed for a world war

The imperative must be to chart a path back from this hopeless but ever-escalating war of attrition to the negotiating table that the US and Britain upended in April 2022 — or at least to new negotiations on the basis that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on March 27, 2022, when he told his people, “Our goal is obvious: peace and the restoration of normal life in our native state as soon as possible.” 

Instead, on February 26, in a very worrying sign of where NATO’s current policy is leading, French President Emmanuel Macron that European leaders meeting in Paris discussed sending larger numbers of Western ground troops to Ukraine. 

Macron pointed out that NATO members have steadily increased their support to levels unthinkable when the war began. He highlighted the example of Germany, which offered Ukraine only helmets and sleeping bags at the outset of the conflict and is now saying Ukraine needs more missiles and tanks. “The people that said ‘never ever’ today were the same ones who said never ever planes, never ever long-range missiles, never ever trucks. They said all that two years ago,” Macron recalled. “We have to be humble and realize that we (have) always been six to eight months late.”

Macron implied that, as the war escalates, NATO countries may eventually have to deploy their own forces to Ukraine, and he argued that they should do so sooner rather than later if they want to recover the initiative in the war. 

The mere suggestion of Western troops fighting in Ukraine elicited an outcry both within France — from extreme right National Rally to leftist La France Insoumise — and from other NATO countries. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that participants in the meeting were “unanimou��” in their opposition to deploying troops. Russian officials that such a step would mean war between Russia and NATO.

But as Poland’s president and prime minister headed to Washington for a White House meeting on February 12, Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski the Polish parliament that sending NATO troops into Ukraine “is not unthinkable.” 

Macron’s intention may have been precisely to bring this debate out into the open and put an end to the secrecy surrounding the undeclared policy of gradual escalation toward full-scale war with Russia that the West has pursued for two years.

Macron failed to mention publicly that, under current policy, NATO forces are already deeply involved in the war. Among that Biden told in his State of the Union speech, he insisted that “there are no American soldiers at war in Ukraine.” 

However, the trove of Pentagon documents in March 2023 included an assessment that there were already at least 97 NATO special forces troops operating in Ukraine, including 50 Britons, 14 Americans and 15 French. Admiral John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, has also a “small US military presence” based in the US Embassy in Kyiv to try to keep track of thousands of tons of US weapons as they arrive in Ukraine. 

But many more US forces, whether inside or outside Ukraine, are in planning Ukrainian military operations, providing satellite intelligence and essential roles in the targeting of US weapons. A Ukrainian official told The Washington Post that Ukrainian forces hardly ever fire HIMARS rockets without precise targeting data provided by US forces in Europe.

All these US and NATO forces are most definitely “at war in Ukraine.” To be at war in a country with only small numbers of “boots on the ground” has been a hallmark of 21st-century US war-making, as any navy pilot on an aircraft carrier or drone operator in Nevada can attest. It is precisely this doctrine of “limited” and proxy war that is at risk of spinning out of control in Ukraine, unleashing the World War III that Biden to avoid.

The United States and NATO have tried to keep the escalation of the war under control by deliberate, incremental escalation of the types of weapons they provide and cautious, covert expansion of their own involvement. This has been to “boiling a frog,” turning up the heat gradually to avoid any sudden move that might cross a Russian “red line” and a full-scale war between NATO and Russia. But, as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned in December 2022, “If things go wrong, they can go horribly wrong.”

Inching toward a war that nobody wanted

We have long been puzzled by these glaring contradictions at the heart of US and NATO policy. On one hand, we believe Biden when he he does not want to start World War III. On the other hand, that is what his policy of incremental escalation is inexorably leading towards. 

US preparations for war with Russia are already at odds with the existential imperative of containing the conflict. In November 2022, the Reed-Inhofe Amendment to the 2023 fiscal year National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) wartime emergency powers to authorize an extraordinary shopping list of weapons like the ones sent to Ukraine, and approved billion-dollar, multi-year no-bid contracts with weapons manufacturers to buy 10 to 20 times the quantities of weapons that the United States had actually shipped to Ukraine.

Retired Marine Colonel Mark , the former chief of the Force Structure and Investment Division in the Office of Management and Budget, explained, “This isn’t replacing what we’ve given [Ukraine]. It’s building stockpiles for a major ground war [with Russia] in the future.”

So, the United States is preparing to fight a major ground war with Russia, but the weapons to fight that war will take years to produce, and, with or without them, that could quickly escalate into a . Nuland’s early retirement could be the result of Biden and his foreign policy team finally starting to come to grips with the existential dangers of the aggressive policies she championed. 

Meanwhile, Russia’s escalation from its original limited “Special Military Operation” to its current commitment of of its GDP to the war and to weapons production has outpaced the West’s escalations, not just in weapons production but in manpower and actual military capability.

One could say that Russia is winning the war, but that depends what its real war goals are. There is a yawning gulf between the rhetoric from Biden and other Western leaders about Russian ambitions to invade other countries in Europe and what Russia was ready to settle for at the talks in Turkey in 2022, when it agreed to withdraw to its pre-war positions in return for a simple commitment to Ukrainian neutrality. 

Despite Ukraine’s extremely weak position after its failed 2023 offensive and its costly defense and loss of Avdiivka, Russian forces are not racing toward Kyiv, or even Kharkiv, Odesa or the natural boundary of the Dnipro River. 

Reuters Moscow Bureau that Russia spent months trying to open new negotiations with the United States in late 2023, but that, in January 2024, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan slammed that door shut with a flat refusal to negotiate over Ukraine.

The only way to find out what Russia really wants, or what it will settle for, is to return to the negotiating table. All sides have demonized each other and staked out maximalist positions, but that is what nations at war do in order to justify the sacrifices they demand of their people and their rejection of diplomatic alternatives. 

Serious diplomatic negotiations are now essential to get down to the nitty-gritty of what it will take to bring peace to Ukraine. We are sure there are wiser heads within the US, French and other NATO governments who are saying this too, behind closed doors, and that may be precisely why Nuland is out and why Macron is talking so openly about where the current policy is heading. We fervently hope that is the case, and that Biden’s Plan B will lead back to the negotiating table, and then forward to peace in Ukraine.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Are We Stumbling Into World War III in Ukraine? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

When Russia invaded Ukraine two years ago, Zelensky the American offer to helicopter him to safety (“I need ammunition, not a ride,”) and in doing so, galvanized Ukraine and the world. Without Zelensky’s inspirational courage and flair, Ukraine could have been overrun, its culture destroyed and its people no longer free.

From TV star to head of state

Zelensky’s ascent from actor to President of Ukraine began when he starred in the TV series, Servant of the People. The wildly popular series began in 2015 and aired for three years. Even today you can find online reviews of it that say, as a certain Derping Flamingo said, “This is the best show ever. I died laughing and now I’m a ghost!” Or who says, “This series is so hilarious, unpredictable, and well done that it needs to be seen by EVERYONE.”

The plot is an idealistic schoolteacher becomes president of Ukraine and works to combat corruption. The background of the show is, in 2014, after Ukrainians forced a corrupt Putin-puppet president to flee the country, people saw the possibility of a rebirth of freedom and prosperity.

The head of the Ukrainian TV network 1+1 was swept along in this enthusiasm and he asked screenwriters to come up with a series based on the idea of, “A new government is coming to this country.”

Thinking back on this time, Dmytro Hryhorenko, one of the show’s writers, remembers: “We started with a clean slate, imagining the perfect picture: a simple person, untouched by politics, becomes president overnight. The show would offer a satirical yet hopeful vision of a Ukraine free from corruption and oligarchy.”

Although Zelensky played the fictional president, Hryhorenko points out, “Zelensky was more than just an actor. It was his production company, and each of the company’s shows was personally edited by him.”

Servant of the People turned out to be wildly popular in Ukraine. It was more than just entertainment; it was a reflection of a nation’s yearning for change. By the second season, Hryhorenko and his fellow screenwriters learned that their viewers were imagining that the man who played the fictional president might become the real president. 

Hryhorenko says that it was at this point that Zelensky began thinking seriously about going into politics for real. Hryhorenko remembers talking with him in the actors’ van. “We could watch him struggle with the fear of such a task,” Hryhorenko recalls. “We got to witness how Zelensky gained determination from one shooting scene to another.”

An anti-corruption candidate

Zelensky may have been awed by the seriousness of what he was contemplating, but Hryhorenko knew that Zelensky knew that if he didn’t run for president, there was no other candidate who would be as well-positioned and as well-motivated to fight corruption. 

Ukrainians had good reason to want to attack corruption. A Ukrainian social worker told me, “The worst legacy of the Soviets was you couldn’t get anything done without a bribe. Your kid doesn’t get into a good school, you don’t get a good job, you aren’t seen by the right doctor, your legal case doesn’t go the way you want, everything depended on bribes.”

And further, the corrupt oligarchs were siphoning off the people’s wealth to pay for their yachts and their villas in France. This kind of theft was keeping the country poor. 

In this context, Zelensky and his scriptwriters knew that fighting corruption needed to be the focus of the series. “We laid out the dramatic twists and complications that faced the President in the show,” says Hryhorenko, “but all of these were solved in 25 minutes and evil was punished. In real life, the battle is not between good and evil. It’s between terrible and bad. Reforms cannot change the country overnight. But they can help take another step from a bad reality to a slightly better one.”

Inspired by Servant of the People, Ukrainians began to demand a new and better kind of leader, one who could take on corruption. The culmination of this came when Zelensky ran for office in 2019. He won with of the vote.

“At its best,” says Hryhorenko, “good art gives the impulse to change reality.” 

Hryhorenko and his colleagues did change reality. Without them, Zelensky would almost certainly not be Ukraine’s President today. And without Zelensky, Ukrainian people might today be under Putin’s Mafia-style thumb, and Putin himself might be invading still more countries. The Servant of the People script writers changed history.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Script That Changed History: Zelensky’s Servant of the People appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Because of the various dangers war provokes to some people’s health and many more people’s well-being, we read the news and follow the talk with a generally helpless sense of needing to understand what is on its face incomprehensible: the programmed destruction of both people and things. However much we try and however we manage to convince ourselves that the side we prefer is good and the other evil, the sequence of events that define a war can never be clarified until we get a sense of who will win and who will lose.

Random observers can never get close enough to the acts of war to get a grip on their meaning. Nevertheless, numerous people with experience of conflict who track the evidence and pay attention to the always shifting state of play in a war will consistently apply their expertise to keeping score. What they see and what they say about an ongoing war is almost certain to diverge from the official accounts offered by anyone who identifies with one of the “side��” in a war, especially governments themselves and their legacy media.

So where do we find ourselves today, exactly two years into a war that officially began with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022? Though many voices influenced by the institutions they belong to or represent may continue to proclaim the contrary, it is fair to say that the best informed coldly rational experts on all sides have now reached one largely unanimous conclusion: that Ukraine cannot defeat Russia. That doesn’t automatically mean that Ukraine will unconditionally capitulate. Nor does it mean, as some might “rationally” expect, that the foregone conclusion heralds imminent negotiations that will aim at defining the conditions for a lasting peace.

In the traditional binary logic of war, the widely shared acknowledgment of the constitutional incapacity of one of the parties to achieve its wartime objectives has always meant that, either publicly or discreetly, all sides would begin preparations for negotiating a peace. In today’s world, we tend to think that all important decision-making follows the laws of economic interest. In such a context, the ongoing cost of war in lives and material loss — including the consideration that anyone who prolongs such a war should be held responsible for supplementary damage done — should logically force all parties to begin shifting both their mindset and their public discourse as they engage in the arduous task of beginning to craft some form of mutually acceptable peace.

A turning point in the culture of war

Most people would recognize that as the scenario that has played out in almost all the wars of the past, at least until the beginning of this century. The new millennium seems to have significantly altered the pattern. This is particularly true concerning wars in which the United States plays a supporting role. The country that once proudly “we’ve never been licked” seems now to understand that all wars are not winnable. The question then becomes how do you make sure they don’t appear to be lost?

The realization that the US is not predestined to win all wars turns out to be an unbearably angst-ridden question for anyone involved in the planning or logic of war. The embarrassment of Vietnam inexorably spawned a psychological shift in thinking about war and its outcomes. Refusing to acknowledge defeat has now become the implicit norm for all wars involving the US. Because of Washington’s role as global hegemon since the fall of the Soviet Union, this has had a profound impact on basic geopolitical reality. One may even ask whether the “rule” of not acknowledging defeat is not the latest item that has been registered as a feature of the vaunted “rules-based international order” so vociferously proclaimed and defended in the West.

Ever since Homer’s ten-year war which pitted Greek heroes against Troy, we know that some wars last longer than others. When a realistic hope of reversing the course of a war exists, refusing to accept defeat makes perfect sense. But because war as defined by Clausewitz is “an extension of politics,” our idea of the nature of war is bound to change whenever geopolitical reality undergoes a shift. In the unipolar world that emerged with the elimination of the Soviet Union as the only credible rival to the US, war shifted from being the means of adjusting power relations between individual nations or ethnic groups as it came to be considered a permanent instrument of power in the hands of the unipolar hegemon.

There were two complementary reasons for this. The hegemon quite naturally saw itself as the only credible arbiter of conflict, since it had no rivals. At the same time it possessed a veto in the one institution that should have claimed the role of arbiter: the United Nations. The second is the sheer economic domination of the US in terms of combined military technology, geographical spread (military bases in all corners of the world), the universally accepted reign of the dollar and the culturally imposed belief, spread even to communist China, in “liberal” values that axiomatically assumed economic considerations should always trump other measures of value.

And so in the 21st century the cultural status of war became transformed. Instead of being an extension of politics, it subsumed politics by occupying the default position in defining relationships. The Cold War installed the principle affirmed by realists such as John Mearsheimer that anarchy and therefore the potential for war must be seen as the starting point and a defining factor of international relations.

From Cold War to Global War on Terror

Since Dwight Eisenhower’s time — and despite that president’s belated warning issued three days before leaving office — the US “military-industrial-Congressional complex” has not only thrived and expanded but ultimately reoriented the mindset of nearly every bureaucrat and elected official in US power centers, whether at the Pentagon, the White House, Congress or Wall Street.

Over the past three decades, there has been a convergence between physical warfare (in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, to mention only the most obvious), economic warfare (the exponential multiplication of sanctions) and lawfare. I would extend the list by adding the linguistic warfare that over the past two decades has taken on an Orwellian or metaphysical dimension. Censorship in a variety of forms has installed itself as a basic feature of our increasingly managed techno-culture.

The new linguistic warfare, which every party seeks to exploit to its advantage, is not limited to the predictable onslaught of propaganda that always comes to the fore in times of conflict. It defines its own terms, writes its own rules and judges severely everyone who it claims has failed to embrace those rules.

An earlier concept of conflict in the era of nation-states that began in the 17th century saw war as similar to the drama we now associate with team sports competition. War appears as an occasion to demonstrate superior force and to emerge as an acknowledged winner. When the final bell sounds, the public, but also the losing team defer to the victor’s superiority. Victory comes with a number of advantages or privileges, including bragging rights.

The 20th century produced one notable exception to the rule that says the fighting stops when one side has won. The Korean War did reach a moment when all active fighting stopped. But the war never officially ended. It was left in suspense. Though North Korea was flattened, much as Gaza has been reduced to rubble in the past four months, there were no declared winners or losers. This unique termination of conflict with no attribution of a trophy for the winner appeared to be a consequence of the psychological terms of the Cold War. It was a moment in history marked by the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). This meant that conflicts had to avoid seeking too radical a resolution. Everyone in Korea had a clear memory of what had happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The illogic of the Korean war’s conclusion began having the effect of transforming the way politicians — entrusted with the task of managing the logic of war — thought about outcomes. With regard to Vietnam the US was prepared to apply the Korean model and would have been happy with a permanent two-state solution. But the more ancient template prevailed when the US, acknowledging its incapacity to continue, stopped funding the war, pulled out and allowed its enemy to unify the nation.

When George W Bush sought to avenge Osama Bin Laden’s spectacular 9/11 attack on New York and Washington by overwhelming the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and subsequently declaring “mission accomplished” in Iraq, he was clearly working within a psychological framework that could be dated back to Julius Caesar’s ancient veni, vidi, vici model of war. Despite calling his program a “global war on terror” — implicitly abolishing the notion of national boundaries — he clearly sought to assume operational and ideological control of two nation-states that had been eviscerated and reduced to political rubble.

The miscalculation became immediately apparent, but Bush’s commitment to success was such that both campaigns, superficially successful at the start, turned into something that lost all sense of linear logic. The course of events took the US well beyond the multiple, chaotic phases of the Vietnam War. It even permitted commentators to amend the vocabulary applied to international conflicts. We entered the era of “forever wars.”

Which kind of war is the Ukraine conflict?

Vladimir Putin shocked the world and especially the neighboring Western nations with his full-scale military operation initiated precisely two years ago. The invasion of Ukraine initially appeared to follow the classical example of a war that like a boxing match would end either with a quick knockout, a twelve-round decision or a technical knowckout.

That was undoubtedly Vladimir Putin’s intention. But he may not have realized that something had changed in the way the world thought about war. Putin clearly understood that the issue involved more than Ukraine. But to his mind, because NATO still had no official status in Ukraine, a controled assault on a weak nation should have allowed him to easily intimidate Ukraine’s military and force a settlement that would include the permanent exclusion of NATO. Despite renewed claims — as recently as the security conference in Munich earlier this month —  that Putin’s goal is to reconstruct the Soviet empire and then somehow push westward to conquer Europe, there has never been an iota of evidence for any intention of that kind.

Moreover, we now know that Putin nearly achieved his aim when negotiators initialed a peace deal in March 2022, a mere month after the opening of hostilities. We also know, thanks to various witnesses, that the US and NATO authorities, dutifully represented by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, instructed the Ukrainians to abandon all negotiations and to prolong the war. It didn’t take long before the mantra “for as long as it take��” became the rallying cry, repeated endlessly by Joe Biden, that could still be heard only a few days ago in Munich, this time voiced by Vice President Kamala Harris.

Most commentators who have paid attention to the state of play on the ground have described the conflict in its current form as a war of attrition, implicitly comparing it with World War I. But there is more to the drama than the visible reality of trench warfare or even the breathless reporting of an important but isolated event, such as the Russian capture of Avdiïvka.

When considering the possible outcome of a war, there are multiple and highly disparate variables that must be assessed. They include the state of equipment, troop levels and demographics, all of which seem to play out in unfavorable terms for Ukraine. But they also have logistical, political, geopolitical and psychological considerations, not the least of which is war fatigue. In the background are other factors, such as the taste among Ukrainian politicians and oligarchs for corruption. And, of course, there is the one issue that the media routinely has been covering recently: whether the US and/or Europe will continue to make the commitment required to keep a forever war going on literally forever.

What does all this mean in practical terms? Many military experts anticipate a sudden collapse of Ukraine’s military system, especially if the Russians advance towards the Dnieper, which the fall of Avdiïvka should facilitate. This game-changer in the military balance has become even more likely following President Zelenskyy’s dismissal of the popular general, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi as his top commander, replaced by the controversial Oleksandr Syrskyi.

The NATO countries have not only persisted in denying the likelihood of collapse, they continue to claim that Ukraine is destined to win. It leaves the impression that anything short of Kyiv’s total victory would result in a loss of face for everyone in the West. In so doing, they are forced —  possibly against their will or better judgment and most likely against the interest of their own people and economy — to attempt everything in their power, however unrealistic, to ensure that actual collapse does not happen or at least to dispel the impression that it is inevitable.

But there’s a deeper question. Even if the US Congress were to pass its next $61 billion gift to the Ukraine war effort, would it have any effect other than simply to further stimulate the already obscenely profitable defense industry in the US? The equipment that package would provide could only become operational on the ground in a year’s time, raising the question of whether Ukraine can remain intact while awaiting delivery and the preparation required to be useful in battle.

From zero sum to zero outcome

Stepping back from Ukraine, the history of recent US wars in the Middle East — which have unexpectedly been given a new life around the periphery of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza —  the pattern of seeing every conflict as potentially perennial and worth investing in year after year with little anticipation of an endgame seems to have become the norm. To the practitioners of 21st-century wars, conflicts that play out and then dramatically end are a thing of the past. The wars in which the US is directly or indirectly involved have transformed the very concept of war. We are now living in the age of the forever war. It stands as a kind of risky variation of MAD in which the idea of extending wars indefinitely is seen as preferable to nuclear confrontation.

The drama that unfolded in Afghanistan and Iraq beginning in 2001 and that is still unfolding in Ukraine, demonstrates that contrary to all our beliefs about international conflict in the past, the logic of war is no longer binary. Thanks to various innovations — technological, political and economic — the logic of war now has a third term that takes it beyond winning and losing. The idea of winning and losing was far too simplistic. We now have various verbs to choose from when describing the third option: prolonging, extending, containing and finally, exploiting. We might even add, when thinking about those who talk most in public about war — the politicians and the media — enjoying.

So, in the coming months and perhaps years, unless a dramatic collapse is allowed to occur, the West will deploy all its forces to ensure that Ukraine will still be the bone of contention no dog is allowed to chew. There are grounds for thinking keeping it going will not be as easy as just sending more money and equipment to Kyiv. We know that the true objective of the US is to weaken Russia. So that may eventually be the focus of any future appreciation of who will be the winner and who the loser. If Russia were to collapse, which seems totally unlikely, the US State Department and Pentagon would be clear winners. So might be a number of Ukrainian oligarchs as well as some political personalities. But even in such circumstances, Ukraine itself and the Ukrainian people would be losers.

For two years, Ukrainian society has been decimated and reduced to beggary. There is little hope that it could emerge, even in the very best scenario, with anything positive to put on display. Maintaining the torture by turning it into a forever war will only add to the misery. But if Biden, Blinken, Stoltenberg, the already discredited Johnson, Von der Leyen, Scholz, Macron, Baerbock and so many others in Europe can keep the suspense alive by prolonging the war as far as their resources permit, they are convinced that, whatever the outcome and even if it means losing face, their world will remain pretty much intact. In such situations, that’s all that really matters. The blood-spangled banner of the current rules-based international order can continue to fly proudly in the dawn’s early light or, more likely, disappear silently into the darkness of a rapidly fading twilight.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The mass slaughter on both sides in this long battle was a measure of the strategic value of the city to both sides, but it is also emblematic of the shocking human cost of this conflict. The war has degenerated into a brutal and bloody war of attrition along a nearly static front line. Neither side made significant territorial gains in the entire 2023 year of fighting, with a net gain to Russia of a mere square miles, or 0.1% of Ukraine.

And while it is the Ukrainians and Russians fighting and dying in this war of attrition with over casualties, it is the United States, with some its Western allies, that has stood in the way of peace talks. This was true of talks between Russia and Ukraine that took place in March 2022, one month after the Russian invasion, and it is true of talks that Russia tried to initiate with the United States as recently as January 2024.

The US and the UK pushed for a long war

In March 2022, Russia and Ukraine met in Turkey and a settlement that should have ended the war. Ukraine agreed to become a neutral country between East and West, on the model of Austria or Switzerland, giving up its controversial ambition for NATO membership. Territorial questions over Crimea and the self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk would be resolved peacefully, based on self-determination for the people of those regions.

But then the US and UK intervened to persuade Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy to abandon neutrality in favor of a long war to militarily drive Russia out of Ukraine and recover Crimea and the Donbas by force. American and British leaders have never admitted to their own people what they did, nor did they try to explain why they did it.

So it has been left to everyone else involved to reveal details of the agreement and the US and UK’s roles in torpedoing it: President Zelenskyy’s and Ukrainian ; Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt and Turkish ; Israeli Prime Minister Naftali who was another mediator; and former German Chancellor Gerhard , who mediated with Russian President Vladimir Putin for Ukraine.

The US sabotage of peace talks should come as no surprise. So much of US foreign policy follows what should by now be an easily recognizable and predictable pattern, in which our leaders systematically lie to us about their decisions and actions in crisis situations, and, by the time the truth is widely known, it is too late to reverse the catastrophic effects of those decisions. By then, thousands of people have paid with their lives, nobody is held accountable, and the world’s attention has moved on to the next crisis, the of lies and the next bloodbath — which in this case is Gaza.

But the war grinds on in Ukraine, whether we pay attention to it or not. Once the US and UK succeeded in killing peace talks and prolonging the war, it fell into an intractable pattern common to many wars. Ukraine, the United States and the leading members of the NATO military alliance were encouraged, or we might say deluded, by limited successes at different times into continually prolonging and escalating the war and rejecting diplomacy, in spite of ever-mounting, appalling human costs for the people of Ukraine.

US and NATO leaders have repeated ad nauseam that they are arming Ukraine to put it in a stronger position at the “negotiating table,” even as they keep rejecting negotiations. After Ukraine gained ground with its much-celebrated offensives in the fall of 2022, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley went public with a to “seize the moment” and get back to the negotiating table from the position of strength that NATO leaders said they were waiting for. French and German military leaders were even more adamant that that moment would be short-lived if they failed to seize it. 

They were right. US President Joe Biden rejected his military advisers’ calls for renewed diplomacy, and Ukraine’s failed 2023 offensive wasted its chance to negotiate from a position of strength, sacrificing many more lives to leave it weaker than before.

On February 13, 2024, the Reuters Moscow bureau broke the story that the United States had recently a new Russian proposal to reopen peace negotiations. Multiple Russian sources involved in the initiative told Reuters that Russia proposed direct talks with the United States to call a ceasefire along the current front lines of the war. 

Instead of negotiating something with Ukraine that the US might later veto, this time Russia approached the United States directly before involving Ukraine. There was a meeting of intermediaries in Turkey, and a meeting between Secretary of State Blinken, CIA Director Burns and National Security Adviser Sullivan in Washington, but the result was a message from Sullivan that the US was willing to discuss other aspects of US–Russian relations, but not peace in Ukraine.

Russia was better prepared than the West to fight a long war

And so the war grinds on. Russia is still firing artillery shells per day along the front line, while Ukraine can only fire 2,000. In a microcosm of the larger war, some Ukrainian gunners told reporters they were only allowed to fire 3 shells per night. As Sam Cranny-Evans of the UK’s Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a military think-tank, told the Guardian, “What that means is that Ukrainians can’t suppress Russian artillery any more, and if the Ukrainians can’t fire back, all they can do is try to survive.”

A March 2023 European initiative to produce a million shells for Ukraine in a year fell far short, only producing about 600,000. US monthly shell production in October 2023 was 28,000 shells, with a target of 37,000 per month by April 2024. The United States plans to increase production to 100,000 shells per month, but that will take until October 2025. Meanwhile, Russia is already producing artillery shells per year.

After spending less than one-tenth of the Pentagon budget over the past 20 years, how is Russia able to produce 5 times more artillery shells than the United States and its NATO allies combined?  

RUSI’s Richard Connolly to the Guardian that, while Western countries privatized their weapons production and dismantled “surplu��” productive capacity after the end of the Cold War in the interest of corporate profits, “The Russians have been…subsidizing the defense industry, and many would have said wasting money for the event that one day they need to be able to scale it up. So it was economically inefficient until 2022, and then suddenly it looks like a very shrewd bit of planning.”

Biden has been anxious to send more money to Ukraine — a whopping $61 billion — but disagreements in the US Congress between bipartisan Ukraine supporters and a Republican faction opposed to US involvement have held up the funds. But even if Ukraine had endless infusions of Western weapons, it has a more serious problem: Many of the troops it recruited to fight this war in 2022 have been killed, wounded or captured, and its recruitment system has been plagued by corruption and a lack of enthusiasm for the war among most of its people.

In August 2023, the government fired the heads of military recruitment in all 24 regions of the country after it became widely known that they were systematically to allow men to avoid recruitment and gain safe passage out of the country. The Open Ukraine Telegram channel , “The military registration and enlistment offices have never seen such money before, and the revenues are being evenly distributed vertically to the top.”

The Ukrainian parliament is debating a new law with an online registration system that includes people living abroad and penalties for failure to register or enlist. Parliament already voted down a previous bill that members found too draconian, and many fear that forced conscription will lead to more widespread draft resistance, or even bring down the government.

Oleksiy Arestovych, Zelenskyy’s former spokesman, Unherd that the root of Ukraine’s recruitment problem is that only 20% of Ukrainians believe in the anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalism that has controlled Ukrainian governments since the overthrow of the Yanukovych government in 2014. “What about the remaining 80%?” the interviewer asked. 

“I think for most of them, their idea is of a multinational and poly-cultural country,” Arestovych replied. “And when Zelenskyy came into power in 2019, they voted for this idea. He did not articulate it specifically but it was what he meant when he said, ‘I don’t see a difference in the Ukrainian-Russian language conflict, we are all Ukrainians even if we speak different languages.’”

“And you know,” Arestovych continued, “my great criticism of what has happened in Ukraine over the last years, during the emotional trauma of the war, is this idea of Ukrainian nationalism which has divided Ukraine into different people: the Ukrainian speakers and Russian speakers as a second class of people. It’s the main dangerous idea and a worse danger than Russian military aggression, because nobody from this 80% of people wants to die for a system in which they are people of a second class.”

If Ukrainians are reluctant to fight, imagine how Americans would resist being shipped off to fight in Ukraine. A 2023 US Army War College study of “Lessons from Ukraine” that the US ground war with Russia that the United States is to fight would involve an estimated 3,600 US casualties per day, killing and maiming as many US troops every two weeks as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq did in twenty years. Echoing Ukraine’s military recruitment crisis, the authors concluded, “Large-scale combat operations troop requirements may well require a reconceptualization of the 1970s and 1980s volunteer force and a move toward partial conscription.”

US war policy in Ukraine is predicated on just such a gradual escalation from proxy war to full-scale war between Russia and the United States, which is unavoidably overshadowed by the risk of nuclear war. This has not changed in two years, and it will not change unless and until our leaders take a radically different approach. That would involve serious diplomacy to end the war on terms on which Russia and Ukraine can agree, as they attempted to do in March 2022.

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The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Since the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainians have fled to Transnistria. From time to time, when aid is available in government-controlled Moldovan territory, hundreds of them cross the boundary to access it. So, we traveled to Moldova on one of those days to learn why.

Ukrainian refugees cross the Dniester to collect basic needs

On a warm September day, we drive through a checkpoint out of Transnistria. We arrive at the Moldovan village of Varnita. Transnistria is just across the Dniester from here.

Transnistria’s “capital,” Tiraspol, is about a 30-minute drive from here, and Moldova’s official capital, Chisinau, is roughly an hour away. The Ukrainian border is also nearby. Tiny Varnita serves as a gateway to three distinct worlds. Here, you can hear Ukranian, Romanian and Russian being spoken.

Volunteers from the Moldovan non-governmental organization (NGO) and the assemble food and hygiene packages for Ukrainian refugees living in the breakaway region. Many of the charity workers are Ukrainians themselves. Today, at least 300 people are expected to collect help. These are the lucky ones. Not everyone made it on the list. 

A diverse crowd forms a long queue — babies, children, elderly and young people. An old Moldovan gas station swiftly transforms into a logistics center.

Those in need present their Ukrainian passports to receive packages tailored for babies, kids, men and women. Broad smiles appear on children’s faces when they reach for their white paper bags. There are little juice boxes, fruit, and puffed snacks for them. The kids also get mini tennis rackets and balls.

The bags for adults are filled with detergents, sponges and soaps. Most of them have basic food. The people thank the donors and quickly drag the heavy bags to their cars or walk to the bus station — only a few stay to chat. Everything is done quietly, with many unspoken words lingering in the air.

Viola Mozhaieva, a Ukrainian refugee from Transnistria, is a coordinator here. She tells us that finding aid as a refugee in Transnistria has become increasingly rare.

According to , a democracy watchdog group, NGOs and civic activists in Transnistria operate in a repressive environment. The Transnistrian authorities monitor and harass groups that work on human rights issues. They also control the public media. Fundamental rights, like freedom of expression, are lacking.

The link to Russia is strong. About 1,500 Russian soldiers still live in Transnistria. The territory solely relies on Russian gas that is then partly converted into electricity. In this context, economic opportunity remains very limited.

“It’s very tough for people in Transnistria,” Viola explains. “Unfortunately, there’s virtually no assistance, mainly due to lack of funding. We’re fortunate if we receive food aid once a month or every other month. But people need to eat daily!”

Some refugees are already feeling desperate. “They’re becoming aggressive, realizing there’s no more hope. The war continues, and the conditions worsen,” said Viola.

Considering all this — why stay in a Russia-friendly place with so little support or even freedom?

“We simply didn’t know where else to go,” 82-year-old Tamara, a native of Crimea, tells us. She traveled to Transnistria with her daughter, granddaughter, great-granddaughter, two cats and a dog. When they arrived, they didn’t know anyone. “We just gathered our family and came here, unsure of our destination,” Tamara explained. “But kind-hearted people took us in.”

An Odesa family with three children wanted to settle in Chisinau, but the father feared he wouldn’t find work there without speaking the local Romanian language. They chose Russian-speaking Transnistria instead. Their baby girl was born there after the war had started. Salaries are lower in Transnistria, but so are the rent and everything else, they explain. Now, they are just waiting for the fighting to be over so they can return to Ukraine. “The birth of our child made us hopeful,” adds the mother.

Ukraine has been a significant trading partner for Transnistria, and Ukrainians comprise . Naturally, many refugees came here to stay with family and friends. But others simply could go no further, Viola explains, as many have disabilities.

Nearly a million border crossings

According to a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) , low living costs, family ties and previous residence are some of the main reasons for choosing Transnistria as a refuge. The problem is that they usually do not register themselves. As of this summer, only 76 refugees — out of possibly 10,000 — had officially filed for protection.

Since the official Moldovan government does not operate in Transnistria, officially registering as a refugee was daunting. According to the UNHCR, obtaining the necessary residency documents was difficult. The refugees also needed a Moldovan mobile number for registration, posing another obstacle. Even the absence of a Moldovan entry stamp on their passports made the registration harder.

The requirements were eased in September this year, said Monica Vazquez, the UNHCR external relations officer in Moldova. Now, refugees only need to submit a self-declaration form, accessible online.

The UNHCR operates through local partnerships across Moldova, including the Transnistrian region. They see that people get tired of helping. Many refugees have been in Moldova for at least a year. “It’s natural for them to start working and become self-reliant,” said Vazquez. “But the humanitarian need persists, and it’s crucial to keep supporting at all levels.”

Moldova hosts some of the region’s most vulnerable refugee populations. “18% are older persons, 7–10% are persons with disabilities and over 60% are children and women,” Vazquez specified.

Moldova has been instrumental in assisting Ukrainian refugees. As of November, over 113,000 Ukrainian refugees have settled in Moldova, with nearly a million crossing the Moldovan border since the war started in February 2022. Additionally, almost 700,000 Ukrainians have returned to their war-torn homeland through Moldova since then.

“What Moldova has achieved is extraordinary on every level,” concluded Vazquez. “It’s remarkable how they’ve stepped up, opened their doors and rushed to assist! Moldova’s response has been incredibly forward-thinking.”

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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A look at the physical casualties will give some idea of the severity of the fighting. In August 2023, US officials that the total casualties from the conflict were close to 500,000, with Ukraine suffering 70,000 killed and between 100,000 and 120,000 injured; they put Russian mortality at 120,000, with 170,000 to 180,000 wounded or sick. In October, UK Defence Intelligence analysts a larger total of Russian casualties, somewhere between 240,000 and 290,000. Further, in September 2023, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights 27,149 civilian casualties in Ukraine since the February 2022 invasion, comprising 9,614 killed and 17,535 injured. Given these headline statistics, it is not surprising that levels of current traumatic illness and the persisting post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) once the conflict has ended are likely to be high.

We can look to psychology to give us a fuller picture. The mental health effects of wartime trauma are well-studied. So, what does the science have to tell us?

Psychological casualties of battle

In the aftermath of World War ll, American researchers studying hospital and unit records that a positive association exists between the casualty rate and psychological breakdown on the battlefield. While such as morale, leadership and confidence in equipment may dampen the effect, it has been found for different nations and across time, from British soldiers in to Israeli troops in the and US forces in Vietnam.

Key studies in the 1990s looked at of the conflict in and, more recently, at deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in counter-insurgency roles. This has shown that veterans who suffer from post-traumatic illnesses often do not recover when treated with therapies that work well for civilians in peacetime. Soldiers are exposed to more trauma than civilians, and the factors that would normally protect them from trauma — such as group cohesion and a soldier’s identity — are diminished once they leave the armed forces.

It has also been that veterans who continue to suffer from troubling thoughts, intrusive memories of trauma and dreams of war meet the criteria for “complex PTSD.” This is a more severe and persisting form of PTSD characterized by negative self-beliefs, difficulty controlling emotions and interpersonal difficulties. The recognition of this distressing mental state has gone some way to explain why some veterans struggle with the challenge of reintegration to civilian life.

Treatments that work well for civilians suffering from PTSD often fail to resolve the symptoms of those with complex PTSD, but research is underway to find more effective interventions. Hopefully, any therapeutic gains can be offered to Ukrainian veterans.

Protective factors

While psychological casualties are inevitable, there are protective factors that will influence the final numbers.

Of importance is the fact that the Ukrainians are defending their homeland and families. Other conflicts have shown that troops fighting an invasion force often achieve success beyond their numbers. In , the Finnish Army halted a much larger Soviet invading force by inflicting heavy casualties on their infantry and destroying many tanks. In the , Finnish forces again defeated an offensive by superior Russian numbers before agreeing to peace terms. In Yugoslavia, partisans took advantage of mountainous terrain and dense forests, winning significant victories against larger and more experienced German forces and neutralizing the enemy’s superior equipment and air superiority with guerrilla tactics. In short, soldiers fight more effectively when they believe in what they are fighting for. Some shows high morale may reduce psychological casualties, too.

Confidence in weapons has also been shown to protect against breakdown. There has been a progressive increase in both the quantity and range of military aid delivered to Ukraine. In June 2022, for example, the delivery of the US M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), which enabled the Ukrainians to strike accurately from long-distance, improved their military capability. , in the midsummer of 2022, battle fatigue among Ukrainian troops engaged in the region of Severodenetsk was significantly reduced after receiving a supply of modern artillery and missiles from Europe and the United States.

of US and UK armed forces deployed to Afghanistan have shown that higher levels of unit cohesion, morale and leadership were associated with lower levels of psychological illness in high-tempo combat operations. These factors not only rely on the selection of soldiers for positions of authority but also on the creation of a military culture in combat units that sets standards of behavior.

Before the Russian incursion into the Donbas and the occupation of the Crimea in 2014, Colonel-General Henadii Vorbyov had begun to redesign the training and education of Ukrainian ground forces to move away from the traditional . The reforms were targeted at senior sergeants and junior officers. Subsequently, individual soldier skills and battalion level operations were taught with the assistance of NATO nations to generate higher levels of professionalism.

Lastly, although conscription can lead to the enlistment of unwilling soldiers, when a nation’s existence is threatened, this is less of a factor. Conscription can add diversity and skills not normally found in regular armies. Recruitment across age groups can promote the feeling of an entire nation at war for a common purpose. Hence, there are grounds for thinking that the Ukrainian armed forces have established the foundations for a psychologically resilient fighting force.

Studies of Western nations have shown that when soldiers and veterans feel supported by friends, family and the civilian population as a whole, it protects against psychological illness and aids psychological recovery. A Chatham House of Ukrainian civil society in December 2022 showed that, despite economic hardships, 72% of Ukrainians had donated money to support the war effort. Whilst it is possible to exaggerate the protective effect of a “blitz spirit,” the resilience of civilians exposed to bombardment has been demonstrated in many , including the Siege of Sarajevo and air raids on Nanking in August 1937 and Barcelona in March 1938.

Ukraine may have the strength to come through, but there will be damage

Ukraine is fighting for its own existence, and history tells us that people defending their homelands often have a resourcefulness that surpasses their numbers. But there are other factors that make the war an especially challenging one from a psychological standpoint.

The Ukrainian conflict resembles World War l in the extensive use of trench systems and artillery. With little movement, the fighting has an attritional character. Because Russia has well-established defensive systems, Ukrainian forces have encountered considerable difficulty counterattacking through extensive minefields and across physical barriers. As in World War l, Ukrainian commanders face the challenge of maintaining the morale of an army faced with a lengthy frontline no immediate prospect of an easy breakthrough.

It is difficult to consider long-term outcomes while the prospect of peace remains unclear. However, the numbers of killed and wounded leave little doubt that there will be a need for psychological therapy in the post-conflict period.

In both psychological casualties were between 5% and 30% of the wounded and sick, depending on the intensity of the fighting. Given that the Ukrainian armed forces have suffered an estimated 100,000 to 120,000 wounded, we could extrapolate that somewhere between 5,000 and 36,000 soldiers will suffer from psychological wounds.

However, as the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz , in war, “moral factor��” are often more important than physical factors, such as weapons, logistics and terrain. By moral factors, he meant an essential spirit that governs the will to conduct military operations and was expressed through adaptability, determination, and stamina. Moral factors, for Clausewitz, were the ultimate determinants of war.

Whilst modern research has shown that these variables do not confer absolute protection against psychological wounds, they can mediate the effects of trauma. Ukrainian forces resisting and driving back a larger invasion army have provided practical weight to Clausewitz’s theories.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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They claim to be enforcing Article 2.4 of the UN Charter, which , “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” By their reasoning, Russia violated Article 2.4 by invading Ukraine. Thus, any compromise or negotiated settlement is unconscionable, regardless of the consequences of prolonging the war.

Other countries have called for a peaceful diplomatic resolution of the conflict in Ukraine, with all aspects of the conflict to be settled at the negotiating table, based on the preceding article of the UN Charter, Article 2.3: “All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.”

These countries also refer to the purposes of the UN, defined in Article 1.1, which include the “settlement of international dispute��” by “peaceful means.” They also point to the dangers of escalation and nuclear war as an imperative for diplomacy to quickly end this war.

As the Amir of Qatar the General Assembly, “A long-term truce has become the most looked-for aspiration by people in Europe and all over the world. We call on all parties to comply with the UN Charter and international law and resort to a radical peaceful solution based on these principles.”

Climate, the West and war

This year, the General Assembly has also been focused on other facets of a world in crisis: the failure to tackle the , the lack of progress on the that countries agreed to in 2000, a neocolonial economic system that still divides the world into rich and poor and the desperate need for structural reform of a UN Security Council that has failed in its basic responsibility to keep the peace and prevent war.

Successive speakers highlighted the persistent problems related to US and Western abuses of power: the occupation of Palestine, cruel and illegal US sanctions against Cuba and many other countries, Western exploitation of Africa that has evolved from slavery to debt servitude and neocolonialism, and a global financial system that exacerbates extreme inequalities of wealth and power across the world.

Brazilian President Lula da Silva on Ukraine:

The war in Ukraine exposes our collective inability to enforce the purposes and principles of the UN Charter. We do not underestimate the difficulties in achieving peace. But no solution will be lasting if it is not based on dialogue. I have reiterated that work needs to be done to create space for negotiations… The UN was born to be the home of understanding and dialogue. The international community must choose. On one hand, there is the expansion of conflicts, the furthering of inequalities and the erosion of the rule of law. On the other, the renewing of multilateral institutions dedicated to promoting peace.

After a bumbling, incoherent by President Biden, Colombian President Gustavo Petro :

We are not thinking about how to expand life to the stars, but rather how to end life on our own planet. We have devoted ourselves to war. We have been called to war. Latin America has been called upon to produce war machines, men, to go to the killing fields. 

They’re forgetting that our countries have been invaded several times by the very same people who are now talking about combatting invasions. They’re forgetting that they invaded Iraq, Syria and Libya for oil. They’re forgetting that the same reasons they use to defend Zelenskyy are the very reasons that should be used to defend Palestine. They forget that to meet the Sustainable Development Goals, we must end all wars.

But they’re helping to wage one war in particular, because world powers see this suiting themselves in their game of thrones, in their hunger games, and they’re forgetting to bring an end to the other war because, for these powers, this did not suit them. What is the difference between Ukraine and Palestine, I ask? Is it not time to bring an end to both wars, and other wars too, and make the most of the short time we have to build paths to save life on the planet?

… I propose that the United Nations, as soon as possible, should hold two peace conferences, one on Ukraine, the other on Palestine, not because there are no other wars in the world — there are in my country — but because this would guide the way to making peace in all regions of the planet, because both of these, by themselves, could bring an end to hypocrisy as a political practice, because we could be sincere, a virtue without which we cannot be warriors for life itself.

Petro was not the only leader who upheld the value of sincerity and assailed the hypocrisy of Western diplomacy. Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent and the Grenadines :

Let us clear certain ideational cobwebs from our brains. It is, for example, wholly unhelpful to frame the central contradictions of our troubled times as revolving around a struggle between democracies and autocracies. St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a strong liberal democracy, rejects this wrong-headed thesis. It is evident to all right-thinking persons, devoid of self-serving hypocrisy, that the struggle today between the dominant powers is centered upon the control, ownership, and distribution of the world’s resources.

On the war in Ukraine, Gonsalves was equally blunt: 

… War and conflict rage senselessly across the globe; in at least one case, Ukraine, the principal adversaries — the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and Russia — may unwittingly open the gates to a nuclear Armageddon… Russia, NATO, and Ukraine should embrace peace, not war and conflict, even if peace has to rest upon a mutually agreed, settled condition of dissatisfaction.

Calls for peace from Europe to Africa

The Western position on Ukraine was also on full display. However, at least three NATO members (Bulgaria, Hungary and Spain) coupled their denunciations of Russian aggression with pleas for peace. Katalin Novak, the President of Hungary, :

… We want peace, in our country, in Ukraine, in Europe, in the world. Peace and the security that comes with it. There is no alternative to peace. The killing, the terrible destruction, must stop as soon as possible. War is never the solution. We know that peace is only realistically attainable when at least one side sees the time for negotiations as having come. We cannot decide for Ukrainians about how much they are prepared to sacrifice, but we have a duty to represent our own nation’s desire for peace. And we must do all we can to avoid an escalation of the war.

Even with wars, drought, debt and poverty afflicting their own continent, at least 17 African leaders took time during their General Assembly speeches to call for peace in Ukraine. Some voiced their support for the African Peace Initiative, while others contrasted the West’s commitments and expenditures for the war in Ukraine with its endemic neglect of Africa’s problems. President Joao Lourenço of Angola clearly why, as Africa rises up to reject neocolonialism, peace in Ukraine remains a vital interest for Africa and people everywhere:

In Europe, the war between Russia and Ukraine deserves our full attention to the urgent need to put an immediate end to it, given the levels of human and material destruction there, the risk of an escalation into a major conflict on a global scale and the impact of its harmful effects on energy and food security. All the evidence tells us that it is unlikely that there will be winners and losers on the battlefield, which is why the parties involved should be encouraged to prioritize dialogue and diplomacy as soon as possible, to establish a ceasefire and to negotiate a lasting peace not only for the warring countries, but which will guarantee Europe’s security and contribute to world peace and security.

Altogether, leaders from at least 50 countries spoke up for peace in Ukraine at the 2023 UN General Assembly. In his closing statement, Dennis Francis, the Trinidadian president of this year’s UN General Assembly, noted, “Of the topics raised during the High-Level Week, few were as frequent, consistent, or as charged as that of the Ukraine War. The international community is clear that political independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity must be respected, and violence must end.”

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A comprehensive on Germany’s involvement in the Ukraine War from the end of June this year showed that solidarity for Ukraine among Germans is steadfast. 42% supported maintaining the West’s military support for Ukraine. 30% called for increased military aid, while 23% preferred to see support scaled back.

Nonetheless, Germany’s political fringes on both the left and right are attempting to disrupt this consensus by stirring fears of nuclear escalation and economic downturn. They latched onto the German government’s to deliver heavy weaponry, most notably Leopard 2 battle tanks. Moreover, they have managed to polarize public discourse with calls for peace talks that dictate terms to Ukraine and downplay Russian aggression.

The so-called “” by far-left politician Sahra Wagenknecht and feminist publicist Alice Schwarzer garnered the most . It demanded that the government “halt the escalation of arms deliveries and lead a strong alliance for a ceasefire and peace negotiations.” In February, Wagenknecht and Schwarzer spearheaded the “” protests in Berlin. Organizers that 50,000 people rallied. Attendees included members of the far-right. The protests were unsettlingly void of symbols of solidarity for Ukraine and made only lackluster attempts to distinguish themselves from right-wing and anti-Ukrainian messaging.

In January this year, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) a motion titled “Peace Initiative” to Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag. The AfD’s honorary chairman, Alexander Gauland, called for peace talks and created doubts about his solidarity with Ukraine. “ one can win this war, and only if we finally accept that and work for a peaceful solution will peace have a chance,” he said.

These calls particularly resonate with voters in East Germany, where historically pro-Russian sentiment persists.

The fringes also attempted to build upon some showing that more than half of the population favored more substantial diplomatic efforts to resolve the war.

At first glance, the debates fueled by these initiatives are ubiquitous, drawing in opinions from across the population. Yet there is a major group missing. People with actual experience of war and migration hardly featured in public discourse, especially Syrians exiled from their country to Germany by a civil war that Russia exacerbated.

At the end of 2021, roughly  people from Syria resided in Germany, an enormous leap from 33,000 Syrians ten years earlier. In spite of this, the influence of Syrians in the debate has been imperceptible, save for at the very . Then, Syrian voices were present in about whether Ukrainian refugees were receiving preferential treatment compared to Middle Eastern and North African refugees. German media thus only reduced them to their status as refugees, meaningful only in terms of what they had experienced in Europe — and not what they had experienced in the country of their birth, in terms of war, freedom and peace.

Two young Syrian voices

So, what do Syrians in Germany think of their new home country’s struggle to find its role in the Ukraine war? What do they have to say about the Russian invasion, Germany’s support for Ukraine and the calls of some Germans for peace talks?

I spoke to Montaser Alrasheed, age 29, and Taoufek Morad, age 25. Like many Syrians, they left war-torn Syria for Germany in 2015. Approaching a decade of life in Germany, they no longer see their future in Assad’s Syria and intend to build new lives in their new home country.

Fearing compulsory military service, Morad fled Syria’s so-called capital of the revolution, Homs, which was ravaged and reclaimed by Assad’s Syrian Arab Army in 2014. He has been making the most of his new-found opportunities in Germany. Along with his full-time job as a social worker, he volunteers on an international advisory board in his new hometown of Pforzheim in Germany’s southwest, an organization that gives immigrants without German citizenship a political voice at the municipal level.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022 left Morad speechless. Soon enough, the images of war and destruction — resembling those of his hometown — made him realize that Putin would “do the same thing in Ukraine that he has done and is doing in Syria.” Morad refers to Russia’s military intervention in Syria that started in September 2015 and killed at least civilians.

Alrasheed fled to Germany from Ar-Raqqa. This enabled him to continue his studies, which he had to interrupt because of the war. He is now studying civil and environmental engineering in Hanover. The first impressions of the war in Ukraine saddened and surprised him, as he, like so many, did not expect Putin to take such a political risk.

Lessons to learn from Syria’s civil war

Morad and Alrasheed understand why some Germans are speaking out for increased diplomatic efforts. They feel the same horror over recurring gruesome images and the number of victims caused by Russia’s aggression.

Yet Alrasheed opposes peace talks that include territorial concessions from Ukraine. “Occupation should not be a basis for a solution,” he told me. According to Morad, a diplomatic solution entailing a loss of Ukrainian territory should only be considered “if the people of Ukraine think it is right.” Likewise, he sees German arms deliveries as appropriate “as long as the Ukrainians want them.”

The arms deliveries to Ukraine remind Alrasheed of the complicated web of foreign interventions in the Syrian Civil War. He describes Ukraine as “a chessboard” of a proxy war against Russia that serves the various actors’ interests.

Alrasheed complements this sober view on foreign involvement in the Ukrainian war with a stark warning, also drawn from the Syrian Civil War: “If military support to Ukraine wanes, there is a risk of exposing Ukrainian civilians to revenge and despotism similar to Assad’s ruthlessness against his people.” to Human Rights Watch, the Syrian regime has been found responsible for 85 chemical weapon attacks during the Syrian Civil War. To this day, Assad arbitrarily and tortures Syrian citizens.

Both Morad and Alrasheed see Putin’s intervention in the Syrian Civil War, similar to Putin’s wars in Chechnya, Georgia and Crimea, as a blueprint for the invasion of mainland Ukraine. “Syria served as a testing ground for Putin on warfare and how the international community responds to military intervention. The international community, by its silence or lack of consequences, sowed the seeds for the Ukrainian war”, Morad said.

Despite the West’s more unanimous and robust reaction to Putin’s aggression against Ukraine, Alrasheed fears that, like in Syria, “the population of Ukraine could be forgotten as soon as the nations involved no longer see their interests represented” and the political and economic costs for the support turn out to be too high.

Lack of representation and participation

The discourse surrounding the war in Ukraine lacks the valuable opinions and experiences like Alrasheed’s and Morad’s. Since , 2.3 million people have sought refuge in Germany due to flight and displacement, including 1.2 million between 2014 and 2021. In addition, 1.1 million Ukrainians immigrated between March 2022 and May 2023. Germany, as an (albeit reluctant) immigration society with a large share of people who fled their homelands, should do better to represent refugees in political discourses, regardless of their state of citizenship. 

The inadequate representation is merely a symptom of an underlying participation deficit. It shows migrants and refugees are reduced to passive spectators, even when the political debates touch upon their lives. They often find themselves in a political and participatory limbo due to insecure residence statuses or missing citizenship.

Voters increasingly see refugees as a burden on Germany’s social fabric, which is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy when they consign refugees to political invisibility and deny them political participation. The preconceived notion of a belittled refugee who is to be grateful for the shelter received does not allow for dialogue and shared experiences.

Refugees’ opinions could be valuable and authentic additions to virulent polarized discourses. Yet, without German or EU member state citizenship,  for formal political participation are sparse. Municipal advisory boards and similar voluntary and informal participation structures cannot fully compensate for exclusion from political elections. Germany must face the reality of being an immigration society. Progressive steps, such as a municipal voting right for foreigners, are overdue to make migrants and refugees politically more visible.

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“All the elements were present on the spot for the outbreak of a conflict which might have precipitated the catastrophe,” one of those diplomats after the conclusion of the agreement. “We had populations inflamed to a high degree; we had extremists on both sides ready to work up and provoke incidents; we had considerable quantities of arms which were by no means confined to regularly organized forces. Therefore, it was essential that we should quickly reach a conclusion.”

The diplomat, of course, was British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who had just negotiated the Munich Agreement with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. In September 1938, Hitler had given Europe an end-of-month deadline to give Germany the Sudetenland, a section of Czechoslovakia where a large German minority lived. Otherwise, the German leader intended to seize the region by force.

Hitler that it would be the last territorial demand he would make of Europe.

In the brief speech he gave in front of 10 Downing Street, Chamberlain declared that the Munich Agreement was “peace for our time,” which for some reason has been repeatedly misquoted as “peace in our time.”

It wouldn’t be Hitler’s last diktat or his last territorial grab. The following September, after Germany invaded Poland, Chamberlain would reverse himself and declare war against Hitler’s regime.

In retrospect, it’s easy to criticize Chamberlain’s �Բ�ï�����é. Perhaps he wasn’t fully versed in Hitler’s appropriation of the concept of lebensraum (“living space”) to justify his desire to expand the national borders of Germany. Maybe he didn’t know that, in 1936, Hitler had of the “rich forest��” of Siberia and the “incalculable farmland��” of Ukraine.

But of a “peace for our time” in Ukraine by compromising with Russian President Vladimir Putin — effectively trading land that is not theirs for a peace that won’t endure — have a much harder time explaining away their �Բ�ï�����é. For one, they have to reckon with this earlier history of appeasement that holds lessons for all those who engage with authoritarian leaders with imperial ambitions.

These “peace advocate��” must also deliberately close their eyes and ears to Putin’s version of lebensraum, namely the “Russian world” that he routinely invokes to extend Moscow’s “protection” to Belarus, Ukraine and areas on the Russian border with significant Russian-speaking minorities.

These erstwhile lovers of diplomacy probably don’t know that the word mir in Russian means both “world” and “peace.” So, when Putin talks of this “Russian world,” he is also speaking of a Russian peace. Such a “peace” would preserve Russian territorial gains in Ukraine, grant amnesty to all Russians who have committed war crimes during this conflict and absolve Russia of its financial responsibility for damages incurred during the war. In other words, any such consolidation of the “Russian world” of Vladimir Putin requires a “Russian peace.”

Instead, peace activists should be clamoring for a “peace in their time,” namely a peace on Ukrainian terms. Ukraine, after all, is the victim in this conflict. It should ideally decide the timing and the parameters of any peace deal.

Fortunately, it now seems that the international community may be coming around to that position as well.

The meeting in Jeddah

In August, representatives from over 40 countries came to the Saudi city of to talk about peace in Ukraine.

Russia was not invited.

The snub was deliberate. The meeting was designed to build a peace plan around principles that Ukraine has put forward, especially the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory and the return of those lands to Ukrainian control.

Territorial integrity and the inviolability of sovereignty are bedrock principles in international law that inform the operating consensus of the United Nations. So, it’s really no surprise that the participants in the Jeddah meeting that these Ukrainian demands should be at the heart of any peace deal. Other issues, such as war crimes and compensation, remain controversial.

That so many countries showed up in Jeddah is already a step forward for Ukraine and the prospects for a “peace in their time.” The participants were not just the usual suspects who are already supplying Ukraine with arms. Many of the countries in the Global South who showed up had been hitherto reluctant to anger Russia, which is a source of arms shipments, grain and occasionally other products. But Russia’s and its deliberate targeting of Ukraine’s agricultural infrastructure, a war crime in and of itself, has been a step too far for many countries in the Global South who have come to depend on cheaper Ukrainian grain exports.

For the time being, countries like China, India, Saudi Arabia and Brazil continue to insist that they are working with both sides. But the Jeddah meeting sends a signal to the Kremlin that it can no longer take for granted even the qualified support it has received from these powerful countries.

Ukraine that the Jeddah meeting will lead to two summits that will finalize a peace deal that could come with the imprimatur of the international community.

Putin cracks down (again)

Boris Kagarlitsky is the most prominent Russian leftist of his generation. In October 1990, during the waning days of the Soviet Union, I in Moscow about the challenges of creating a left party and the emergence of a “second dissidence” in response to the ruling elite and their economic programs. He was the most interesting commentator on the ultimately quixotic efforts to pull some version of democratic socialism out of the wreckage of Soviet communism.

Kagarlitsky is now sitting in jail, having been arrested for his statements against the war in Ukraine. This week, the Russian government him a “terrorist.”

Opposing the war in Ukraine required something of an about-face for Kagarlitsky, who improbably Russia’s annexation of Crimea and involvement in the Donbas secession struggles in 2014. Becoming part of the “patriotic left,” he took advantage of the greater media exposure that came with his newfound allegiance to the Russian government.

But that only made his subsequent criticism of Putin’s war in Ukraine all the more threatening to the Russian government. His arrest has come amid a crackdown against dissent across the political spectrum. This week, the government also to the sentence of the country’s most prominent dissident, Alexei Navalny. A rather conventional nationalist during his protest days, Navalny has also recently changed his tune on aspects of the Ukraine War, for instance now supporting the of Crimea to Ukraine.

And then there’s Igor Girkin, who occupies a position on the political spectrum further to the right of Putin. A former intelligence operative and mercenary, Girkin helped set up the pro-war Club of Angry Patriots in April. But not even these extremist, pro-war credentials have saved Girkin from the wrath of Putin. When the military blogger directly criticized the Russian president last month, he too was .

Russia will hold presidential elections next year. Though press spokesman Dmitry Peskov of a landslide victory, Putin is clearly concerned that someone or something will pose a significant challenge to his authority.

But as long as Putin remains in charge, Ukraine will face a major obstacle in achieving peace on its own terms. Like Hitler, Putin has been coy about his own territorial ambitions. His spokesman Peskov that “we just want to control all the land we have now written into our Constitution as ours.” That means the Donbas and Crimea — and a few more pieces of territory — but Russia doesn’t currently control all of the Donbas. So, even this “modest” imperialism would entail a broader land grab.

Putin’s ambitions, meanwhile, range from a “” of Russian-occupied territory that prevents Ukrainian missiles from reaching Russian territory, to the seizure of all of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, to the all-out replacement of the “Nazi” government in Kyiv. The Russian government has also threatened to use nuclear weapons, so it is not above using nuclear blackmail to achieve its aims.

But all talk of Putin being satisfied with control of the territory the Russian army currently controls is �Բ�ï�����é at the level of believing Hitler’s promise that Nazi Germany wouldn’t occupy any territory beyond the Sudetenland. The world soon saw through the claims of “peace in our time.” With the wisdom of hindsight and given the widely available evidence of Putin’s intentions, it’s time to rally behind the alternative: “peace in their time.”

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So, based on Biden’s own definition of US war aims, his policy is failing. Tragically, it is hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers, not Americans, who are paying the price with their and their lives. 

This result was far from unexpected. Early in the year Pentagon documents, , had a bleak assessment of the likelihood of Ukrainian success. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself the offensive in May to avoid what he called “unacceptable” losses. 

The delay allowed more Ukrainian troops to complete NATO training on Western tanks and armored vehicles, but it also gave Russia more time to reinforce its anti-tank defenses and prepare lethal kill zones along the 700-mile front line.

Now, after two months, Ukraine’s new armored divisions have advanced only 12 miles or less in two small areas, at the cost of tens of thousands of casualties. of newly deployed Western armored vehicles and equipment were reportedly destroyed in the first few weeks of the new offensive as armored divisions tried to advance through Russian minefields and kill zones without demining operations or air cover. 

Meanwhile, Russia has made similar toward Kupyansk in eastern Kharkiv province, where land around the town of Dvorichna has changed hands for the third time since the invasion. These tit-for-tat exchanges of small pieces of territory, with massive use of heavy artillery and appalling losses, typify a brutal war of attrition not unlike the First World War.

Missed chances for peace

Last spring, peace talks in Turkey , but UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson encouraged Ukraine to stay in the fight for the long haul in a . Just three days after this Western intervention in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that talks were at “,” and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, that the US and UK “b���dz�����” negotiations.

Ukraine’s military successes in the provinces of Kharkiv and Kherson the following autumn provoked serious debate within NATO over whether it was the moment for Ukraine to return to the negotiating table. As by Italy’s La Repubblica, NATO leaders saw the capture of Kherson as providing the opportunity they had been waiting for to try to negotiate a peace agreement from a position of Ukrainian strength.

On November 9, 2022, the very day that Russia ordered its withdrawal from Kherson, General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Economic Club of New York, where the interviewer asked him whether the time was now ripe for negotiations. The general expressed hope that leaders might be able to seize the opportunity provided by the winter slowdown in fighting to negotiate.

General Milley compared the situation to the First World War, explaining that leaders on all sides understood by Christmas 1914 that that war was not winnable, yet they fought on for another four years, multiplying the million lives lost in 1914 into 20 million by 1918, destroying five empires and setting the stage for the rise of fascism and the Second World War.

Milley underscored the point of his cautionary tale by noting that, as in 1914, “… there has to be a mutual recognition that military victory is probably in the true sense of the word, is maybe not achievable through military means. And therefore, you need to turn to other means … So things can get worse. So when there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it, seize the moment.”

But Milley and other voices of experience were ignored.

At Biden’s February State of the Union speech in Congress, General Milley’s face was a study in gravity, a rock in a sea of misplaced self-congratulation and ignorance of the real world beyond the circus tent, where the West’s incoherent war strategy was not only sacrificing Ukrainian lives every day but flirting with nuclear war. Milley didn’t crack a smile all night, even when Biden to glad-hand after his speech.

No US, NATO or Ukrainian leaders have been held accountable for failing to seize that moment , nor the previous missed chance for peace in spring, when Western leaders rejected a near-agreement, mediated by Turkey and Israel, that could have brought peace based on the of a Russian withdrawal in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality. Nobody has demanded a serious account of why the West let these chances for peace slip through their fingers. 

The West has no idea what it is doing

Whatever their reasoning, the result is that Ukraine is caught in a war with no exit. When Ukraine seemed to have the upper hand in the war, NATO leaders were determined to press their advantage and launch another offensive, regardless of the shocking human cost. But now that the new offensive and weapons shipments have only succeeded in laying bare the weakness of Western strategy and returning the initiative to Russia, the architects of failure reject negotiating from a position of weakness.

So, the conflict has fallen into an intractable pattern common to many wars, in which all parties to the fighting—Russia, Ukraine and the leading members of the NATO military alliance—have been encouraged, or we might say deluded, by limited successes at different times into prolonging the war and rejecting diplomacy. In doing so, they are willing to bear not only the appalling human costs but the rising danger of a wider war and the existential risk of nuclear confrontation.

The reality of war is laying bare the contradictions of Western policy. If Ukraine is not allowed to negotiate with Russia from a position of strength or from a position of weakness, what stands in the way of its total destruction?

And how can Ukraine and its allies defeat Russia, a country whose nuclear weapons policy that it will use nuclear weapons before it will accept an existential defeat? 

If, as has warned, any war between the United States and Russia, or of “tactical” nuclear weapons, would most likely escalate into full-scale nuclear war, where else is the current policy of incremental escalation and ever-increasing US and NATO involvement intended to lead?

Are they simply praying that Russia will implode or give up? Or are they determined to call Russia’s bluff and push it into an inescapable choice between total defeat and nuclear war? 

Hoping, or pretending, that Ukraine and its allies can defeat Russia without triggering a nuclear war is not a strategy. 

In place of a strategy to resolve the conflict, the United States and its allies welded the natural impulse to resist Russian aggression to a plan to prolong the war indefinitely. The results of that decision are of Russian and Ukrainian casualties so far and the gradual destruction of Ukraine by millions of artillery shells fired by both sides.

Since the end of the first Cold War, successive US governments, Democratic and Republican, have made catastrophic miscalculations regarding the United States’ ability to impose its will on other countries and peoples. Their naive assumptions about American power and military superiority have led to this fateful, historic crisis in US foreign policy.

Now, Congress is being asked for to keep fueling this war. They should instead listen to the majority of Americans, who, according to the latest CNN , oppose more funding for an unwinnable war. They should heed the words of the by civil society groups in 32 countries calling for an immediate ceasefire and peace negotiations to end the war before it destroys Ukraine and endangers all of humanity.

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In recent months, among Russian President Vladimir Putin’s followers, there has been much talk of a “forever war” in Ukraine dragging on for years, if not decades. “For us,” Putin a group of factory workers recently, “this is not a geopolitical task, but a task of the survival of Russian statehood, creating conditions for the future development of the country and our children.”

Visiting Kyiv last February, US President Joseph Biden assured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, “You remind us that freedom is priceless; it’s worth fighting for, for as long as it takes. And that’s how long we’re going to be with you, Mr. President: for as long as it takes.” A few weeks later, the European Council “its resolute condemnation of Russia’s actions and unwavering support for Ukraine and its people.” 

With all the major players already committed to fighting a forever war, how could peace possibly come about? With the UN compromised by Russia’s seat on the Security Council and the G7 powers united in “Russia’s illegal, unjustifiable, and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine,” the most likely dealmaker when it comes to ending this forever war may prove to be President Xi Jinping of China.

China? Really?

In the West, Xi’s self-styled role as a peacemaker in Ukraine has been widely mocked. In February, on the first anniversary of the Russian invasion, China’s as the “only viable solution to the Ukraine crisi��” sparked a barbed reply from US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who claimed the war “could end tomorrow if Russia stopped attacking Ukraine.”

When Xi visited Moscow in March, the statement Chinese officials released claiming that he to “play a constructive role in promoting talk��” prompted considerable Western criticism. “I don’t think China can serve as a fulcrum on which any Ukraine peace process could move,” Ryan Hass, a former American diplomat assigned to China. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, pointed out that “China has taken side��” in the conflict by backing Russia and so could hardly become a peacemaker. Even when Xi made a to Zelensky promising to dispatch an envoy to promote negotiations “with all parties,” critics dismissed that overture as so much damage control for China’s increasingly troubled trade relations with Europe.

The symbolism of peace conferences

Still, think about it for a moment. Who else could bring the key parties to the table and potentially make them honor their signatures on a peace treaty? Putin has, of course, already violated UN accords by invading a sovereign state and ruptured his economic entente with Europe by trashing past agreements with Washington to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty. And yet the Russian president relies on China’s support, economically and otherwise, which makes Xi the only leader who might be able to bring him to the bargaining table and ensure that he honors any agreement he may sign. That sobering reality should raise serious questions about how any future Beijing-inspired peace conference might happen and what it would mean for the current world order.

For more than 200 years, peace conferences have not only resolved conflicts but regularly signaled the arrival at stage center of a new world power. In 1815, amid the whirling in Vienna’s palaces that accompanied negotiations ending the Napoleonic wars, Britain emerged into its century-long reign as the globe’s . Similarly, the 1885 that carved up the continent of Africa for colonial rule heralded Germany’s rise as Britain’s most serious rival. The somber grand Hall of Mirrors that officially ended World War I in 1919 marked America’s debut on the world stage. Similarly, the at San Francisco that established the UN (just as World War II was about to end) affirmed the ascent of US global hegemony.

Imagine the impact if, sooner or later, envoys from Kyiv and Moscow convene in Beijing beneath the gaze of President Xi and find the elusive meeting point between Russia’s aspirations and Ukraine’s survival. One thing would be guaranteed: after years of disruptions in the global energy, fertilizer and grain markets, marked by punishing inflation and spreading hunger, all eyes from five continents would indeed turn toward Beijing.

After all, with the war disrupting grain and fertilizer shipments via the Black Sea, world hunger to an estimated 345 million people in 2023, while basic food insecurity now afflicts 828 million inhabitants of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Should such negotiations ever prove fruitful, a televised signing ceremony hosted by President Xi and watched by countless millions globally would crown China’s rapid 20-year ascent to world power.

The world’s newest great power

Forget Ukraine for a moment and concentrate on China’s economic rise under communist rule, which has been little short of extraordinary. At the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, China was an economic lightweight. Its massive population, 20% of the world’s total, was just 4% of global economic output. So weak was China that its leader Mao Zedong had to amid a Moscow winter for an audience with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin just to plead for the industrial technology that would help rebuild an economy devastated by 12 years of war and revolution. In the decade following its admission to the World Trade Organization in 2001, however, China quickly became the workshop of the world, an unprecedented $4 trillion in foreign exchange reserves.

Instead of simply swimming in a hoard of cash like Scrooge McDuck in his Money Bin, in 2013 President Xi announced a trillion-dollar development scheme called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It aimed to build a massive infrastructure across the Eurasian landmass and Africa, thereby improving the lives of humanity’s forgotten millions, while making Beijing the focal point of Eurasia’s economic development. Today, China is not only an industrial powerhouse that 18% of the global gross domestic product (GDP), compared to 12% for the US, but also the world’s chief creditor. It provides capital for infrastructure and industrial projects to while offering some hope to the still subsisting on less than four dollars a day.

Testifying to that economic prowess, for the past six months world leaders have ignored Washington’s pleas to form a united front against China. Instead, remarkable numbers of them, including Germany’s Olaf Scholz, Spain’s Pedro Sánchez and Brazil’s Lula da Silva, have been to pay court to President Xi. In April, even French President and US ally Emmanuel Macron visited the Chinese capital, where he a “global strategic partnership with China” and urged other countries to become less reliant on the “extraterritoriality of the U.S. dollar.”

Then, in a diplomatic coup that stunned Washington, China took a toward healing the dangerous sectarian rivalry between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia by a meeting of their foreign ministers in Beijing. As the Saudis’ and Iran’s , Beijing had the commercial clout to bring them to the bargaining table. China’s top diplomat Wang Yi then the restored diplomatic relations as part of his country’s “constructive role in facilitating the proper settlement of hot-spot issues around the world.”

Geopolitics as a source of change

Underlying the sudden display of Chinese diplomatic clout is a recent shift in that essential realm called “geopolitic��” that’s driving a fundamental realignment in global power.

Around 1900, at the high tide of the British Empire, the English geographer Sir Halford Mackinder started the modern study of geopolitics by publishing a highly arguing that the construction of the 5,000-mile-long Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Vladivostok was the beginning of a merger of Europe and Asia. That unified land mass, he said, would soon become the epicenter of global power.

In 1997, in his book , former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brezinski updated MacKinder, arguing that “geopolitics has moved from the regional to the global dimension, with preponderance over the entire Eurasian continent serving as the central basis for global primacy.” In words particularly apt for our present world, he added: “America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained.”

Imagine geopolitics as the deep substrate shaping far more superficial political events, even if it’s only noticeable in certain moments, much the way the incessant grinding of the planet’s tectonic plates only becomes visible when volcanic eruptions break through the earth’s surface. For centuries, if not millennia, Europe was separated from Asia by endless deserts and sprawling grasslands. The empty center of that vast land mass was crossed only by an occasional string of camels traveling the .

Now, thanks to its in infrastructure—rails, roads, pipelines, and ports—China is fundamentally changing that geopolitical substrate through a more-than-metaphorical merger of continents. If President Xi’s grand design succeeds, Beijing will forge a unified market stretching 6,000 miles from the North Sea to the South China Sea, eventually encompassing 70% of all humanity and effectively fusing Europe and Asia into a single economic continent: Eurasia.

Despite the Biden administration’s fervid attempts to create an , recent diplomatic eruptions are shaping a new world order that isn’t at all what Washington had in mind. With the economic creation of a true Eurasian sphere seemingly underway, we may be seeing the first signs of the changing face of international politics. The question is: Could a Chinese-engineered peace in Ukraine be next in line?

Pressures on China for peace

Such growing geopolitical power is giving China both the motivation and potentially even the means to negotiate an end to the fighting in Ukraine. First, the means: as Russia’s for its commodity exports, and Ukraine’s largest before the war, China can use commercial pressure to bring both parties to the bargaining table, much as it did for Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Next, the motivation: while Moscow and Kyiv might each exude confidence in ultimate victory in their forever war, Beijing has reason to grow impatient with the economic disruptions radiating out across the Black Sea to roil a delicately balanced global economy. According to the World Bank, almost (47%) is now surviving on seven dollars a day, and most of them live in Africa, Asia and Latin America where China has made massive, long-term developmental loans to under its Belt and Road Initiative.

With 70% of its lands and their rich black soils devoted to agriculture, Ukraine has for decades produced bumper crops of wheat, barley, soybeans and sunflower oil that made it “the of the world,” providing the globe’s hungry millions with reliable shipments of affordable commodities. Right after the Russian invasion, however, world prices for grains and vegetable oils shot up by 60%. Despite stabilization efforts, including the UN’s Black Sea Grain Initiative to allow exports through the war zone, prices for such essentials remain all too high. They threaten to go higher still with further disruption of global supply chains or more war damage like the recent rupture of a crucial Ukrainian that’s turning more than a million acres of prime farmland into “desert.”

As costs for imports of fertilizer, grain and other foodstuffs have soared since the Russian invasion, the Council on Foreign Relations that “a climbing number of low-income BRI countries have struggled to repay loans associated with the initiative, spurring a wave of debt crises.” In the Horn of Africa, for example, the sixth year of a crippling drought has pushed an estimated into a “hunger crisis,” forcing the governments of Ethiopia and Kenya to balance costly food imports with the repayment of Chinese loans for the creation of like factories, railroads and renewable energy. With such loans surpassing in nations like Ghana, Malaysia, Pakistan and Zambia, while China itself holds outstanding credits equivalent to , China is far more invested in global economic peace and stability than any other major power.

Beyond western fantasies of victory

At present, Beijing might seem alone among major nations in its concern about the strain the Ukraine war is placing on a world economy poised between starvation and survival. But within the coming six months, Western opinion will likely start to shift as its inflated expectations for Ukrainian victory in its long-awaited “” meet the reality of Russia’s return to trench warfare.

After the stunning success of Ukraine’s offensives late last year near Kharkiv and Kherson, the West dropped its reticence about provoking Putin and began shipping billions of dollars of sophisticated equipment—first and missiles, then and battle tanks and, by the end of this year, advanced . By the war’s first anniversary last February, the West had already provided Kyiv with in aid, and expectations of success rose with each new arms shipment. Adding to that anticipation, Moscow’s own “winter offensive” with its desperate suicide attacks on the city of Bakhmut , as Foreign Affairs put it, that “the Russian military demonstrated … it was no longer capable of large-scale combat operations.”

But defense is another matter. While Moscow was wasting some in suicide assaults on Bakhmut, its specialized tractors were cutting a formidable network of along a 600-mile front designed to stall any Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Ukraine’s troops will probably achieve some breakthroughs when that offensive finally begins, but are unlikely to push Russia back from all its post-invasion gains. Remember that Russia’s army of 1.3 million is than Ukraine’s, which has also suffered many casualties. In March, the commander of Ukraine’s 46th Air Assault brigade the Washington Post that a year of combat had left 100 dead and 400 wounded in his 500-man unit and that they were being replaced by raw recruits, some of whom fled at the very sound of rifle fire. To counter the few dozen “symbolic” Leopard tanks the West is sending, Russia has thousands of in reserve. Despite US and European sanctions, Russia’s economy has actually continued to grow, while Ukraine’s, which was only about a tenth the size of Russia’s, has shrunk by 30%. Facts like these mean just one thing is likely: stalemate.

Beijing as peacemaker

By next December, if Ukraine’s counteroffensive has indeed stalled, its people face another cold, dark winter of drone attacks, while Russia’s rising casualties and lack of results might by then begin to challenge Putin’s hold on power. In other words, both combatants might feel far more compelled to sit down in Beijing for peace talks. With the threat of future disruptions damaging its delicate global position, Beijing will likely deploy its full economic power to press the parties for a settlement. By trading territory, while agreeing with China on reconstruction aid, and some further strictures on Ukraine’s future NATO membership, both sides might feel they had won enough concessions to sign an agreement.

Not only would China then gain enormous prestige for brokering such a peace deal, but it might win a preferential position in the reconstruction bonanza that would follow by offering aid to rebuild both a ravaged Ukraine and a damaged Russia. In a recent report, the World Bank that it could take $411 billion and over a decade to rebuild a devastated Ukraine through infrastructure contracts of the very kind Chinese construction companies are so ready to undertake. To sweeten such deals, Ukraine could also allow China to build massive factories to supply Europe’s soaring demand for renewable energy and electric vehicles. Apart from the profits involved, such Chinese-Ukrainian joint ventures would ramp up production at a time when that country is likely to gain duty-free access to the European market.

In the post-war moment, with the possibility that Ukraine will be an increasingly strong economic ally at the edge of Europe, Russia still a reliable supplier of cut-rate commodities and the European market ever more open to its state corporations, China is likely to emerge from that disastrous conflict—to use Brzezinski’s well-chosen words—with its ‼�����ponderance over the entire Eurasian continent” consolidated and its “basis for global primacy” significantly strengthened.

[ first published this piece.]

[ edited this piece.]

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If Ukraine uses these munitions on Ukrainian soil, it will be endangering its own children, who may come across some of these explosives years from now when out playing.

One of the participants on the MSNBC show, New York Times columnist David Brooks, was asked why the Biden Administration was supplying such munitions to Ukraine.  His answer really startled me.

It was,

I guess they have no other munitions to send.

So, after a few months of artillery-intense trench warfare, the West has run out of supplies of shells and missiles and cannot replenish its stocks quickly enough. This reveals acute vulnerability.

How on Earth did the US, and its European allies, find themselves in this situation?

If munitions have run out after a few months of artillery warfare, that does not bode well for Europe’s capacity to defend itself in the long term in the event of a wider confrontation with Russia.

We’ve seen all this before…

It seems as if the West has been taken by surprise by this munitions shortage. There is no excuse for that. There are ample warnings from history.

There is a clear precedent in relatively recent history for the style of war now being waged in Ukraine: the artillery bombardments, followed by assaults on deep entrenchments, that characterized the Western Front in the First World War. Only after heavy bombardment of the enemy front line could troops advance.

Like the war in Ukraine, World War I started out as a war of movement.

The Germans made rapid advances in 1914 until the French halted them on the Marne.  After that, the war quickly became a static artillery war, where advances of as little as 100 meters were celebrated as triumphs.

These small advances would involve huge casualties among the advancing forces unless they had been preceded by heavy artillery barrages that employed a caliber of shell that destroyed barbed wire as well as larger fortifications.

In general terms, casualties among the attacking forces were three times as great as they were among the defenders. That is probably the ratio in Ukraine now too.

It is becoming plain that Ukraine does not have sufficient supplies of either the type or amount of munitions required needed to make a big breakthrough and to preserve the lives of the brave Ukrainian soldiers sent in to attack the Russian lines. Meanwhile, Russia has air superiority, which is more important now than it was in World War I.

I do not understand why the counter-offensive was announced at all, without adequate supplies of artillery and munitions already being in place. A worrying lack of strategic foresight is evident.

…and we didn’t deal with it very well back then, either.

The political precedents from World War Iare far from encouraging.

Within a couple of months of that war starting, there was already an acute shortage of shells and heavy artillery in the British Army. (France and Germany were better supplied.) David Lloyd George described this situation in Volume One of the War Memoirs.  He described the war as a war between German “mechanic��” ( i.e., munitions manufacturers) and British manufacturers, and said that, in 1915, the German “mechanic��” were winning.

Radical action was required. There was an acute shortage of people available to work in munitions and artillery factories. State enterprise had to be brought into play because private enterprise was too slow in setting up the required factories.  State-owned “Royal Factorie��” were set up all over the British Isles, including in Dublin, Waterford, Cork and Galway.

There were not enough men to work in the factories, so women had to be employed in this dangerous work. The war became an industrial war.

The West is facing similar choices today. Notwithstanding the fact that the NATO counties, especially the US, outspend the Russians on military hardware by a large multiple, they have yet to mobilize society for the existential struggle which their chosen ally, Ukraine, is undertaking.

But even the opening of the Royal Factories, and the recruitment of thousands of women workers, was too slow in delivering the necessary shells in 1915. This was because there was an acute labor shortage then, just as there is in 2023.

The Daily Mail went on the warpath. There was a political crisis.

The Liberal government, led by H. H. Asquith and supported by the Irish Party, which was committed to Home Rule, was replaced by a coalition of Liberals and Unionists, led by David Lloyd George. We are living with the consequences of the munitions crisis of 1915 to this day.

Returning to 2023, the EU may face a similar political crisis because it has not matched its needs with the necessary resources.

Member governments need to simultaneously ramp up arms production for Ukraine, pour money into the Green Deal, provide for healthcare for an aging population and manage the debt inherited from the Covid epidemic, all while still respecting the Maastricht budgetary criteria.

If Trump wins the 2024 Election in the US, he may stop supplying arms to Ukraine. Europe will then be alone facing Putin.

[ edited this piece.]

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Ukraine after independence

On December 21, 1991, the Alma-Ata Protocols formally ended the Soviet Union. The day before, the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) held its first meeting and to uphold the values of “building a Europe a whole and free.” The NACC invited the former Soviet countries that now formed part of the Commonwealth of Independent States to join on March 10, 1992. This established Ukraine’s first formal relationship with NATO. In 1997, the NACC evolved into the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, which broadened the focus of cooperation outside of Europe.

NATO invited all members of the NACC to join the Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme on its launch in 1994. Ukraine became the first former Soviet country to sign on . PfP was not a pathway towards membership in NATO, nor a vehicle for enlargement. Rather, it was a more mundane means of formalizing relations between countries that wanted to  more closely with NATO.

Alongside these developing relationships with NATO that were open to all countries, Ukraine, alongside Belarus and Kazakhstan, was involved in more specific institutional mechanisms due to its inheritance of nuclear weapons following the breakup of the Soviet Union. On December 5, 1994, Russia, the US and the UK signed the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, including the following clause:

The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations

The process allowed for Ukraine to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and provided security assurances to Ukraine—which were by Russia and the US in 2009—to enable it to give up its inherited nuclear weapons. This cooperative spirit was further enhanced with Ukraine reaching a with Russia over the Black Sea Fleet in 1995.

Deepening ties

NATO has always acknowledged Ukraine as a country of unique importance. Just as with , NATO developed a special relationship with Ukraine.

.In January 1997 NATO and Ukraine agreed to a special partnership, which by July 9th, 1997, led to the , which included the provision that NATO and Ukraine recognize “that security of all states in the OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe] area is indivisible.”

Relations were further solidified on November 22, 2002, with the signing of the . This identifies areas where NATO and Ukraine can work more closely together across different security interests of mutual concern. On July 15, 2004, Ukrainian President Kuchma that the intention was not for Ukrainian membership of NATO, but a significant deepening of the relations with NATO (and the EU) as security guarantors of Europe.

The significant issue of membership became prevalent in 2008, with the so-called  sent  for a NATO membership action plan (MAP). The 2008 Bucharest summit decided that Ukraine (and Georgia) were not yet ready to be members of NATO, but that they would be members in the future, according to Jaap de Hoop Scheefer, NATO’s Secretary General. Russia that the promise was a “huge strategic mistake.”

In October 2018, the Ukrainian Parliament reaffirmed this position by NATO (and EU) membership its central foreign policy objective.

This is the position today. A promise of membership at some point in the future, which has been affirmed since the 2008 Bucharest summit, though no specific MAP for how this will be delivered.

Different Ukrainian leaders and the relationship with NATO

Different Ukrainian administrators since the end of the Cold War have varied their approach to NATO membership, as has the Ukrainian public. Indeed, the decisive in favor of NATO membership among the Ukrainian public only occurred after the Russian invasion in 2022.

Leonid Kuchma, president from 1994 to 2005, initially seemed supportive of NATO membership but changed his approach towards the end of his tenure. I offer no comment as to whether this was his own personal desire or a reflection of the apparent political reality that Ukraine would not be admitted as a member. His successor Viktor Yushchenko, president from 2005 to 2010, was a keen proponent of NATO membership, though the general public was less convinced in the 2000s. At the time, opinion polls ran around the 25% mark in favor of NATO membership. had it at 21% in favor of joining.

On the other hand,  did support a referendum on membership in 2008, influenced primarily by the Bucharest Summit and its acknowledgment that Ukraine would be able to join at some point in the future.

Viktor Yanukovych, president from 2010 to 2014, took the position that the existing relationship with NATO was sufficient and didn’t require any further development. In the wake of the Euromaidan uprising, he fled the country, with Petro Poroshenko taking over from 2014–2019. Given the Russian invasion of Crimea and the Donbas in February 2014, Poroshenko pursued a series of policies that were favorable to NATO membership, such as joint exercises and securing a  at the Warsaw summit.

Volodymyr Zelensky, since 2019, has continued the approach of NATO membership and has continually called for, and received, assistance from NATO members. NATO has supplied equipment and military training following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Public support for joining NATO is now regularly above in favor.

No MAP for Ukraine?

 have not traditionally been controversial in the NATO accession process. The process focuses on : political and economic, military, resource, security, and legal issues. These areas have posed particular problems for Ukraine (and Georgia) since the Bucharest Summit. Ukraine has never met the criteria for a MAP; thus, its membership has been in a state of limbo. Ukraine is not alone in this; North Macedonia was obliged to wait twenty-odd years for its membership to be validated.

The main issues center on territorial sovereignty and the settling of ethnic disputes, alongside issues of corruption. Ukraine ranks  out of 180 countries on corruption, even after a decade of reform attempts.

Despite the lack of meaningful progress towards meeting the MAP requirements, Jens Stoltenberg in April 2023 that all NATO members have agreed that Ukraine will join NATO once the war with Russia is over. Indeed, it is now apparent that the accession process could be fast-tracked, with the usual MAP conditions .

Before NATO considers the questions of the geopolitical situation and its relationship with Russia, there is a procedural question to decide. Should NATO set aside the MAP to allow Ukraine to join? Proponents point to Sweden and Finland’s accession earlier in 2023, though each of these countries meets the MAP requirements and has a long history of doing so. Simply waiting for the war to end before offering membership is a bad plan as it could encourage Russia to  to avoid Ukraine joining NATO. In any case, it could be argued that, given the levels of assistance provided to Ukraine, it is a  already.

The tone of the statements that emanate from the Vilnius summit will be crucial. NATO needs to thread the needle of reassuring Ukraine while avoiding encouraging Russia to achieve its objectives by prolonging the conflict. Further, consideration has to be given to . For instance, Georgia, the other declared future member from Bucharest 2008, will likely question why it hasn’t received a fast-track membership process too.

Despite the support of many leaders of NATO countries, the public remains much more sceptical. For example, a May 2023 of Germans found the majority opposed offering Ukraine NATO membership. Support fluctuates between different members; there is no consensus of public opinion for Ukrainian membership of NATO. Never mind the trickier questions as to whether it should be fast-tracked, or when precisely it should join.

Navigating the challenge could well prove to be the most significant issue that the Alliance has faced since its founding in 1949.

[ edited this piece.]

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First, the crazy idea, once expressed and shared publicly, begins to influence the thinking of those who have the power of decision-making or at least those with power over the implementation of real outcomes.

Who are these people? They tend to be either diplomats or military strategists. In some cases they are academics or even media celebrities. When some in either of these groups begin toying with one or even multiple crazy ideas, those ideas stop seeming crazy and can provide the groundwork for reaching some form of resolution. They may literally open an Overton window.

The second way a crazy idea may play out is more subtle. Its very craziness can set the stage for imagining other crazy ideas, one of which may point towards an unforeseen resolution. In this age of increasingly standardized discourse—not to say propaganda—this could prove to have a salutary effect.

Most people agree there is no lack of conflict in today’s world, the most egregious being the war in Ukraine. But there is a growing litany of others worth considering: trade wars, supply chain conflict, cultural conflict, generational clashes, class war, ethnic and religious confrontations, ideological standoffs, currency competition (dollar hegemony, crypto vs. fiat currency), competing economic priorities surrounding the climate crisis. The list expands exponentially as one moves from the global towards the local.

The context of today’s Crazy Idea

Topic: the war in Ukraine.

This week in Vilnius, Lithuania the leaders of NATO will meet to deliberate presumably on two topics:

1. The state of the war, which, despite official denials, no one can legitimately deny is a proxy war between NATO, led by the US, and Vladimir Putin’s Russia,
2. Ukraine’s eventual membership in NATO.

From NATO’s point of view, the real stakes are Russia’s influence in the world; from Russia’s, they are its regional security. NATO claims the conflict is about Ukraine’s sovereignty and nothing else. Russia claims it’s about the denazification of Ukraine and the security of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. Those official formulations on both sides reflect only one small aspect of the real issue, which is geopolitically complex.

 No one can predict at the beginning of this week how NATO will assess the state of a war that appears to be increasingly unfavorable on the ground to the NATO-Ukrainian cause. Will this provoke a timid move towards conciliation of a doubling down of NATO’s commitment with the risk of edging ever closer to nuclear confrontation?

It appears that the conference will seek to arrive at a definitive consensus on the principle of admitting Ukraine into NATO, but only after a formal peace is achieved. Because for the moment there is no prospect for negotiation of a peace deal, the idea of Ukraine joining NATO, even if unanimously approved, remains something of a pipe dream. What will Ukraine look like after a peace deal? Will it even exist as a viable political entity? So long as no serious discussions about discussions of peace are underway, that question has no meaning.

�մǻ岹��’s Crazy Idea

A crazy idea is one that no one in politics or the media dares for the moment to enunciate, even if the thought may have crossed some people’s minds. Crazy ideas tend to be simple in their basic formulation. If taken seriously and ultimately implemented they acquire several degrees of complexity, but the basic idea becomes the driving force behind whatever solution emerges.

The basic form of today’s crazy idea is that NATO decides not just to admit Ukraine to NATO but also Russia.

That sounds preposterous, and it is preposterous, given the attitudes of the major actors. But as I pointed out last week, there are two historical precedents, in 1954 and 1999. On both of those occasions the Moscow government – the USSR in the first case, Russia in the second – expressed a desire to be part of NATO.

Why it may not be so crazy

The two historical precedents, both categorically refused by the US, demonstrate that the status of such an idea can be described as objectionable but not unthinkable. That’s an important distinction. If the right people are allowed to think freely about it, it can potentially become viable.

If both Russia and Ukraine were invited to join NATO, it would have an effect similar to what happened after the initial creation of NATO in 1949. It would eliminate the risk of armed conflict between any two nations in the organization and would thus guarantee Ukraine’s security and eliminate Russia’s perception of NATO as an existential threat. Borders could be redefined, as required, in a spirit of mutual respect and.

Though the US has never looked kindly upon Russian integration into Europe because it would threaten the balance of economic power that since World War II has been massively skewed in favor of the US, Russia’s association with European security could pull it away from China, serving to isolate the Beijing and break up the growing alliance between the two historical superpowers.

Why it’s just crazy enough not to be taken seriously

Foreign policy experts in the US have studied the theory elaborated more than a century ago by the British geographer and politician, Halford Mackinder. As an original geopolitical thinker at the height of the British empire’s extension across the globe, Mackinder described the Eurasian landmass as “the world island” and resoundingly announced his heartland principle: “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the world.

In his 1998 book The Grand Chessboard, President Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was deeply familiar with Mackinder’s theory, designated Ukraine as an “important space on the Eurasian chessboard.” In other words, foreign policy wonks in Washington have long understood that, even as an ally, a greater Europe that could include Russia would constitute Mackinder’s Heartland. It would be far too powerful in relation to the US, militarily and economically, and thus constitute a far greater threat to US hegemony than a rising China, or even—as we’re seeing now—a close alliance between China and Russia.

In other words, the US has a holy fear of the very idea of Russia’s integration into Europe. It has consistently seen Ukraine, rather, as the key to preventing Russia from coupling with Europe.

In contrast, Europeans have been aware of the economic advantages of having a strong relationship with Russia. Germany in particular is now discovering the crippling effects of the US putting in place an new iron curtain cutting it off not only from trade with the East, including restrictions on trade with China, but especially the cheap energy that was a key to the efficiency of German industry.

If they were free to speak their minds, Europeans might well be in favor of the crazy and verboten idea of integrating Russia into a vastly expanded NATO. They may even think that the US would see this as ultimately advantageous. But whatever they think, if indeed they do think after being trained for seven decades to keep their thoughts to themselves, they are not about to express it.

It would not be crazy to suppose that some Europeans, especially those of Old Europe led by Germany and France, are thinking that the more European nations there are in NATO, the easier it will be in a not-too-distant future for Europe to take the reins of NATO, define its own security framework and thereby weaken the influence—which is currently more like domination—of the US.

I’ll repeat what I’ve just said: it would not be crazy to suppose Europeans are thinking along these lines. But it would be absolutely bonkers to suppose that the US is not intent on stopping any move in that direction.

Europe currently has no margin of maneuver, but in a multipolar world intent upon limiting the power of US hegemony, that margin of maneuver could increase and allow for a new configuration of the geopolitical order in which Europe could play a balancing role between the US and China. In today’s world that seems utterly unthinkable, to the point that no sane person other than someone writing a column about crazy ideas would dare to evoke it. But an Afghanistan-style end to the Ukraine war, whether it occurs later this year or 19 years down the line, might end up providing the conditions that could allow that kind of configuration to fall into place.

An appeal to our readers

We at 51�Թ� believe that it is incumbent on all of humanity, including our authors and readers, to think about and eventually propose unorthodox and even manifestly illogical approaches to apparently insoluble conflicts. For that reason, we invite you to submit well-reasoned Crazy Ideas that we will regularly publish.

We only ask that your submissions respect the format of this one, with the following four-part structure:

1. The context of today’s Crazy Idea
   Background on the who, what, when and why that justifies imagining a crazy idea.
2. �մǻ岹��’s Crazy Idea
   A concise formulation of the idea with eventually a paragraph clarifying its meaning.
3. Why it may not be crazy
   An explanation of the factors that make it worth considering, even if it appears utterly unlikely to be applied.
4. Why it’s just crazy enough not to be taken seriously
   Here is where you help readers to understand the redoubtable obstacles to achieving it and the utter unlikelihood of its ever being implemented.

With a bit of luck, the great decision-makers of our crazy world will discover your suggestions and begin to mull them over, eventually integrating them into the sort of modes of thought that could change the world we live in for the better.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post A Crazy Idea Aimed at Achieving Peace in the World appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Although it is not yet certain, it is beginning to appear that Ukraine’s much-anticipated spring offensive has become bogged down. If the coming weeks bear out the same results, the war may become a stalemate. Why would Russia keep fighting a war that seems ready to drag on forever, with neither side able to vanquish the other? For this, we must take a look at Russia’s wider strategic outlook.

What motivates Russia?

To discern what long-term objectives Russian President Vladimir Putin might have in Ukraine, we need to begin in 2014. Then, a series of clashes between protestors and government forces resulted in the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. The events became known as the Maidan Revolution. If we can understand why Russia considered Maidan a threat, we can understand Russia’s fundamental objectives in its subsequent relations with Ukraine.

From the Russian point of view, the first problem with Maidan was that the movement threatened to result in an eventual accession to NATO. While the primary goal of the protestors was the integration of Ukraine into the EU, not NATO, Russia saw this as a slippery slope. Moscow—whether during the Empire, the Soviet Union, or the Federation—has always considered threats from the territory of modern Ukraine, and particularly from the part of it east of the Dnieper River, to be absolutely unacceptable. It will strive to remove hostile forces from the area at almost any cost. The thought of NATO forces east of the Dnieper, especially in Crimea, is absolutely unthinkable in Moscow. Moscow thus perceives NATO enlargement as a threat of the most existential kind.

Secondly, Russia has a positive interest in Crimea, since the Russian coast of the Black Sea has no good sites for year-round naval ports. The Russian Black Sea fleet must thus rely on the Crimean port of Sevastopol to stage its operations. Retaining the use of Crimea for the navy is a condition for the maintenance of Russia’s status as a Black Sea power. Strategically, Crimea is the only part of Ukraine’s territory that holds positive value for Moscow (as opposed to negative value, i.e. the deterrence of possible threats). However, Russia’s experience after the annexation of Crimea in 2014—particularly Ukraine’s economic siege of the peninsula and cutting of its water supply—has suggested that control of the territory immediately opposite Crimea on the Ukrainian mainland is key to the support of Crimea itself.

Finally, Russia has sought to avoid the loss of face that would result if the pro-Russian rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts were comprehensively defeated. This is not only a matter of vanity for Russia, but an important strategic objective to maintain its influence in the post-Soviet space. Russia exercises influence by playing the role of protector of ethnic Russians and other pro-Russian ethnic groups, such as the Ossetes and Abkhaz in Georgia. To be seen as weak and ineffective in this role would be a serious hindrance to Russia’s continued influence in its neighborhood.

Russia still has much to gain from fighting on

In spite of its heavy physical and reputational losses in the Ukraine War, these three goals provide Russia ample reason to cling tenaciously to its current position. Holding on to the land bridge between Crimea and the Donbas addresses Crimea’s post-2014 strategic vulnerabilities, and the expansion of Russian territory to a significantly increased portion of Donetsk and virtually all of Luhansk demonstrates effective support of the rebels. As long as things do not change, two of Russia’s main assets in the region—the port of Sevastopol and its reputation as protector—remain substantially intact.

If battle lines do remain mostly fixed, the main downside for Russia will be the significant areas east of the Dnieper that remain in Ukrainian hands. As international relations scholar John Mearsheimer has , Russia’s second-best alternative to controlling strategic territory is to “wreck Ukraine as a functioning state”, and this Russia has been doing very effectively.

Compared to Russia, Ukraine is older, poorer, more demographically unstable—with lower birthrates and negative net migration, and vastly smaller. The war has greatly aggravated these problems, as young men die in battle and young women and children become refugees. What’s more, Ukraine’s infrastructure has been systematically destroyed. A country with a like that of Ukraine needs to develop its economy quickly and maximize its resources to deal with an aging and shrinking population. This war has instead severely damaged Ukraine’s economy, and every month that passes is a crucial month in which Ukraine fails to get on the road to recovery, while the likelihood of refugees returning falls.

Simply by holding the current lines, Russia is making good on its protection of its friends, securing the long-term viability of its outpost in Crimea, and bleeding Ukraine further, making it increasingly likely that Ukraine will become a dysfunctional, impoverished state over the long term, without the capacity to be an effective base for NATO assets. Meanwhile, sanctions have not had on Russia’s economy that was hoped, and Russia’s large population, bolstered by from Ukraine, means that any demographic effects of the war on Russia are likely to be minuscule.

Putin is well aware that Russia can bear the losses of the war longer than Ukraine can. Even a costly victory is still a victory if Russia can keep its foothold. Eventually, the West may find its resolve wavering before Russia’s. On the present trajectory, Russia may end up holding onto its gains in spite of everything.

If the current offensive fails, and it begins to appear that a long-term stalemate is developing, Western countries will have to rethink their willingness to underwrite a war whose continuation is destroying the viability of Ukraine, while only helping Russia to cement the achievement of its strategic goals.

[ edited this piece.]

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South African President Cyril Ramaphosa tried to line up a number of African leaders to travel to Russia and Ukraine in an effort to persuade the two countries to stop fighting. He was joined on the trip by the leaders of Senegal, Comoros and Zambia. Three presidents , one (Uganda) because of a case of Covid, a second (Republic of Congo) because of security concerns and a third (Egypt) for no specific reason.

The timing was not great. Because it recently launched its much-anticipated counteroffensive, Kyiv was not in the mood for compromise. Nor has Russia been exactly diplomacy-positive either, not only refusing to give up the territory it illegally annexed but continuing to try to expand its holdings. The Kremlin has also been busy bombarding Ukrainian targets. Missile attacks on Kyiv even as the African delegation visited the capital city, forcing the members in a bomb shelter.

And then there’s the fiasco at the Warsaw airport.

A second airplane with Ramaphosa’s security team and a number of South African journalists never made it to Ukraine. Stuck at their transit stop in Poland, the airplane sat on the tarmac for hours and hours as the Polish authorities refused to allow the passengers to disembark. A journalist on the trip :

Aboard the stuffy SAA A340-300 plane conditions are starting to resemble a refugee camp. Passengers have not left the plane since around 23:00 on Wednesday, and although water and take away food were delivered, supplies have now been depleted. Unwashed security personnel, SAA staff and journalists have been forced to shape a grim existence on the plane, walking up and down the aisles and using different toilets for distraction.

The head of Ramaphosa’s security detail the Poles of “shocking and racist” conduct. Then came news of 12 rather large containers of weapons on board the airplane that did not have the proper permits. The weapons were reportedly for the use of the security detail. But according to “highly placed South African government insiders,” the boxes “long-range sniper rifles and weapons normally used in serious conflict.”

Wait, what? A peace delegation bearing gifts of war?

Okay, it was a large security detail of 100 people, and maybe they thought they’d be plunged into the thick of war. Or perhaps the weapons were somehow connected to South African arms dealer Ivor Ichikowitz, who was in organizing the initiative. Although the South African government has been quite close with the Kremlin—ditto Ichikowitz—it likely supplied Russia with any arms after its invasion of Ukraine. But arms dealers can make as much from a negotiated peace—supplying both sides of the ceasefire line—as they can from a continued war. Maybe those boxes were simply a sneak peek.

A Canadian Perspective on Ukraine, Iraq and Afghanistan

After more than 24 hours on the tarmac, the plane eventually returned to South Africa, with those 12 crates of weapons. It’s a shame the journalists on board never had a chance to accompany the Ramaphosa contingent, particularly when it arrived in St. Petersburg for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In Russia, Ramaphosa was able to deliver his opening remarks. But before the other African leaders could speak, a clearly unhappy Putin interrupted to lecture the group with his usual talking points. Then the live feed , and there are no independent accounts of what happened next.

There’s the fog of war. But there’s also the equally dense fog of diplomacy.

Meanwhile, in Beijing

As the African delegation was wrapping up its meetings in Russia, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was conducting a series of sit-downs in China, including a 35-minute confab with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

On the face of it, the meeting was a success for both sides. China and the United States seemed to be putting behind them the incident that had recently divided them: the US shooting down of a Chinese that may or may not have surveilled some semi-secret sites. Xi provided assurances, once again, that China would not send military assistance to Russia. Blinken provided assurances, once again, that the United States doesn’t support an independent Taiwan.

Most important of all, the two sides are again talking. The rest of us look on like little kids who are terrified when their parents go mum and only glare at each other across the dinner table. Yeah, we know that these powerful figures have their disagreements. But we also know how destabilizing and unpredictable a marital dispute can be.

Of course, China and the United States aren’t married. Far from it. Blinken couldn’t even get Beijing to agree to more communication between the two militaries. The warships and airplanes of the respective superpowers continue to jostle one another in areas around China. There is considerable economic competition. With nationalism on the rise on both sides, there is no love between Washington and Beijing.

But there is something remarkable about how the two countries have managed, so far, not to allow the war in Ukraine to turn into a truly global conflict. That has entailed restraint on both sides.

Two Reasons China Can Be a Valuable Partner for Europe

But will it lead to either a just peace in Ukraine or a meaningful US-China détente?

What did the Africans propose?

In its initial discussions around talking points, the delegation from Africa considered various quid pro quos to offer Russia and Ukraine. to Reuters, which viewed the document, it included

a number of measures that could be proposed by the African leaders as part of the first stage of their engagement with the warring parties. Those measures could include a Russian troop pull-back, removal of tactical nuclear weapons from Belarus, suspension of the implementation of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant targeting Putin, and sanctions relief.

When Ramaphosa presented the plan in Russia, it contained 10 rather anodyne points. On the most contentious question of a Russian pullback, the list fudged the issue by noting simply that “the sovereignty of states must be respected.” Neither side found this language useful. Zelensky insisted on the precondition of a withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine’s sovereign territory: not only the land seized in the 2022 invasion, but also the Donbas and Crimea that were occupied in 2014. Putin found the plan so off-putting that he pulled the plug on the live feed of his meeting with the African delegation, but only after he presented his side of the story: that Ukraine and the West had started the war and the invasion was defensive in nature.

Ramaphosa was undeterred, that “this initiative has been historic in that it is the first time African leaders have embarked on a peace mission beyond the shores of the continent.” After decades—centuries, really—of Europeans beginning and ending wars in Africa, it is indeed refreshing for Africans to weigh in on a European affair. But it’s a shame that this first peace mission was such an obvious failure.

The World Presses to End the War in Ukraine: Can the US Agree?

For one thing, the trip was poorly planned, as the embarrassing standoff in Warsaw demonstrates. The Poles that they held three consultative meetings with the South Africans where they explained exactly what paperwork was required. The crates of weapons were a surprise.

Second, South Africa is not exactly neutral. Ramaphosa’s party, the African National Congress (ANC), has with Russia, a carryover from the days when the government in Moscow was at least putatively left-wing. South Africa has benefited from arms shipments, (modest) trade relations, and political support from Putin’s government. It enjoys a higher profile because of its membership, with Russia, in the BRICS formation (along with Brazil, India, and China). In February, South Africa Russia and China for naval exercises in the Indian Ocean, tellingly on the first anniversary of the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ramaphosa boldly attempted to trade on his country’s ersatz neutrality to expand its global reputation and possibly, just possibly, secure concessions that could benefit the warring parties and, in the case of boosting food exports, African countries as well. But if anything, the trip undercut South Africa’s reputation—as well as Ramaphosa’s personal brand, which is already at a low ebb because of various scandals. The media commentary in South Africa has been biting from virtually all sides. “Shambolic peace mission did us no favours,” the headline of a Business Live editorial. Or from Mia Swart in The Daily Maverick: “ANC’s kamikaze Russian diplomacy puts SA on the road to economic and reputational ruin.”

What is oft said about “best-laid plan��” applies even more forcefully to poorly-laid plans.

Détente along two axes?

China may not be supplying weapons to its erstwhile ally Russia, but it too is not neutral. It’s doing well by the war, boosting its trade with Russia and importing energy at a discount. China’s exports to Russia have risen by an so far this year, compared to the same period last year. Xi Jinping’s well-calculated engagement is a big reason why the Russian economy has not gone completely down the toilet as a result of international sanctions.

Pundits and policymakers seem to agree: China should use its leverage to end the war. The United States is with China as mediator. So is . Even Ukraine future Chinese initiatives.

Why would the Chinese have any more success than the Africans?

For one, China is waiting for the right moment. One scenario is that the Ukrainians kick Russian troops out of most of the occupied territory and then it’s China’s job to deliver the hard news to Putin: negotiate a face-saving deal or else. In a second scenario, the Ukrainians manage only to regain a small fraction of the occupied territory and then it’s China’s job to deliver the hard news to Zelensky: negotiate a deal that establishes some ambiguous sovereignty over the Donbas, the Crimean Peninsula, and the land between them.

What Now is the Future of Ukraine: Korea or Yugoslavia?

Neither scenario, alas, would be particularly durable. Putin and the nationalist right that has embraced him will not easily give up on their dream of an expanding “Russian world.” And Ukraine will not settle for amputation, regardless of the words used to describe the unsavory operation.

What of east-west relations? China knows that Russia doesn’t really count for anything in geopolitics, aside from its brutal unpredictability. The Chinese have an alliance of convenience, and they’re not going to yoke themselves so closely to the Kremlin that they too fall off the mountain if and when the Russians lose their grip. The real question for China, as Foreign Policy In Focus contributor Michael Klare has pointed out, is how it manages with both the United States and India, two frenemies of old.

Despite various left-wing (and far-right-wing) conspiracy theories, the United States does not want a forever war that bleeds Russia dry. The war is a costly distraction from Washington’s twin concerns: the economy at home and China abroad. If China helps negotiate an end to the conflict, that would help reduce tensions with Washington and win points in India as well, where the war is even less popular.

Now that the door is open again to Beijing, perhaps the United States and China can do a better job of coordinating their approach to the war in Ukraine. Because their alliances are clear, these conversations must be discreet (and who knows, maybe Blinken already got the ball rolling on his recent trip to China).

After all, there is nothing like a noisy marital dispute next door to help quarrelsome parents bond over their relatively more constructive partnership. Cooperating quietly on finding a way to end the war in Ukraine—with a just conclusion that Ukrainians, above all, accept—could ultimately reestablish a better working relationship between Beijing and Washington. The world could use a little détente right around now.

[ first published this piece.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The public quickly became fascinated with the tool’s ability to credibly imitate human expression. Almost as quickly the media began spreading the fear that this new form of intelligence might take over the world. The educational community went into panic. The fear of undetectable cheating by students who might use ChatGPT to write academic essays turned out to be traumatizing for institutions that had invested heavily in anti-plagiarism software. (Though I have personally experimented and documented one approach to solving this problem, and others are busily working on it, confusion continues to reign in the field of education as a whole. This shouldn’t surprise us, since educational traditions developed during the industrial age have encouraged a form of learning that is more appropriate to machines than to human minds.)

As for the general economy, it took just about six months for the media to discover the core issue: AI’s effect on employment. Last week, The Washington Post published an titled “ChatGPT took their jobs. Now they walk dogs and fix air conditioners.” The authors, Pranshu Verma and Gerrit De Vynck, hint at the prospect of an apocalyptic outcome of a process that has only just begun. “Some economists,” they write, ‼�����dict artificial intelligence technology like ChatGPT could replace hundreds of millions of jobs, in a cataclysmic reorganization of the workforce mirroring the industrial revolution.”

The authors provide the initial evidence of the trend. “For some workers, this impact is already here. Those who write marketing and social media content are in the first wave of people being replaced with tools such as chatbots, which are seemingly able to produce plausible alternatives to their work.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Plausible alternatives:

Artifacts similar to junk jewelry that successfully imitate forms of rationality cultivated by humans in former times, now abandoned by a human race that insists on delegating its reasoning capacity to machines capable of generating standardized, marketable simulacra of human insight.

Contextual note

Keen to demonstrate their personal sympathy for the plight of the those who have been displaced by AI, the article cites the view of experts who “say that even advanced AI doesn’t match the writing skills of a human: It lacks personal voice and style, and it often churns out wrong, nonsensical or biased answers.” They appear to admit that in an ideal world, where the quest for quality would systematically prevail over the obsession with quantity, we humans would choose to trust in people rather than machines. Humans –  at least potentially – possess a specific quality no algorithm can conceivably have: a moral sense clearly related to their innate understanding of biological reality.

But, of course, we don’t live in that ideal world. In purely monetary terms, quality cannot compete with quantity. And since everything we now consider “good” will inevitably be evaluated in monetary terms, that competitive advantage for quantity over quality is unlikely to change.

In today’s world, goodness itself, when it is recognized, always has a price tag attached to it. Quality appears in only limited numbers. Its rarity makes it expensive. That means it will fail to meet the most widely shared objective in the commercial world: satisfying the demands of a mass market.

Concerning the job market – itself a mass market – the authors note that AI and robots can increasingly do things humans were traditionally paid to do, as they remind us that “chatbots that can hold fluid conversations, write songs and produce computer code.” Replacing humans who do those thing represents an obvious “!”

Historical note

The Post’s article reveals but doesn’t explicitly state the fact that we now find ourselves at a special moment in human history. As a society, we face an existential choice at a time when none of our institutions appears prepared for the challenge. The authors mention AI producing “plausible alternative��” to human production. But we are the ones who must begin envisioning plausible alternatives to a system that is undermining its own basic assumptions about the economy.

The authors’ use of the word “plausible” refers to the criteria put forward by the late mathematician Alan Turing whose “Turing test” determines whether a machine is capable of fooling us into thinking that it is human. My experience with ChatGPT tells me that only those who want to be fooled will be fooled. It’s true, however, that because most human beings are not very skilled at producing coherent prose, ChatGPT’s performance is superficially up to “some” human standards. But everything it produces is annoyingly predictable.

To its credit, ChatGPT makes far fewer performance errors than the average human. That is what effectively fools us. But its performance is – to coin an oxymoron –  deeply superficial. It has polish but no substance. Polish in a world seduced and regulated by hyperreality impresses. Some people today may even see AI’s lack of substance as normal for human behavior. If our criterion for judgment is the lowest common denominator, this makes sense.

There is however a difference. Humans, unlike AI, have the capacity to rise above what is considered normal. The reason we can be fooled is that our hyperreal culture has conditioned to be fooled. We are consumers of foolery. We expect insincerity in a world regulated by the need to sell not just products, but also ideas and even our own personalities. All these things – products, ideas and personalities – have identifiable monetary value, the measure by which we expect everything to be judged.

Humanity should have noticed by now what is truly exceptional in this moment of history. Many of the values that have guided us in the past have brought us to the brink of uncontrollable catastrophe. Technology is wonderful but, at some point, its wonders threaten our existing assets. A competitive economy is marvelous as a stimulator of innovation, but Schumpeter’s of  “creative destruction” may easily morph into irredeemably destructive destruction. The individualism of the consumer society is exhilarating, promising to satisfy an aver wider range of desires, but it ends up confining people within the isolated cells of their cultivated consumer habits.

For many, disaster is looming, and it has multiple names. It might be the destruction of our ecosystem, nuclear confrontation or the total collapse of an economy based on the utterly insubstantial notion of monetary value. Citing “liberal democracy” with the belief that it can be a source of stability no longer makes sense. Our institutions that leave essential decisions to “market force��” have proved themselves incapable of addressing the most obvious problems or choosing any “plausible alternative” to what we see as risky. This has undermined the majority’s confidence in a rational future. As a society, we increasingly sense that we may have painted ourselves into a corner.

This crisis of values is real. We have made what appears to be a reasoned commitment to a productivist economy that “creates wealth.” But the evidence is clear that this has undermined the environment on which we depend. But we have chosen to feel ourselves more dependent on productivism than on the physical environment that supports us. We seem incapable of imagining plausible alternatives while trusting AI to keep producing plausible alternatives to our rationality.

AI’s plausible alternative is clearly a chimera. Though totally superficial, it has successfully created the illusion of depth. In the meantime, an increasing number of people who were taught to measure their own value by the job they managed to secure, are condemned to watch helplessly as AI steps in to plausibly imitate what they were trained to do.

AI systematically produces plausible alternatives to human effort. It’s time for humans to use their biological brains to imagine the feasible alternatives that may avert catastrophe.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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But it was not to be. Instead, the Global South leaders were forced to sit and listen as their hosts announced their latest plans to tighten sanctions against Russia and further escalate the war by sending US-built F-16 warplanes to Ukraine. 

The G7 summit stands in stark contrast to efforts of leaders from around the world who are trying to end the conflict. In the past, the leaders of Turkey, Israel and Italy have stepped up to try to mediate. Their efforts were bearing fruit back in April 2022, but were by the West, particularly the US and UK, which did not want Ukraine to make an independent peace agreement with Russia. 

Now that the war has dragged on for over a year with no end in sight, other leaders have stepped forward to try to push both sides to the negotiating table. In an intriguing new development, Denmark, a NATO country, has stepped forward to offer to host peace talks. On May 22, just days after the G-7 meeting, Danish Foreign Minister Lokke Rasmussen that his country would be ready to host a peace summit in July if Russia and Ukraine agreed to talk. 

Many Peace Initiatives

“We need to put some effort into creating a global commitment to organize such a meeting,” said Rasmussen, mentioning that this would require getting support from China, Brazil, India and other nations that have expressed interest in mediating peace talks. Having an EU and NATO member promoting negotiations may well reflect a shift in how Europeans view the path forward in Ukraine.

Also reflecting this shift is a by Seymour Hersh, citing US intelligence sources, that the leaders of Poland, Czechia, Hungary and the three Baltic states, all NATO members, are talking to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about the need to end the war and start rebuilding Ukraine so that the five million refugees now living in their countries can start to return home. On May 23, right-wing Hungarian President Viktor Orban , “Looking at the fact that NATO is not ready to send troops, it’s obvious that there is no victory for poor Ukrainians on the battlefield,” and that the only way to end the conflict was for Washington to negotiate with Russia. 

Meanwhile, China’s peace initiative has been progressing, despite US trepidation. China’s special representative for Eurasian affairs and former ambassador to Russia, has Russian President Vladimir Putin, Zelenskyy, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and other European leaders to move the dialogue forward. Given its position as both Russia’s and Ukraine’s top trading partner, China is in a good position to engage with both sides.

Another initiative has come from Brazilian President Lula da Silva, who is creating a “” of countries from around the world to work together to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. He appointed renowned diplomat Celso Amorim as his peace envoy. Amorim was Brazil’s foreign minister from 2003 to 2010, and was named the “world’s best foreign minister” in Foreign Affairs magazine. He also served as Brazil’s defense minister from 2011 to 2014, and is now President Lula’s chief foreign policy advisor. Amorim has already had with Putin in Moscow and Zelenskyy in Kyiv, and was well received by both parties.

On May 16, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and other African leaders stepped into the fray, reflecting just how seriously this war is affecting the global economy through rising prices for energy and food. Ramaphosa a high-level mission by six African presidents, led by President Macky Sall of Senegal. He served, until recently, as Chairman of the African Union and, in that capacity, spoke out forcefully for peace in Ukraine at the UN General Assembly in September 2022. 

The other members of the mission are Presidents Nguesso of Congo, Al-Sisi of Egypt, Musevini of Uganda and Hichilema of Zambia. The African leaders are calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine, to be followed by serious negotiations to arrive at “a framework for lasting peace.” UN Secretary-General Guterres has been on their plans and has “welcomed the initiative.”

Pope Francis and the Vatican are also to mediate the conflict. “Let us not get used to conflict and violence. Let us not get used to war,” the Pope . The Vatican has already helped facilitate successful prisoner exchanges between Russia and Ukraine, and Ukraine has asked for the Pope’s help in reuniting families that have been separated by the conflict. A sign of the Pope’s commitment is his appointment of veteran negotiator Cardinal Matteo Zuppi as his peace envoy. Zuppi was instrumental in mediating talks that ended civil wars in Guatemala and Mozambique. 

Will any of these initiatives bear fruit? The possibility of getting Russia and Ukraine to talk depends on many factors, including their perceptions of potential gains from continued combat, their ability to maintain adequate supplies of weapons, and the growth of internal opposition. But it also depends on international pressure, and that is why these outside efforts are so critical and why US and NATO countries’ opposition to talks must somehow be reversed.

The US rejection or dismissal of peace initiatives illustrates the disconnect between two diametrically opposed approaches to resolving international disputes: diplomacy vs. war. It also illustrates the disconnect between against the war and the determination of US policymakers to prolong it, including most Democrats and Republicans. 

Give Peace a Chance

A growing grassroots movement in the US is working to change that: 

• In May, foreign policy experts and grassroots activists put out paid advertisements in The and to urge the US government to be a force for peace. The Hill ad was endorsed by 100 organizations around the country, and community leaders organized in of congressional districts to deliver the ad to their representatives. 
• Faith-based leaders, over 1,000 of whom a letter to President Biden in December calling for a Christmas Truce, are showing their support for the Vatican’s peace initiative.
• The US Conference of Mayors, an organization that represents about 1,400 cities throughout the country, unanimously a resolution calling on the President and Congress to “maximize diplomatic efforts to end the war as soon as possible by working with Ukraine and Russia to reach an immediate ceasefire and negotiate with mutual concessions in conformity with the United Nations Charter, knowing that the risks of wider war grow the longer the war continues.”

• Key US environmental leaders have recognized how disastrous this war is for the environment, including the possibility of a catastrophic nuclear war or an explosion in a nuclear power plant, and have sent a to President Biden and Congress urging a negotiated settlement. ​​
• On June 10-11, US activists will join peacemakers from all over the world in Vienna, Austria, for an . 
• Some of the contenders running for president, on both the Democratic and Republican tickets, support a negotiated peace in Ukraine, including and . 

The initial decision of the United States and NATO member countries to try to help Ukraine resist the Russian invasion had broad . However, promising peace negotiations and deliberately choosing to prolong the war as a chance to and Russia changed the nature of the war and the US role in it, making Western leaders active parties to a war in which they will not even put their own forces on the line.

Must our leaders wait until a murderous war of attrition has killed an entire generation of Ukrainians, and left Ukraine in a weaker negotiating position than it was in April 2022, before they respond to the international call for a return to the negotiating table? 

Or must our leaders take us to the brink of World War III, with all our lives on the line in an all-out , before they will permit a ceasefire and a negotiated peace? 

Rather than sleepwalking into World War III or silently watching this senseless loss of lives, we are building a global grassroots movement to support initiatives by leaders from around the world that will help to quickly end this war and usher in a stable and lasting peace. .

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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While condemning Russia’s invasion, the statement provides a more objective account of the crisis in Ukraine than the US government or The New York Times has previously presented to the public, including the disastrous US role in NATO expansion, the warnings ignored by successive US administrations and the escalating tensions that ultimately led to war. 

The statement calls the war an “unmitigated disaster,” and urges President Joe Biden and Congress “to end the war speedily through diplomacy, especially given the dangers of military escalation that could spiral out of control.”

This call for diplomacy by wise, experienced former insiders—US diplomats, military officers and civilian officials—would have been a welcome intervention on any one of the past 442 days of this war. Yet their appeal now comes at an especially critical moment in the war.

Ukraine Is in a Tough Spot

On May 10, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that he is delaying Ukraine’s long-awaited “spring offensive” to avoid “” losses to Ukrainian forces. Western policy has repeatedly put Zelenskyy in positions, caught between the need to show signs of progress on the battlefield to justify further Western support and arms deliveries and, on the other hand, the shocking human cost of continued war represented by the fresh graveyards where tens of thousands of Ukrainians now lie buried.

It is not clear how a delay in the planned Ukrainian counter-attack would prevent it leading to unacceptable Ukrainian losses when it finally occurs, unless the delay in fact leads to scaling back and calling off many of the operations that have been planned. Zelenskyy appears to be reaching a limit in terms of how many more of his people he is willing to sacrifice to satisfy Western demands for signs of military progress to hold together the Western alliance and maintain the flow of weapons and money to Ukraine.

Zelenskyy’s predicament is certainly the fault of Russia’s invasion, but also of his April 2022 deal with the devil in the shape of the then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Johnson Zelenskyy that the UK and the “collective West” were “in it for the long run” and would back him to recover all of Ukraine’s former territory, just as long as Ukraine stopped negotiating with Russia.

Johnson was never in a position to fulfill that promise and, since he was forced to resign as prime minister, he has a Russian withdrawal only from the territory it invaded since February 2022, not a return to pre-2014 borders. Yet that compromise was exactly what he talked Zelenskyy out of agreeing to in April 2022, when most of the war’s dead were still alive and the framework of a peace agreement wason the at diplomatic talks in Turkey.

Zelenskyy has tried desperately to hold his Western backers to Johnson’s overblown promise. But short of direct US and NATO military intervention, it seems that no quantity of Western weapons can decisively break the stalemate in what has degenerated into a brutal, fought mainly by artillery and trench and urban warfare. 

An American general that the West has supplied Ukraine with 600 different weapons systems, but this itself creates problems. For example, the different sent by the UK, France, Germany and the US all use different shells. And each time heavy losses force Ukraine to re-form survivors into new units, many of them have to be retrained on weapons and equipment they’ve never used before.

Despite US of at least six types of anti-aircraft missiles—Stinger, NASAMS, Hawk, Rim-7, Avenger and at least one Patriot missile battery—a leaked Pentagon document that Ukraine’s Russian-built S-300 and Buk anti-aircraft systems still make up almost 90 percent of its main air defenses. NATO countries have searched their weapons stockpiles for all the missiles they can provide for those systems, but Ukraine has nearly exhausted those supplies, leaving its forces newly vulnerable to Russian air strikes just as it prepares to launch its new counter-attack.

Diplomacy Is the Only Way Forward

Since at least June 2022, Biden and other US officials have that the war must end in a diplomatic settlement, and have insisted that they are arming Ukraine to put it “in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.” Until now, they have claimed that each new weapons system they have sent and each Ukrainian counter-offensive have contributed to that goal and left Ukraine in a stronger position.

But the leaked Pentagon documents and recent statements by US and Ukrainian officials make it clear that Ukraine’s planned spring offensive, already delayed into summer, would lack the previous element of surprise and encounter stronger Russian defenses than the offensives that recovered some of its lost territory last fall. 

One leaked Pentagon document warned that “enduring Ukrainian deficiencies in training and munitions supplies probably will strain progress and exacerbate casualties during the offensive,” concluding that it would probably make smaller territorial gains than the fall offensives did.

How can a new offensive with mixed results and higher casualties put Ukraine in a stronger position at a currently non-existent negotiating table? If the offensive reveals that even huge quantities of Western military aid have failed to give Ukraine military superiority or reduce its casualties to a sustainable level, it could very well leave Ukraine in a weaker negotiating position, instead of a stronger one.

Meanwhile, offers to mediate peace talks have been pouring in from countries all over the world, from the Vatican to China to Brazil. It has been six months since the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, publicly, after Ukraine’s military gains last fall, that the moment had come to negotiate from a position of strength. “When there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it,” he said.

It would be doubly or triply tragic if, on top of the diplomatic failures that led to the war in the first place and the US and UK peace negotiations in April 2022, the chance for diplomacy that General Milley wanted to seize is lost in the forlorn hope of attaining an even stronger negotiating position that is not really achievable. 

If the United States persists in backing the plan for a Ukrainian offensive, instead of encouraging Zelenskyy to seize the moment for diplomacy, it will share considerable responsibility for the failure to seize the chance for peace, and for the appalling and ever-rising human costs of this war.

The experts who signed The New York Times statement recalled that, in 1997, 50 senior US foreign policy experts the then president Bill Clinton that expanding NATO was a “policy error of historic proportion��” and that, unfortunately, Clinton chose to ignore the warning. Biden, who is now pursuing his own policy error of historic proportions by prolonging this war, would do well to take the advice of today’s policy experts by helping to forge a diplomatic settlement and making the United States a force for peace in the world.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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US support for Ukraine over the last year has not been confined to military hardware. The Biden administration has led a global campaign to: condemn Russia; levy both multilateral and unilateral sanctions against the Kremlin and its domestic supporters; persuade allies to provide military and economic assistance of their own; strengthen NATO and usher in new NATO members; and mobilize energy supplies for Europe to substitute for Russian imports.

Despite this broad-based effort to defend Ukraine, the United States has nonetheless displayed a certain degree of caution. It has drawn the line at committing US forces to the battlefield, aside from a handful of . It has refused to support a no-fly zone over the country, and it has not sent over the Black Sea for fear of engaging Russian forces. It has hesitated to supply Kyiv with every weapon system on its wish list, whether fighter jets or long-range missiles. This caution reflects in particular the anxieties of the Pentagon—a risk-averse institution—about provoking an escalation of the conflict both horizontally (into adjoining countries) and vertically (involving non-conventional weapons like tactical nuclear devices).

A Fine and Tricky Balance

The Biden administration has calibrated this balance between military assistance and geopolitical caution within a rapidly changing global context. Russia’s actions have divided the world into three blocs: illiberal supporters of the Kremlin and its imperial policy, the largely democratic club of nations who directly support Ukraine, and the much larger group of fence-sitters who generally acknowledge that the invasion was a violation of international law but are reluctant to break with Moscow.

The United States has tried to turn these divisions into assets by expanding ties with allies, isolating Russia’s few supporters, and pushing the fence-sitters away from the Kremlin. The skepticism that Donald Trump brought to the trans-Atlantic relationship, with his threats to withdraw the United States from NATO, has been decisively reversed. All talk of a “strategic reset” of relations with Russia, which was popular during the Obama years and seemed again possible under Trump, has disappeared. The Biden administration has warned China—and other countries—not to supply Russia with weapons or violate technology bans.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has not fundamentally altered US national interests, but it has shifted the means by which Washington pursues those interests.

Certain things remain unclear, however, about US policy. For instance, to what degree is the United States committed to weakening Russia further by supporting either a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive or a prolonged war of attrition? Or is the United States eager to push for negotiations between the aggressor and the victim to resolve a conflict that distracts attention from other strategic US priorities, primarily the containment of China? How long can the Biden administration maintain the flow of military aid to Ukraine, given a divided Congress and weakening public support? What role can the United States play in advancing a just peace in Ukraine? What plans does the United States have for transatlantic relations after the war is over, and in what way does Russia fit into those plans?

What Lies Ahead?

This moment for east-west relations is bleak. The war rages on in Ukraine. Arms control is a dead issue. A cold war threatens to descend upon the larger world order. The “peace” that is discussed in foreign policy circles in the West often comes with several asterisks: loss of territory and a fragile state for Ukraine, lack of prosecution of war crimes for Russia, few guarantees that the conflict will not resume after a strategic pause. This kind of “peace” was secured under the Minsk agreements following Russia’s military interventions in Ukraine in 2014. Ukraine, quite sensibly, fears a “Minsk 3” that effectively rewards the Kremlin for its aggression.

The United States will play a pivotal role in determining this outcome through its mix of military assistance and diplomatic leverage. For now, the Biden administration seems to believe that a relatively low-cost and low-risk commitment will enable Ukraine to achieve the same results that Croatia secured in 1995. If Ukraine fails to do so in the first half of 2023, the Biden administration will have to decide whether to maintain this approach, dramatically increase assistance, or push for a “diplomatic endgame.” There isn’t likely political support now for the second option, given Republican control of Congress. Nor is there sufficient support within the administration to pressure Ukraine to abandon its territorial ambitions. So, unless the Ukrainian government itself decides that it is time to negotiate, the United States will continue with the current status quo approach.

For the time being, then, the Biden administration supports a “just peace” in Ukraine that would give victory to the victim and punishment to the aggressor. But this approach is highly contingent on what happens on the ground in Ukraine and what happens in American politics. Even though they have both benefited from the way the war has squeezed Russia, the United States and China will not let the conflict go on indefinitely. In the interim, however, a relatively weak country that gave up its nuclear weapons three decades ago continues to buck the geopolitical odds by beating back a nuclear superpower bent on expanding its empire. That, in itself, is a win for international law and points toward a more just world order.

[ published this piece, which was originally published in the .]

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Muslim-majority states “de-westernize” their international affairs and establish strategic partnerships with other great powers while reducing their dependence on arms suppliers from the US. They also avoid interstate rivalry and interference in domestic affairs of fellow Muslim-majority states, or other authoritarian great powers.

This article analyzes the foreign affairs of Muslim-majority states through two prisms, descriptive and explanatory. The descriptive section highlights observable data, such as their foreign policy views, commitments, or actions that demonstrate their balanced approach to international affairs. The explanatory section questions the nature of their actions: Why, for example, do Muslim-majority states diversify their relationships beyond Western partnerships, including their increased arms supply from Russia?

A Beacon of Neutrality 

Muslim-majority states maintain a “practical”, “cautiou��” or “uneasy” neutrality over the Russia-Ukraine War. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan this position by stating, “We cannot hold sides. We cannot take sides. And it wouldn’t be right for us to do that.” 

Imran Khan, the former prime minister of Pakistan, emulated Erdoğan when he refused to blame Russia for the war. He , “countries like Pakistan should not pass any value and moral judgment on thi��” and they should be “nonaligned, neutral, and friendly to both.” Malaysia has similarly committed to .

Saudi Arabia, like other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), generally the war “as a complicated European conflict.” The GCC leaders see no reason for Arab states “to stand against Vladimir Putin’s government.” Egypt’s foreign ministry released a affirming the importance of “dialogue and diplomatic solution��”. This reluctance to blame and antagonize Russia triggered prompt expressions of frustration from Kyiv’s embassy in Cairo.

Currently, it is difficult to find any statement by Muslim-majority states that supports either the West or Russia. These states have remained studiously neutral. Syrian President Bashar Al Assad is an to this phenomenon.

It’s Not Personal, It’s Policy

The Muslim world’s approach to the invasion reflects their readiness to establish political, economic and security partnerships with multiple players in the international system. They are not choosing alliances with a single power. This is what contemporary Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin and late political scientist Samuel P. Huntington posited when they spoke about Islamic-Orthodox or Islamic-Confucian alliances. Muslim-majority states prefer constructive engagements with various great powers based solely on their commercial, security or geopolitical interests. 

Turkey, for example, sees Russia as an important partner for energy, tourism and regional security. At the same time, as a member of , Ankara is allied with the US and European powers for its security. China has now become Saudi Arabia’s biggest trading partner. The US still remains the Kingdom’s most important security partner though. Since choosing one relationship over the other would be costly, Turkey and Saudi Arabia tend to pursue multi-directional foreign policies. Abu Dhabi, Cairo, Jakarta, Islamabad, and Doha also respect the US as a great power, while maintaining relationships with other great powers.

Muslim-majority states are forging relationships with non-Western groups, such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (). Both groups approach international affairs in a multipolar manner, and act as an alternative to the US-led order. In the Middle East alone, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United States Emirates (UAE) are current or prospective dialogue partners of the. All medium-sized Muslim-majority countries, such as Iran, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, look positively to BRICS. The same holds for other parts of the Muslim world, specifically Kazakhstan, Nigeria, the UAE, Senegal, Algeria, Uzbekistan and Malaysia. All prefer to participate in remaking the rules of the international system, a process that is now underway. 

More consequential commitments from Muslim-majority states at the multilateral level are found within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (). Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they calls from the US to pump more crude as prices of oil rallied to multi-year highs. In October 2022, Muslim-majority member states within OPEC+ decided to cut crude production by two million barrels a day, a move that benefitted not only Russia, but also themselves. On April 2, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC+ oil producers announced further oil of around 1.16 million barrels per day. For these states, staying friendly with the US is subordinate to pursuing their national economic goals.

Muslim-majority states are also generally reluctant to interfere in the domestic affairs of fellow Muslim states, including on issues of serious human rights violations. In the UN Human Rights Council, no Muslim-majority state member voted for the international fact-finding to independently investigate alleged human rights violations in Iran. Tehran had cracked down on protests that began on September 16, 2022 after the death in police custody of a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini.

Muslim-majority states also ignore the domestic affairs of other great powers, including serious human rights violations of Muslim minorities. This behavior of their political leaders, including their state religious bodies, is striking. They have remained silent on the massive detention and forced re-education of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in Northwest China. In July 2019, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, and other Muslim-majority states helped to a Western motion at the United Nations calling for China to allow “independent international observer��” into the Xinjiang region. 

This year, a delegation from The World Muslim Communities Council (), which comprises 14 Muslim-majority states, visited Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital. According to its , TWMCC “hailed the efforts of the Chinese authorities in combating terrorism in Xinjiang”. As prime minister, Khan also that hardly any Muslim country, with the exception of Turkey, stands with Pakistan on the rights of the Kashmiri people.

Fighter Jets and Possible Peace

Neutrality in the exercise of international affairs generally does not come cheap. It is important to note that many Muslim-majority states take appropriate measures to protect and pay for their stances. According to a fact sheet of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (), 14 Muslim-majority states are listed among the top 30 largest importers of arms, accounting for 38.8% of the total volume of arms imports from 2017 to 2021. 

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Pakistan and the UAE are listed among the top 10 largest importers of arms. This illustrates that weapon imports from Russia are the most important driver of relations between Muslim-majority states and Moscow. According to , Russia was the largest arms supplier for Egypt, Algeria, Iraq and Pakistan from 2017 to 2021. It was the second and third largest supplier for Bangladesh, Azerbaijan, Pakistan and the UAE. Moreover, half of the top Russian weapons importers are Muslim-majority states. At the regional level, the Middle East and North African (MENA) region was the most lucrative for Russian arms sales between 2009 and 2018. 

In recent years, Russia’s share of MENA’s defense market has doubled, as arms deliveries by 125% from 1999-2008 to 2009-2018. In 2009-18, Russia weapons to 14 countries in the region, which accounted for 26% of the total volume of Russia’s arms exports. In 1999-2008 this figure was only 14%. As arms imports from Russia increased, imports from the US . They went down from 47% in 2012-16 to 43% in 2017-21. 

Continuing this trend, arms exports from the US to the UAE fell by 36% between 2016 and 2020. The UAE was the second largest recipient of US arms in 2012–16 but fell to the eighth largest in 2017–21. For the same period, arms exports to Turkey fell by 81% as they went from the third largest recipient of US arms exports in 2011–15 to the 19th largest in 2016–20. 

In 2022, Erdoğan that his country is no longer dependent on the US. Facing problems with importing fighter jets, he said, “If we can’t get the results out of the United States about the F-16s, what are we going to do? Of course, we’re going to take care of our own selve��”.

The generalization of the Muslim world versus others ignores the important issue of interstate relations between Muslim-majority states. What happens between rival Muslim-majority states in a world that is no longer unipolar? 

Data on civil, proxy, or interstate wars suggest that rival Muslim states compete far less today than in the past. States with previously strained relations, made bilateral U-turns in recent years. Turkey and Saudi Arabia established military collaborations and Erdoğan Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). The Turkish defense minister his Syrian counterpart in Moscow. Saudi Arabia a consulate in Iraq and pledged $1 billion in aid. Additionally, there was a in Yemen and even the civil war in Syria has subsided. 

The recent deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran marks a dramatic departure from years of open hostility. Perhaps even more unexpectedly, Turkey began a with Syria. While the rivalry between Muslim-majority states will not cease completely in the emerging multipolar world, old differences are shrinking considerably.

Assertively Moving from the Periphery 

Leaders in the West might wonder why many Muslim-majority states are reluctant to embrace the Western narrative about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This might come across as surprising given that some of these states host US military troops. To make sense of what is going on, a closer examination of the Muslim world is necessary.

Both the Russian Dugin and the American Huntington depicted a unitary nature of the Muslim world. They generalized Islamic civilization as a single variable or meta-force in international affairs. This has provoked serious and never-ending debate. However, religion has never been the central defining element for Muslim-majority states. Furthermore, Dugin and Huntington did not examine the relationship between Islam and forms of government in Muslim-majority countries. The reality is complex.

Our assumption at the international level is that Muslim-majority states resent the liberal international order and the threat that it poses to their political societies. Their political elites do generally dislike what John Mearsheimer calls “a liberal unipole” in which the US, as the sole superpower in the international system, pursues a policy of “liberal hegemony.” They do not want the liberal American elites to reshape Muslim-majority states in their own image. Indeed, there is a problem in the Muslim world with accepting the universality and superiority of liberal ideology. The liberal political elite in the West believes in democracy and free markets, and wants to impose this on others. Muslim-majority states distrust this Western, especially American, article of faith. They see recent military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya as disasters. 

Therefore, Muslim-majority states prefer multipolarity in the international system. In this system, their voices can be heard and they can move from the periphery to the center of international politics. Many Muslim-majority states have progressed from dependent status, serving foreign policy objectives of other great powers, to push for what Pakistani Khan calls “more dignity”, “self-respect” and “independence” in international affairs.

Turkey, for example, has gradually moved from a peripheral state, or as Huntington describes a “torn state”, in the Western block to a core state in its regional sub-system. Turkey’s recent stand on Ukraine or Saudi Arabia’s strategic partnership with China underlines an important shift. A new world order has emerged where China and Russia have become important, and are now challenging the US. 

Michael Singh has how medium-sized states are “eschewing both alignment with a single power and nonalignment, and instead choosing omni-alignment: participation in the multilateral institutions led by the United States and those spearheaded by its rivals.” He argues that “omni-alignment also serves as a hedge against the unpredictability of great-power behavior”. This hedging is most clearly seen in the Middle East, where the future of both US and Chinese engagement remains unclear.

Muslim-majority states view liberal ideology as a threat to their political systems. They prefer strong, sovereign and authoritarian states. The Muslim world still remains unfriendly to liberal democracy, irrespective of variations in faith practices, ideologies, regime characteristics or elite interests. Muslim-majority states are either non-democratic or have no functional democracy by Western standards. Those few Muslim countries that hold regular elections, such as Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia, have not reached the status of “consolidated democracy” according to .

Data on individual freedoms reveals that Muslim-majority states score poorly on the right to vote, freedom of expression and equality before the law. Of all Muslim-majority states that are members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (), not one scored enough to be given the status of a free state. The majority are considered not free, with the rest deemed partially free. Given their opposition to the liberal order, contemporary Muslim kings, presidents, and prime ministers built stronger partnerships with Donald Trump, a like-minded American president. He railed against the liberal order and supported strongmen around the world such as Erdoğan, MBS and Mohamed bin Zayed. In turn, they prefer Trump to Biden.

Shared opposition by Muslim-majority states to the international liberal order is allied to their opposition to liberal norms at the national level. Today, Muslim-majority states and their leaders are aiming to move to a post-liberal, new global order where the East balances the West and where they are no longer “client”, “torn”, “vassal”, or “periphery” states.

It remains to be seen how the push for increased centrality within their regional sub-systems will play out for Muslim-majority states. This new assertive foreign policy of the Muslim world will certainly strengthen multipolarity. It suits China and Russia. However, Muslim-majoirty states will not become part of what Huntington defined as the Islamic-Confucian alliance or what Dugin proposed as a common front of Islamic-Orthodox civilisations against the liberal West.

They will continue to establish political, economic or security partnerships with different players in the international system. Muslim states may even contribute to stability in an anarchic and more complex multipolar system by offering mediation in conflict zones that involve opposing great powers. The future will be very different to the present and Muslim-majority states will become bigger players in the international system.

[edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian nationalism has been on the rise and is a key driver of the Russia-Ukraine War. Russian President Vladimir Putin has fostered this nationalism for decades. He first made his name by crushing the anti-Russian uprising in Chechnya. In recent years, Russia has become more aggressive. In the case of Ukraine, Putin has been particularly aggressive. 

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and support for pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine sparked a conflict. This violated Ukraine’s sovereignty and has led to a deadly conflict that has claimed thousands of lives.

Tracing the Roots of Russian and Ukrainian Nationalism

Nationalism has always played a big role in Russia’s history. It first came to the fore at the end of the 18th century. In the early 19th century, an of national superiority and honor came into shape, along with a strict loyalty to the ideology of Emperor Alexander I. During what is known as the “Golden Age” of Russian literature, writers such as Ivan Kireevsky, Mikhail Pogodin and Fyodor Tyutchev furthered these sentiments. 

These writers asserted that Russian culture was superior to that of other nations. They glorified Russian martyrs who gave their lives for their country. Over time, this sense of national pride became ingrained in the mindsets of most Russians. 

The Russian Romanticism of 1820-1840 extolled Russian literature, culture, language and orthodoxy as sources of pride and uniqueness. This was also a time when the Russian Empire continued to spread through Central Asia and the Caucasus. Russia fought against both the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires for territory. This quest for empire fuelled Russian nationalism.

Russia’s nationalism is driven by a sense of being wronged by others and a desire for a strong leader. Throughout history, Russians have faced invasions and attacks from different enemies, such as the Mongols, the Swedes, the Poles and the Nazis. These experiences have shaped their sense of identity and pride.

They also made Russians crave a strong leader who can protect them from any threat. This craving is the reason Russians have tolerated authoritarian rulers for centuries and why many of them support Vladimir Putin today. Putin claims to be a strong leader who can stand up to the West and defend Russia’s interests. 

Ukrainian nationalism also has deep roots in the country’s history. It grew out of a resistance to domination and assimilation by the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires. In the 19th century, a group of Ukrainian intellectuals and writers initiated a movement for Ukrainian , which aimed to celebrate and preserve their unique language, culture and national identity. These nationalists also advocated for an independent state, free from outside domination. 

Ukrainian nationalism is no longer simply about asserting independence from Russia. It is also about integrating with Europe and NATO, who are both now seen as partners and allies. Ukrainians view themselves as part of Europe, both geographically and culturally. This is reflected in their desire to embrace Western values and norms, such as democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

At the same time, Ukrainian nationalism is defined more than ever by standing up to Russia’s bullying and meddling. This became progressively worse since Russia took over Crimea and started a war in Donbas. For Ukrainian nationalists, their language, culture and history matter immensely. These Ukrainians are willing to fight and even die to protect the nation. They want to speak Ukrainian in all situations, celebrate Ukrainian holidays and traditions, and honor Ukrainian heroes and achievements.

Putin Sees Ukraine as a Betrayer of Slavic Unity

Putin’s vision of “Great Russia” or a “Russian World,” encompasses not only the territory of modern-day Russia and Ukraine but other countries with significant ethnic Russian populations. They include Belarus, Kazakhstan and the Baltic states. Putin portrays Moscow. as the protector of Russian speakers abroad. Therefore, he constantly advocates for the rights and the interests of Russian speakers in neighboring countries.

Putin once that “since time immemorial, the people living in the southwest of what has historically been Russian land have called themselves Russians and Orthodox Christian��”. Russia and Ukraine share a common Eastern Slavic heritage that dates back to the medieval state of Kyivan Rus. Kyivan Rus was the of both Ukraine and Russia. Its ruler, Volodymyr the Great, changed the state religion to Orthodox Christianity in 988 A.D. 

According to Putin, Ukraine’s independence was a result of an erroneous division of land by Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin and his associates. Furthermore, “modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia.” To Putin, this is unacceptable.

Russia wants to keep Ukraine under its control for many reasons. First, it wants to have a buffer zone between itself and NATO countries, which it sees as Russia’s enemies. Putin is not the only Russian who is also worried about NATO’s expansion to Russia’s borders and its interference in its near-abroad, which the country sees as its backyard. Second, Moscow wants to protect the rights of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in Ukraine. Putin claims that Ukraine is discriminating against them. Third, Russia wants to make sure it has access to important resources such as the natural gas pipelines that run through Ukraine as well as the Ukrainian coastline near Crimea.

The war in Ukraine demonstrates that Russia’s nationalism is all based on a feeling of being wronged by others, a craving for a strong leader and a deep desire to defend ethnic Russians. Over a year of conflict has demonstrated the strength of Russians nationalism and its readiness to fight against the West. It has also shown us how risky and dangerous such nationalism can be and the need for negotiations to avoid more violence.

[Naveed Ahsan edited this article.]

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The hope, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is that the Western allies will continue to furnish money, tanks, missiles, and everything else his battered country needs to fend off Putin’s forces. The war will be won, according to Zelensky, not through backroom compromises but on the battlefield with guns and ammo.

“I appeal to you and the world with these most simple and yet important words,” he to a joint session of Great Britain’s parliament in February. “Combat aircraft for Ukraine, wings for freedom.”

The United Kingdom, which has committed well over in assistance to Ukraine, has so far refused to ship fighter jets there but has promised to supply more weaponry, including tank shells made with depleted uranium (DU), also known as “.” A by-product of uranium enrichment, DU is a very dense and radioactive metal that, when housed in small torpedo-like munitions, can pierce thickly armored tanks and other vehicles.

Reacting to the British announcement, Putin ominously said he would “” if the Ukrainians begin blasting off rounds of DU.

While the UK’s decision to send depleted-uranium shells to Ukraine is unlikely to prove a turning point in the war’s outcome, it will have a lasting, potentially devastating, impact on soldiers, civilians, and the environment. The controversial deployment of DU doesn’t pose faintly the same risks as the actual nuclear weapons Putin and his associates they might use someday in Ukraine or as would a potential meltdown at the embattled in that country. Still, its use will certainly help create an even more lethal, all too literally radioactive theater of war — and Ukraine will end up paying a price for it.

The Radioactive Lions of Babylon

Stuart Dyson survived his deployment in the first Gulf War of 1991, where he served as a lance corporal with Britain’s Royal Pioneer Corps. His task in Kuwait was simple enough: he was to help clean up “dirty” tanks after they had seen battle. Many of the machines he spent hours scrubbing down had carried and fired depleted uranium shells used to penetrate and disable Iraq’s T-72 tanks, better known as the .

Dyson spent five months in that war zone, ensuring American and British tanks were cleaned, armed, and ready for battle. When the war ended, he returned home, hoping to put his time in the Gulf War behind him. He found a decent job, married, and had children. Yet his health deteriorated rapidly and he came to believe that his military service was to blame. Like so many others who had served in that conflict, Dyson suffered from a mysterious and debilitating illness that came to be known as Gulf War Syndrome.

After Dyson suffered years of peculiar ailments, ranging from headaches to dizziness and muscle tremors, doctors discovered that he had a severe case of colon cancer, which rapidly spread to his spleen and liver. The prognosis was bleak and, after a short battle, his body finally gave up. Stuart Dyson in 2008 at the age of 39.

His saga is unique, not because he was the only veteran of the first Gulf War to die of such a cancer at a young age, but because his cancer was later as having been caused by exposure to depleted uranium. In a landmark 2009 ruling, jurors at the Smethwick Council House in the UK found that Dyson’s cancer had resulted from DU accumulating in his body, and in particular his internal organs.

“My feeling about Mr. Dyson’s colon cancer is that it was produced because he ingested some radioactive material and it became trapped in his intestine,” Professor Christopher Busby, an expert on the effects of uranium on health, said in his court testimony. “To my mind, there seems to be a causal arrow from his exposure to his final illness. It’s certainly much more probable than not that Mr. Dyson’s cancer was caused by exposure to depleted uranium.”

The US Department of Defense estimated that American forces fired during that 1991 war to push Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein’s military out of Kuwait. The result: a poisoned battlefield laced with radioactive debris, as well as toxic nerve agents and other chemical agents.

In neighboring southern Iraq, background radiation following that war rose to 30 times normal. Tanks tested after being shelled with DU rounds had readings 50 times higher than average.

“It’s hot forever,” explains Doug Rokke, a former major in the US Army Reserve’s Medical Service Corps who helped decontaminate dozens of vehicles hit by DU shells during the first Gulf War. “It doesn’t go away. It only disperses and blows around in the wind,” he adds. And of course, it wasn’t just soldiers who suffered from DU exposure. In Iraq, has been buildingthat DU, an intense carcinogenic agent, has led to increases in cancer rates for civilians, too.

“When we were moving forward and got north of a minefield, there were a bunch of blown-out tanks that were near where we would set up a command post,” says Jason Peterson, a former American Marine who served in the first Gulf War. “Marines used to climb inside and ‘play’ in them … We barely knew where Kuwait was, let alone the kind of ammunition that was used to blow shit up on that level.”

While it’s difficult to discern exactly what caused the Gulf War Syndrome from which Dyson and so many other soldiers suffered (and continue to suffer), experts like Rokke are convinced that exposure to depleted uranium played a central role in the illness. That’s an assertion Western governments have consistently downplayed. In fact, the Pentagon has repeatedly the two.

“I’m a warrior, and warriors want to fulfill their mission,” Rokke, who also suffers from Gulf War Syndrome, Vanity Fair in 2007. “I went into this wanting to make it work, to work out how to use DU safely, and to show other soldiers how to do so and how to clean it up. This was not science out of a book, but science done by blowing the shit out of tanks and seeing what happens. And as we did this work, slowly it dawned on me that we were screwed. You can’t do this safely in combat conditions. You can’t decontaminate the environment or your own troops.”

Death to Uranium

Depleted uranium can’t produce a nuclear explosion, but it’s still directly linked to the development of atomic weaponry. It’s a by-product of the uranium enrichment process used in nuclear weapons and fuel. DU is alluring to weapons makers because it’s heavier than lead, which means that, if fired at a high velocity, it can rip through the thickest of metals.

That it’s radioactive isn’t what makes it so useful on the battlefield, at least according to its proponents. “It’s so dense and it’s got so much momentum that it just keeps going through the armor — and it heats it up so much that it catches on fire,” says RAND nuclear expert and policy researcher Edward Geist.

The manufacturing of DU dates back to the 1970s in the United States. Today, the American military employs DU rounds in its M1A2 Abrams tanks. Russia has also used DU in its tank-busting shells since at least 1982 and there are plenty of accusations, though as yet no hard evidence, that Russia has already deployed such shells in Ukraine. Over the years, for its part, the US has fired such rounds not just in Kuwait, but also in Bosnia, Iraq, Kosovo, Syria, and Serbia as well.

Both Russia and the US have reasons for using DU, since each has piles of the stuff sitting around with nowhere to put it. Decades of manufacturing nuclear weapons have created a mountain of radioactive waste. In the US, more than of depleted-uranium waste has accumulated since the Manhattan Project first created atomic weaponry, much of it in Hanford, Washington, the country’s main plutonium production site. As I investigated in my book , Hanford is now a cesspool of radioactive and chemical waste, representing the most expensive environmental clean-up project in history with an estimated price tag of $677 billion.

Uranium, of course, is what makes the whole enterprise viable: you can’t create atomic bombs or nuclear power without it. The trouble is that uranium itself is radioactive, as it emits alpha particles and gamma rays. That makes mining uranium one of the most dangerous operations on the planet.

Keep It in the Ground

In New Mexico, where uranium mines were primarily worked by Diné (Navajo People), the toll on their health proved gruesome indeed. According to a 2000 in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, rates of lung cancer in Navajo men who mined uranium were 28 times higher than in those who never mined uranium. The “Navajo experience with uranium mining,” it added, “is a unique example of exposure in a single occupation accounting for the majority of lung cancers in an entire population.”

Scores of studies have shown a direct correlation between exposure to uranium and , in infants (when mothers were exposed), increased rates of , and several . The list is both extensive and horrifying.

“My family had a lot of cancer,” anti-nuclear activist and Indigenous community organizer Leona Morgan. “My grandmother died of lung cancer and she never smoked. It had to be the uranium.”

One of the largest radioactive accidents, and certainly the least reported, occurred in 1979 on Diné land when a dam broke, flooding the Puerco River near Church Rock, New Mexico, with . The incident received virtually no attention at the time. “The water, filled with acids from the milling process, twisted a metal culvert in the Puerco and burned the feet of a little boy who went wading. Sheep keeled over and died, while crops curdled along the banks. The surge of radiation was detected as far away as Sanders, Arizona, fifty miles downstream,” writes Judy Pasternak in her book .

Of course, we’ve known about the dangers of uranium for decades, which makes it all the more to see a renewed push for increased mining of that radioactive ore to generate nuclear power. The only way to ensure that uranium doesn’t poison or kill anyone is to leave it right where it’s always been: in the ground. Sadly, even if you were to do so now, there would still be tons of depleted uranium with nowhere to go. A put the world’s mountain of DU waste at more than one million tons (each equal to 2,000 pounds).

So why isn’t depleted uranium banned? That’s a question antinuclear activists have been asking for years. It’s often met with government claims that DU isn’t anywhere near as bad as its peacenik critics allege. In fact, the US government has had a tough time even acknowledging that Gulf War Syndrome exists. A Government Accountability Office released in 2017 found that the Veterans Affairs Department had denied more than 80% of all Gulf War illness claims by veterans. Downplaying DU’s role, in other words, comes with the terrain.

“The use of DU in weapons should be prohibited,” maintains Ray Acheson, an organizer for the and author of . “While some governments argue there is no definitive proof its use in weapons causes harm, it is clear from numerous investigations that its use in munitions in Iraq and other places has caused impacts on the health of civilians as well as military personnel exposed to it, and that it has caused long-term environmental damage, including groundwater contamination. Its use in weapons is arguably in violation of international law, human rights, and environmental protection and should be banned in order to ensure it is not used again.”

If the grisly legacy of the American use of depleted uranium tells us anything, it’s that those DU shells the British are supplying to Ukraine (and the ones the Russians may also be using there) will have a radioactive impact that will linger in that country for years to come, with debilitating, potentially fatal, consequences. It will, in a sense, be part of a global atomic war that shows no sign of ending.

[ first published this piece.]

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Sure, in the post-1991 era, nuclear war could still happen by mistake. It could break out between two actively hostile nuclear powers like India and Pakistan. It could be triggered by a disgruntled new nuclear club member like North Korea. And, of course, a conflict between the superpowers themselves—United States, China, Russia—could escalate to a nuclear exchange because of miscalculation, misinformation, or simply a few missing synapses in the brains of the leaders.

But what had once been a front-and-center obsession during spikes in Cold War tensions—from backyard bomb shelters to films like The Day After—had become in recent years more like ominous but muted background music. Meanwhile, other existential crises stepped to the fore, like climate change, pandemics, and artificial intelligence run amok. Apocalyptic ends have still loomed large in the public imagination: not so much with a bang any more but a whimper.

Now, after Russia invaded Ukraine last year, nuclear war is once again competing to become the planetary catastrophe de jour. The Russian decision this week to in Belarus, possibly bringing them closer to deployment, has analysts in the West second-guessing the Kremlin’s calculations. Would Russian President Vladimir Putin actually go nuclear, either to gain battlefield advantage or to a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive from restoring the country’s pre-2014 borders?

This prospect of a nuclear war, however limited, has pushed quite a few peace activists in the West to at whatever the cost. Policy analysts, too, not to overreach, for instance by threatening Russian control of Crimea, out of concern that the conflict could escalate to the nuclear threshold.

The threat of nuclear war should never be treated casually, particularly when such weapons are in the hands of madmen like Nixon, Trump, or Putin. This January, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved their Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds to midnight. It’s never before been so close.

All of this requires a sober assessment of the nuclear risks involved in the Ukraine war and what can be done to minimize them.

The Clock Strikes Almost Midnight

Back in 1991, the Doomsday Clock stood at 17 minutes before . That’s the greatest margin of safety since the clock debuted in 1947. Subsequent US presidents squandered an historic opportunity to rewind the clock even more. Despite the reassurances provided by Barack Obama that he was indeed committed to nuclear disarmament—if not during his presidency then at some undefined time in the future—the clock remained poised several minutes before midnight for most of his tenure in office. When Trump took office, the measurement switched from minutes to seconds. Then this January, the second hand ticked down from 100 seconds to 90.

The Bulletin’s well-reasoned decision to advance the clock places all the blame on Russia. The editorial discusses Russian threats to use nuclear weapons, its violations of international law, its false accusations concerning Ukraine’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has increased the risk of nuclear weapons use, raised the specter of biological and chemical weapons use, hamstrung the world’s response to climate change, and hampered international efforts to deal with other global concerns,” the editors .

At the same time, the Bulletin stresses the need for the United States to keep open the option of “principled engagement” with Russia to reduce the risk of nuclear war. There is no recommendation that Ukraine or its supporters pull their punches to reduce this risk. Instead, the editors speak of “forging a just peace.”

Although the Doomsday Clock is a powerful visual suggestion that the threat of nuclear war has increased with the conflict in Ukraine, Western politicians and analysts have downplayed the actual risk of a nuclear attack. Here, for instance, is the of the Institute for the Study of War, which produces an influential daily analysis of the military and political developments in Ukraine:

“The announcement of the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus is irrelevant to the risk of escalation to nuclear war, which remains extremely low. Putin is attempting to exploit Western fears of nuclear escalation by deploying tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus. Russia has long fielded nuclear-capable weapons able to strike any target that tactical nuclear weapons based in Belarus could hit. ISW continues to assess that Putin is a risk-averse actor who repeatedly threatens to use nuclear weapons without any intention of following through in order to break Western resolve.”

It might seem counterintuitive to argue that Putin is a “risk-averse actor.” Didn’t he invade Ukraine last year without sufficient preparation? Didn’t he put Russia’s economy at risk of serious damage because of the invasion? Hasn’t he cavalierly destroyed several decades of carefully cultivated relations with Europe and the West?

In fact, with the exception of the ill-prepared invasion itself, Putin has been quite careful. He took pains to sanction-proof the Russian economy and replace European oil and gas clients with Asian ones. He hasn’t shifted to a war economy. Nor has he declared an all-out aerial war on all parts of Ukraine (though that’s likely because of Ukraine’s ).

Most importantly, he hasn’t risked direct confrontation with NATO powers. The most logical strategy for Russia at this point is to interdict Western shipments of arms to Ukraine. Back in March 2022, the Russian government that it would do so. But it has failed to do so. Partly that’s because Russia lacks capacity and military . But it’s also because Putin doesn’t want to draw NATO into the war. It’s been hard enough for Russia to fight against Ukrainian soldiers and a handful of international volunteers. The introduction of NATO battalions would be game over for Russia.

Russia’s use of tactical nuclear weapons could also draw NATO more directly into the conflict, which no doubt restrains Putin’s hand. The fact that Xi Jinping, on his recent trip to Moscow, explicitly Putin not to use nukes only reinforces the prohibition.

Not everyone believes that the risk of nuclear war is “extremely low,” as ISW put it.

Longtime security analyst Carl Conetta agrees that the likelihood of a direct Russian nuclear strike against Ukraine is low. But he other nuclear options for Russia such as

“a demonstration blast in remote areas of Russia. Such an action would be intended and likely to have a powerful psychological effect not easily mollified by official US reassurances to NATO allies and other countries. But such a gambit would also involve and/or provoke abruptly heightened levels of strategic force readiness on both sides of today’s strategic divide, and this would be uniquely dangerous.”

Conetta also notes that Russia’s nuclear doctrine has shifted over the last year, and the Kremlin may well redefine what constitutes an existential threat to Russia to allow for the use of nuclear weapons. In the end, he concludes that “although the probability of a big power nuclear clash of any magnitude over Ukraine remains low, it would be irrational and irresponsible to act as though we can roll the nuclear dice and never come up ‘snake eyes.’”

Masha Gessen, the prolific critic of Putin, has also sounded a about Putin’s willingness to go nuclear. She grounds these fears in an analysis of Putin himself.

“He believes that, on the one hand, he is facing down an existential threat to Russia and, on the other, that Western nations don’t have the strength of their convictions to retaliate if it comes to nukes. Any small sign of a crack in the Western consensus—be it French President Emmanuel Macron pressuring Ukraine to enter peace negotiations, or the House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy criticizing what he sees as unconditional aid to Ukraine—bolsters Putin’s certainty.”

She concludes that only the threat of massive conventional retaliation by NATO and the West stays Putin’s hand. Also note Gessen’s terrible irony: the more that peace activists call for negotiations to reduce the risk of nuclear war, the more Putin will interpret the successful pick-up of that message as a sign that he can use nukes with impunity.

The Politics of Good and Evil

Superpowers that do evil should not be allowed to continue doing so simply because they possess nuclear weapons. Those who have resisted the spread of the US empire in Asia, Africa, and Latin America didn’t lay down their arms or stop protests in the streets because of the threat that Washington would use nuclear weapons. They confronted the evil of US occupation and, in many cases, they succeeded.

Oh, but Putin is different, you might say. The Russian leader is making actual nuclear threats. He is promising to move nukes closer to the front (as opposed to the United States, which hasn’t moved its 100 or so tactical from storage facilities in Western Europe). He is a mad man and will stop at nothing to create his “Russian world” out of territory absorbed from countries on Russia’s borders.

But as should be clear from the above, Putin has stopped short at several junctures. He has committed war crimes, to be sure. But so far he has not listened to the right-wing critics at home who urge him to fight a total war in Ukraine. He hasn’t listened to them because the Russian military doesn’t have sufficient capacity and because he fears the consequences of such a dramatic escalation.

It should go without saying that the United States must keep open lines of communication with Moscow and pursue arms control negotiations. The Biden administration should be careful to focus on the importance of defending Ukraine and avoid any statements that call into question the existential status of Russia or Putin’s regime. Direct NATO involvement in the conflict, which could indeed trigger a world war, should be avoided.

So, it’s up to Ukraine—not only to defend itself but to prevent Putin from using nuclear blackmail to achieve his ends. That might also mean, paradoxically, that it will be up to Ukraine to show restraint in defeating Russia to prevent Putin from using actual nukes to forestall his own end. Ukraine thus must fight against two evils simultaneously: the reality of Putin and the possibility of nuclear war.

[ first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In previous columns, Feffer made it clear where his hopes lie. In his latest account, there is enough bad news concerning Russia’s fate in the war to keep the author happy. But this time there is not enough good news about Ukraine to justify the claim he made in these columns last November, when he claimed that “Ukraine has a considerable edge over Russia.”

Like many defenders of Ukraine’s sovereign right to install NATO not just on Russia’s border but even more critically as the dominant military force in the Black Sea, Feffer’s optimism is slightly attenuated by recent events that fail to validate the hope of an imminent expulsion of Russian troops from Ukraine. His belief in the cause nevertheless remains intact, which he expresses in the final sentence of last week’s article: “Perhaps this second year will see the biggest surprise of all: an end to the war that is just, with the aggressor punished and the victim vindicated. That kind of peace is certainly worth fighting for.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Victim:

In any conflict or quarrel, with whom the person the speaker or writer identifies or sympathizes

Contextual note

There can be no doubting the simple fact that Russia has played the role of the bellicose aggressor in the ongoing war. That simple fact means that Ukraine is the victim. The evidence of victimhood, the unspeakable horrors of war, abound. But any reasoning being with no preordained ideological commitment would ask the question that Feffer avoids: is Ukraine the only victim?

Echoing the US government, Feffer talks about what is “worth fighting for,” though no Americans –

 apart from a gaggle of misguided who “lie, waste and bicker” according to the New York Times – is actually fighting or risking their lives. Instead US policy incites a foreign population to do the fighting.

The Scary Not-So-Winding Road from Iraq to Ukraine

For many decades, Americans have cultivated the art of standing as judges of what people thousands of miles away should be fighting and dying for. Once “worth” is attributed to a particular cause, the unique victim to be defended and avenged can be identified. Then everything focuses on how to punish the perpetrator. Sanctions, invasion and wars of attrition constitute some of the standard punishments. Once the victim is identified, there is little time for due process and historical debate. Negotiating itself is a game for sissies. It will immediately be slandered as appeasement.

The culture of victimization; though a relatively recent feature of US culture, has become central to the way Americans think about any conflict, whether it’s gender rivalry or the mission of eliminating autocratic regimes. Once victimhood is attributed, rescuing the victims becomes a noble cause. Vital to that logic is the refusal to consider that victimhood might sometimes be shared. 

In the case of the Ukraine war, only committed ideologues could refuse to consider the obvious fact that eminent analysts such as John Mearsheimer and George Friedman have been highlighting for the past eight years: that Russia considers itself a victim of NATO expansion promoted by the US. The claim may be exaggerated or even specious, but it would be dishonest to deny that the feeling not only exists but is shared widely across Russian culture. In such cases, psychologists recommend that those feelings be explored rather than simply ignored or dismissed. The means of exploration is called negotiation or the art of diplomacy. Alas, the insistence on applying  the “rule of law” subordinates problem-solving to the pitiless application of ironclad principles. And of course it’s the hegemon that retains the prerogative of defining what the principles are. Negotiation becomes an unnecessary, time-consuming luxury.

Historical note

After two full years as “the leader of the free world,” the Biden administration’s foreign policy has manifested itself in a pair of major events. The first was the awkward withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. The second is its commitment to a faraway war in Ukraine. Many observers see these events as evidence of Washington’s dependence on, if not addiction to war. Defense once meant protecting one’s territory. But defense of an empire cannot be merely defensive. Hiroshima and Nagasaki established a precedent: that defense of superpowers relies first of all on the demonstration of a massive capacity for destruction deployable on foreign soil.

Hiroshima implanted another idea: that acts of war could be initiated without risking the lives of one’s own combatants. This contradicted previous notions of warfare, but it was not totally new. In medieval and early modern Europe, warring kings preferred to rely on Swiss mercenaries rather than recruit their own subjects. The rise of the nation-state in the 17^th century definitively changed that trend. Warfare became linked to the notion of national identity and  patriotic duty.

Over the past 50 years, the paradigm has shifted again. Before the war in Vietnam, citizens viewed war as the compelling cause of the nation intent upon defending itself and its values. During the Second World War, valiant young men responded to the slogan: “Uncle Sam needs you” by enlisting in the army. But it wasn’t only men who worked for the cause. emerged as a champion of the war effort. American GIs and Joseph Stalin’s brave workers-turned-soldiers, accompanied by the women who worked in the factories all willingly sacrificed not only capitalist comfort and communist pride, but even their lives. 

The war in Vietnam changed everything. The nation’s youth refused to identify with a war that seemed both remote and artificial in its historical logic. Only a few years earlier President Eisenhower’s had uttered his dire warning that the government itself was being taken over by an uncontrollable military-industrial complex. The idea of alienation promoted by French philosophers, the existentialists, took hold among the younger generations. The era of Dr Strangelove (1964) had dawned. War was no longer a noble cause, but a form of irresponsible madness.

When the war in Vietnam eventually wound down, President Nixon found a neat solution to the problem of alienation. He abolished the draft. The US would no longer sacrifice its unwilling citizens to defend its chosen causes overseas. It created: a volunteer army designed to get the job done for pay rather than glory.

With George W Bush’s “war on terror” twenty years ago, the trend evolved again. To avoid the costly loss of lives that tarnished the cause in Vietnam, the military returned to employing mercenary armies for the most dangerous work (Blackwater) and increasingly relied on remote-controlled drones. These two innovations meant that killing could continue while more and more of “our boys” (every mother’s kids) were kept out of harm’s way.

The Ukraine war has taken the logic one step further. This is a war Americans support and even manage from the safety of their own homes. Ukrainians are not only dying in place of Americans, they are also providing the media with that valuable commodity known as martyrdom. They are the precious victims that the US is called upon to rescue and avenge.

Hollywood could have written and produced a carefully plotted scenario. For decades, starting with the fall of the Berlin wall, the US pursued an aggressive foreign policy directed against Russia and focused on controlling Europe via NATO. Increasingly it aimed at provoking an extreme reaction to finally break Russia’s resistance. That dramatic moment erupted spectacularly in February 2022 with the invasion of Ukraine. 

The American public now has the luxury of witnessing in the comfort of its living room the ongoing martyrdom of a brave population defending its sovereignty. The US assumes the less perilous task of supplying enough cash and armaments to prolong the spectacle as Russia faces slow extinction. Americans can breathe easy. Not only are “our boy��” safe; our defense industry prospers.

Some see this as a symptom of growing cynicism about human life itself. War itself has been transformed into essentially a business built on three pillars: entertainment (in this case a tragedy whose victims can be pitied), industrial prosperity (things have never been better for weapons manufacturers), and the assertion of global reach (war is also a marketplace). The Ukrainian victims can be counted on to play their noble role. And Vladimir Putin stands alone as the solitary evil villain. Most significantly, the show must go on, as we have been reminded, “as long as it lasts.” It is indeed a business. But it’s also a show that back in 1935 the decorated and popular Major General Smedley Butler to call “a racket.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.

Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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There wasn’t much for Putin to celebrate. The invasion had failed to dislodge the government of Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv or incorporate all of Ukrainian territory into greater Russia.

Over the last year, the Russian military has 60-70,000 fatalities plus nearly 200,000 injuries. It has half of its fleet of tanks, and monthly it continues to lose while only managing to replace 20 of them from the country’s only tank factory.

The call-up of new recruits for the army in the fall significant pushback throughout the country. The new soldiers, many of them well into , are and equipped. Russians of the Ukrainian front as a “meat grinder” because the Russian army has been throwing wave after wave of these unprepared recruits into the line of fire.

Russia Is Not Doing So Well

The much-anticipated Russian winter offensive to retake territory in the Donbas region has either not materialized or failed to make any mark beyond some negligible gains around the battered city of Bakhmut. Western intelligence that nearly all of Russia’s forces are now deployed to Ukraine, and all of these soldiers still haven’t been able to turn the tide in Russia’s favor.

The Russian economy hasn’t collapsed under the weight of international sanctions, but it isn’t doing well. Russian GDP shrank by last year. Hundreds of foreign companies have or suspended operations. The Putin government has kept the economy afloat—and its war effort funded—by increasing exports of raw materials, especially fossil fuels. But this is not a sustainable strategy.

Somewhere between 500,000 and a million of Russians the country, either in protest of Putin’s policies or to avoid serving in the military. Although this exodus has reduced the ranks of Putin’s opposition, it has also robbed the country of its most creative professionals. Combined with the failure to diversify the economy away from raw materials, this “brain drain” means that Russia is mortgaging its future in order to wage war in Ukraine.

On the foreign policy front, Putin’s determination to expand the “Russian world” has served only to expand the coalition of forces equally determined to halt his advance. Sweden and Finland, despite decades of ambivalence, have signed up to join NATO. In Finland, public support for NATO membership, which stood at in 2018, rose to in fall 2022. Justifiably angry at NATO’s eastward creep, Putin has nonetheless provided the Western alliance with the motivation to add to its ranks, increase its military spending, and accelerate its coordination with non-members like Ukraine.

Meanwhile, after the invasion, Putin lost nearly all of his within European far-right parties. Even his non-European allies are wavering. Only seven countries voted against the UN resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Although China and India, among other countries, continue to buy Russian energy, often at a significant discount, they are not happy with the war and have pushed for a peace settlement.

Putin Still Carries On

Despite all of these failures, Putin remains committed to the war. At the very least, he wants to control all of the Donbas—the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk—as well as the land in southern Ukraine that connects the Russian mainland to the Crimean Peninsula, which the Kremlin seized in 2014. The Russian president believes that he can win a war of attrition, given that Russia has a demographic edge over Ukraine. Even though Russia has lost upwards of a million people to emigration post-invasion, far more have left Ukraine: around 8 million, around 20 percent of the population.

Putin also thinks that support in the West for Ukraine will decline and the military assistance will dry up. Polls in the and indeed confirm that support for unabated military assistance has ebbed. This hasn’t yet affected deliveries of weapons. But it could.

Ukraine is certainly concerned that a drawn-out conflict will not be to its advantage. That’s why Zelensky has been trying to get as many arms—the more sophisticated the better—as soon as possible. Much hinges on a second Ukrainian counter-offensive, slated for some time in the spring after the mud has dried up. If Ukrainian forces can drive a wedge between the Donbas and Crimea, it can isolate the latter and create an aura of inevitability around its efforts to expel Russian occupiers.

Call this the Croatian scenario, after the successful 1995 campaign by the Croatian army to push Serbian forces out of positions they occupied inside Croatia. Ultimately, Operation Storm led to a peace agreement that ended the Yugoslav wars and contributed to undermining Serbian support for strong-arm leader Slobodan Milosevic, who lost elections five years later.

The other scenario is the Korean one. As in the Korean War, the first year of the Ukrainian conflict has featured dramatic reversals of territorial control. What comes next might resemble the last two years of the Korean War, in which the two sides battled to a virtual stalemate around the original line of demarcation. If Ukraine and Russia battle to a similar stand-off, they might also agree to a reluctant armistice.

It’s hard to know which of these scenarios will transpire. If there is one salient take-away from the first year of the war in Ukraine it’s the unpredictability of the course of events.

Russia surprised nearly everyone by actually invading Ukraine. Kyiv then surprised almost everyone by successfully repelling the attack, followed by a surprise counter-offensive that pushed even more Russian troops from Ukrainian territory. Meanwhile, despite many predictions of collapse, Russia hasn’t backed down.

Perhaps this second year will see the biggest surprise of all: an end to the war that is just, with the aggressor punished and the victim vindicated. That kind of peace is certainly worth fighting for.

[ first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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While the US was able to 49 countries, including many in the Global South, to join its “coalition of the willing” to support invading the sovereign nation of Iraq, only the U.K., Australia, Denmark and Poland actually contributed troops to the invasion force, and the past 20 years of disastrous interventions have taught many nations not to hitch their wagons to the faltering US empire. 

Today, nations in the Global South have overwhelmingly US entreaties to send weapons to Ukraine and are reluctant to comply with Western sanctions on Russia. Instead, they are urgently for diplomacy to end the war before it escalates into a full-scale conflict between Russia and the United States, with the existential danger of a world-ending nuclear war.

Neoconservative Ideas of Regime-Change

The architects of the US invasion of Iraq were the neoconservative founders of the Project for a New American Century (), who believed that the United States could use the unchallenged military superiority that it achieved at the end of the Cold War to perpetuate American global power into the 21st century. 

The invasion of Iraq would demonstrate US “full spectrum dominance” to the world, based on what the late Senator Edward Kennedy as “a call for 21st century American imperialism that no other country can or should accept.”  

Kennedy was right, and the neocons were utterly wrong. US military aggression succeeded in overthrowing Saddam Hussein, but it failed to impose a stable new order, leaving only chaos, death and violence in its wake. The same was true of US interventions in Afghanistan, Libya and other countries. 

For the rest of the world, the peaceful economic rise of China and the Global South has created an alternative path for economic development that is replacing the US model. While the United States has squandered its unipolar moment on trillion-dollar military spending, illegal wars and militarism, other countries are quietly building a more peaceful, multipolar world.      

And yet, ironically, there is one country where the neocons’ “regime-change” strategy succeeded, and where they doggedly cling to power: the United States itself. Even as most of the world recoiled in horror at the results of US aggression, the neocons consolidated their control over US foreign policy, infecting and poisoning Democratic and Republican administrations alike with their exceptionalist snake oil.

Corporate politicians and media like to airbrush out the neocons’ takeover and continuing domination of US foreign policy, but the neocons are hidden in plain sight in the upper echelons of the US State Department, the National Security Council, the White House, Congress and influential corporate-funded think tanks.

PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and was a key of Hillary Clinton. President Joe Biden appointed Kagan’s wife, Victoria Nuland, a former foreign policy adviser to Dick Cheney, as his Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the fourth most senior position in the State Department. That was after she played the US role in the 2014 in Ukraine, which caused its national disintegration, the return of Crimea to Russia and a civil war in Donbas that killed at least 14,000 people.

Nuland’s nominal boss, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, was the staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2002, during its debates over the impending US assault on Iraq. Blinken helped the committee chairman, Senator Joe Biden, hearings that guaranteed the committee’s support for the war, excluding any witnesses who did not fully support the neocons’ war plan.

Biden Administration Persists with Neoconservative Policies

It is not clear who is really calling the foreign policy shots in Biden’s administration as it barrels toward World War III with Russia and provokes conflict with China, riding roughshod over Biden’s campaign to “elevate diplomacy as the primary tool of our global engagement.” Nuland appears to have far beyond her rank in the shaping of US (and thus Ukrainian) war policy.

What is clear is that most of the world has seen through the and hypocrisy of US foreign policy, and that the United States is finally reaping the result of its actions in the refusal of the Global South to keep dancing to the tune of the American pied piper.

At the UN General Assembly in September 2022, the leaders of 66 countries, representing a majority of the world’s population, for diplomacy and peace in Ukraine. And yet Western leaders still ignore their pleas, claiming a monopoly on moral leadership that they decisively lost on March 19, 2003, when the United States and the United Kingdom tore up the UN Charter and invaded Iraq. 

In a panel discussion on “Defending the UN Charter and the Rules-Based International Order” at the recent Munich Security Conference, three of the panelists–from Brazil, Colombia and Namibia–explicitly Western demands for their countries to break off relations with Russia, and instead spoke out for peace in Ukraine.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira called on all the warring parties to “build the possibility of a solution. We cannot keep on talking only of war.” Vice President Francia Márquez of Colombia elaborated, “We don’t want to go on discussing who will be the winner or the loser of a war. We are all losers and, in the end, it is humankind that loses everything.”

Prime Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila of Namibia summed up the views of Global South leaders and their people: “Our focus is on solving the problem…not on shifting blame,” she said. “We are promoting a peaceful resolution of that conflict, so that the entire world and all the resources of the world can be focused on improving the conditions of people around the world instead of being spent on acquiring weapons, killing people, and actually creating hostilities.”

So how do the American neocons and their European vassals respond to these eminently sensible and very popular leaders from the Global South? In a frightening, warlike speech, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell the Munich conference that the way for the West to “rebuild trust and cooperation with many in the so-called Global South” is to “debunk… this false narrative… of a double standard.”

But the double standard between the West’s responses to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and decades of Western aggression is not a false narrative. In previous articles, we have how the United States and its allies dropped more than 337,000 bombs and missiles on other countries between 2001 and 2020. That is an average of 46 per day, day in day out, for 20 years. 

The US record easily matches, or arguably far outstrips, the illegality and brutality of Russia’s crimes in Ukraine. Yet the US never faces economic sanctions from the global community. It has never been forced to pay war reparations to its victims. It supplies weapons to the aggressors instead of to the victims of aggression in Palestine, Yemen and elsewhere. And US leaders—including Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden—have never been prosecuted for the international crime of aggression, war crimes or crimes against humanity.

As we mark the 20th anniversary of the devastating Iraq invasion, let us join with Global South leaders and the majority of our neighbors around the world, not only in calling for immediate peace negotiations to end the brutal Ukraine war, but also in building a genuine rules-based international order, where the same rules—and the same consequences and punishments for breaking those rules—apply to all nations, including our own.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022 changed the security context. As a consequence, in May 2022 Finlandapplied for , as did its Nordic neighbor Sweden.

In another historical change, Finland broke with its policy of not exporting weapons to countries at war and has repeatedly sent to Ukraine, including heavy artillery and munitions. Most recently, Finlandalso agreed to send to Ukraine.

It is against this background that parliament, in July 2022, adopted changes to the Emergency Powers Act and the Border Guard Act, and these actions should set warning bells ringing across Europe.

While Finland needed to respond to a radically changed security context, the hasty legislative changes hollowed out the constitution and raised questions about Finland’s commitment to the rule of law and its human rights obligations.

Hybrid threats among Finland’s top priorities

Hybrid threats are among Finland’s priorities relating to its.

The Helsinki-based European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats hybrid threats as actions by state or non-state actors that aim to undermine or harm a country by influencing decision-making at the local, regional, state, or institutional level. These actions deliberately target democratic states’ and institutions’ vulnerabilities.

Hybrid threats can, for example, involve influencing campaigns, cyber attacks, various forms of sabotage, or instrumentalizing migrant and refugee flows, which is an egregious way of using people in often desperate situations.

In 2015 Finland received 32,476 asylum seekers,a record for the country. That year large numbers of refugees arrived in European countries, in particular from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Their arrival in Finlandsparked about multiculturalism, integration, and values perceived as non-Finnish.

Emergency Powers Act no longer protects constitutional or human rights

The legislative changes to the Emergency Powers Act adopted in July 2022 focus on these hybrid threats, in particular the possibility of large flows of asylum seekers or immigrants being directed to Finland’s border by Russia.

To be able to respond to such a situation, parliament chose in haste to amend the Emergency Powers Act instead of addressing the issue through the section of the constitution that deals with fundamental rights during states of emergency and that defines the circumstances in which exceptions can be made.

The changes to the Act were adopted in a hurried package deal that required a compromise with the opposition parties. This included controversial and legally questionable changes to the Border Security Act such as allowing the closing of border crossing points in unclearly defined circumstances.

Writing in leading constitutional and human rights expert Martin Scheinin argued persuasively that following the changes to the Emergency Powers Act the constitution no longer provides protection for constitutional rights or human rights against a supermajority in parliament.

In Scheinin’s words, section 23 of the constitution, which addresses rights during states of emergency, “… was in fact deconstitutionalized” because of the manner in which parliament chose to make changes to the Act.

Border Guard Act changes put in question international human rights obligations

As part of the package deal that allowed the government to obtain the majority required to push through its changes, the Border Guard Act was amended in a way that appeased the anti-immigration opposition.

These changes raise serious questions about Finland’s ability and willingness to comply with its international human rights obligations.

The amended Border Guard Act allows the government to centralize applications for international protection to one or more border crossing points. Expecting asylum seekers who arrive at Finland’s more than 800-mile-long border to make their way to one designated location to apply for international protection could easily make an application impossible.

The circumstances in which the government can decide to centralize applications for asylum are not clearly defined. Scheinin points out that according to the wording of section 16 of the Border Guard Act, the provision could be triggered by, for example, a large sporting event in Finland that attracts many foreign visitors just as it could be triggered, for another example, by a future genocide in Russia.

Dunja Mijatović, the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner, several concerns about the changes in a to Finland’s Minister of the Interior, including concerns that the changes could prevent individuals from applying for asylum.

Mijatović also highlighted the situation of people fleeing Russia via the Finnish border, and this includes people who might be persecuted on grounds related to their opposition to the war in Ukraine, their sexual orientation or gender identity, or their work on human rights. She emphasized the need to pay specific attention to these groups, which she pointed out could be particularly affected.

New 2023 parliament should review the Emergency Powers Act

will take place in Finland in early April. The new parliament could choose to continue to review the entire Emergency Powers Act, currently under way and expected to conclude in 2025, to begin repairing the damage caused by the changes made in 2022. The new parliament should not allow the changes from 2022 to remain in their current form and should ensure that future changes comply fully with Finland’s international human rights obligations.

As Scheinin points out in his article for , part of the aim of the legislative changes in 2022 was to signal Finland’s determination to protect its population against external threats.

It could be argued that the way in which the changes were made sent another signal: It takes very little to weaken the rule of law in Finland. It will be up to the new parliament and government to decide if that is to be a lasting message.

[ edited this piece.]

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On the eastern side, the Russian rulers are strongly interested in maintaining control over Siberia, which gives the country access to the Pacific Ocean. Hence, they have a geopolitical interest in having friendly relations with China. On the western side, Russia retains access to the Baltic Sea in Saint Petersburg and has managed to keep the enclave of Kaliningrad despite the three Baltic republics declaring independence from the Soviet Union. On the southern side, Russia wants access to the Black Sea, which is the gateway to the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal. Hence, Crimea is of vital importance to Russia.

If Putin were a new Peter the Great or a new Stalin, a settlement between great powers would be within reach: a Yalta-Potsdam-style division of spheres of influence. But as a country in decline with repeated loss of territories, Russia views the hostility from its neighbors as an existential threat. Therefore, it has responded with exasperated despair.

Not a very good war so far

The invasion has not worked as well for Russia as Putin expected. We have learned that, in war, it is more difficult to conquer than to defend. Some experts in military history and strategy estimate that for an attack to succeed in conquering adverse territory,the attacker may need more resources, in troops and weapons, than the defender. This alone can explain why, so far, the Russians haven’t entered Kyiv or Kharkiv, while the Ukrainians have not arrived in Crimea or most of the Donbas.

The attacker’s disadvantage is aggravated by bad management, typical of authoritarian governments. As stated by strategist “A lot of most catastrophic decisions come from autocratic decision-making.” Autocracies lack open and often critical feedback. They believe that “the advantage of autocracy is bold and decisive decision-making.” However, the lack of feedback mechanisms mean that “one poor decision or bit of bad luck can put [them] out completely.”

Along with catastrophic decisions, Russia has been hampered by the fact that some crucial potential allies have not joined its adventure. A few weeks before the invasion, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed an agreement for “unlimited cooperation,” but the Chinese have kept their distance since the war broke out. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has gone further than Xi and told Putin in public that today’s era is not an era of war.

A long bloody war looms

The current protracted stalemate has so far not yielded a clear winner. In a lecture at Georgetown University, CIA Director William Burns that the next six months will be critically decisive. He suggested that the alternatives are either a quick military overturn followed by negotiation and peace or an escalation towards a long war.

A negotiated peace would require that none of the two sides achieves absolute victory or faces bitter defeat. In his recent visit to Warsaw, US President Joe Biden that “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. Never.” This is a very different declaration to a call for Ukrainian victory or Russian defeat.

So far, both Russia and Ukraine are still at the rhetorical stage of being maximalist in their demands. Each expects to be in a strong position if a real negotiation ever starts. In the past, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy explicitly he could accept painful concessions on Crimea and Donbas, which were the original objectives of the Russian “special military operation.” As the war has gone on, Zelenskyy has changed his position. He regularly proclaims his determination to move back to Ukraine’s 2014 borders. Zelenskyy also insists on applying for EU and NATO memberships. Russia, in turn, verbally rejects any concession of moving backward.

For an escalation in conflict, the Kremlin would have to make risky domestic moves, including new conscriptions and mass mobilizations. This would make Russian politics the continuation of war by other means, which is what Clausewitz meant even if he phrased it the other way. It is from impatience and distress that Putin toys with using tactical nuclear weapons over Kyiv. He is playing a game of chicken with the US on the assumption that Washington wants to avoid the risk of World War III.

As of now, it seems that Ukraine might be able to sustain its belligerence for as long as the US and NATO keep providing increasingly effective and lethal weapons, including drones, missiles, tanks and even fighter jets. However, political calculations and concern about excessive financial costs of war might make the US Congress and several European countries restrict unrestricted support.

The conflict has already lasted longer than many regional wars and might degenerate into a war of attrition. An end might come from changes away from the war fronts. There should be elections in Russia and Ukraine twelve months from now. There is uncertainty not only about the results of these elections but also whether they will actually be held. The US, the UK and the European Parliament also face elections in 2024, which will come in the middle of a war.One thing we certainly know and can be sure about is that war is the worst human activity with tragic consequences of death and destruction. We have plenty of information and images about the human tragedy in Ukraine. To understand the gruesome nature of war further, you could watch the movie . It is probably the best war movie ever because of the way it captures the horrors of war. Sadly, that horror continue for a while in Ukraine.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Western sanctions would erect a new Iron Curtain, hundreds of miles to the east of the old one, separating an isolated, defeated, bankrupt Russia from a reunited, triumphant and prosperous West. Not only has Russia withstood the economic assault, but the sanctions have boomeranged–hitting the very countries that imposed them.

The Losers

Western sanctions on Russia reduced the global supply of oil and natural gas, but also pushed up prices. So Russia profited from the higher prices, even as its export volume decreased. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) that Russia’s economy only contracted by 2.2% in 2022, compared with the 8.5% contraction it had, and it predicts that the Russian economy will actually grow by 0.3% in 2023. 

On the other hand, Ukraine’s economy has shrunk by 35% or more, despite $46 billion in economic aid from generous US taxpayers, on top of $67 billion in military aid. 

European economies are also taking a hit. After growing by 3.5% in 2022, the Euro area economy is to stagnate and grow only 0.7% in 2023, while the British economy is projected to actually contract by 0.6%. Germany was more dependent on imported Russian energy than other large European countries so, after growing a meager 1.9% in 2022, it is predicted to have negligible 0.1% growth in 2023. German industry is set to about 40% more for energy in 2023 than it did in 2021.

The United States is less directly impacted than Europe, but its growth shrank from 5.9% in 2021 to 2% in 2022, and is projected to keep shrinking, to 1.4% in 2023 and 1% in 2024.

The Winners

Meanwhile India, which has remained neutral while buying oil from Russia at a discounted price, is projected to maintain its 2022 growth rate of over 6% per year all through 2023 and 2024. China has also benefited from buying discounted Russian oil and from an overall trade increase with Russia of 30% in 2022. China’s economy is to grow at 5% this year.

Other oil and gas producers reaped windfall profits from the effects of the sanctions. Saudi Arabia’s GDP grew by 8.7%, the fastest of all large economies, while Western oil companies laughed all the way to the bank to deposit in profits: ExxonMobil made $56 billion, an all-time record for an oil company, while Shell made $40 billion and Chevron and Total gained $36 billion each. BP made “only” $28 billion, as it closed down its operations in Russia, but it still doubled its 2021 profits.

As for natural gas, US LNG (liquefied natural gas) suppliers like Cheniere and companies like Total that distribute the gas in Europe are Europe’s supply of Russian natural gas with fracked gas from the United States, at about four times the prices US customers pay, and with the climate impacts of fracking. A mild winter in Europe and a whopping $850 billion in to households and companies brought retail energy prices back down to 2021 levels, but only after they five times higher over the summer of 2022.

While the war restored Europe’s subservience to US hegemony in the short term, these real-world impacts of the war could have quite different results in the long term. French President Emmanuel Macron, “In today’s geopolitical context, among countries that support Ukraine, there are two categories being created in the gas market: those who are paying dearly and those who are selling at very high prices… The United States is a producer of cheap gas that they are selling at a high price… I don’t think that’s friendly.”

An even more unfriendly act was the sabotage of the Nord Stream undersea gas pipelines that brought Russian gas to Germany. Seymour Hersh that the pipelines were blown up by the United States, with the help of Norway—the two countries that have displaced Russia as Europe’s two natural gas suppliers. Coupled with the high price of US fracked gas, this has anger among the European public. In the long term, European leaders may well conclude that the region’s future lies in political and economic independence from countries that launch military attacks on it, and that would include the United States as well as Russia.

The other big winners of the war in Ukraine will of course be the weapons makers, dominated globally by the US “big five”: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics. Most of the weapons so far sent to Ukraine have come from existing stockpiles in the United States and NATO countries. Authorization to build even bigger new stockpiles flew through Congress in December, but the resulting contracts have not yet shown up in the arms firms’ sales figures or profit statements. 

The Reed-Inhofe substitute to the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act authorized “wartime” multi-year, no-bid contracts to “replenish” stocks of weapons sent to Ukraine, but the quantities of weapons to be procured outstrip the amounts shipped to Ukraine by up to 500 to one. Former senior OMB official Marc Cancian commented, “This isn’t replacing what we’ve given [Ukraine]. It’s building stockpiles for a major ground war [with Russia] in the future.”

Since weapons have only just started rolling off production lines to build these stockpiles, the scale of war profits anticipated by the arms industry is best reflected, for now, in the 2022 increases in their stock prices: Lockheed Martin, up 37%; Northrop Grumman, up 41%; Raytheon, up 17%; and General Dynamics, up 19%.  

Food, Fertilizer and Fuel Crisis for Global South

While a few countries and companies have profited from the war, countries far from the scene of the conflict have been reeling from the economic fallout. Russia and Ukraine have been critical suppliers of wheat, corn, cooking oil and fertilizers to much of the world. The war and sanctions have caused shortages in all these commodities, as well as fuel to transport them, pushing global food prices to all-time highs. 

So the other big losers in this war are people in the Global South who depend on of food and fertilizers from Russia and Ukraine simply to feed their families. Egypt and Turkey are the largest importers of Russian and Ukrainian wheat, while a dozen other highly vulnerable countries depend almost entirely on Russia and Ukraine for their wheat supply, from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Laos to Benin, Rwanda and Somalia. African countries imported more than half their supply of wheat from Russia and Ukraine in 2020. 

The Black Sea Grain Initiative brokered by the UN and Turkey has eased the food crisis for some countries, but the agreement remains precarious. It must be renewed by the UN Security Council before it expires on March 18, 2023, but Western sanctions are still blocking Russian fertilizer exports, which are supposed to be exempt from sanctions under the grain initiative. UN humanitarian chief Martin told Agence France-Presse on February 15 that freeing up Russian fertilizer exports is “of the highest priority.”

After a year of slaughter and destruction in Ukraine, we can declare that the economic winners of this war are: Saudi Arabia, ExxonMobil and its fellow oil giants, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. 

The losers are, first and foremost, the sacrificed people of Ukraine, on both sides of the front lines, all the soldiers who have lost their lives and families who have lost their loved ones. But also in the losing column are working and poor people everywhere, especially in the countries in the Global South that are most dependent on imported food and energy. Last but not least is the Earth, its atmosphere and its climate—all sacrificed to the God of War.  That is why, as the war enters its second year, there is a mounting global outcry for the parties to the conflict to find solutions. The words of Brazil’s President Lula da Silva reflect that growing sentiment. When pressured by US President Joe Biden to send weapons to Ukraine, he, “I don’t want to join this war, I want to end it.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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They don’t get along.

Religious affiliation by itself does not determine political or military alliances. Plenty of wars have pitted Christians against Christians and Moslems against Moslems. But there are only about 15 million Jews in the world. Especially in the post-Holocaust era, Jewish communities have generally stuck up for one another. Think of American Jews rallying in support of Soviet refuseniks during the Cold War or the huge number of Ethiopian Jews welcomed in Israel (though not always with completely ).

Changing My Mind on Ukraine

Zelensky has certainly played up this natural affinity in his efforts to acquire military weaponry from Israel. He has several times to Israeli audiences, including an impassioned to the Knesset.

But Zelensky’s relationship with former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was and took a turn for the worse when Bennett Zelensky for publicly pressuring him for more aid. When Israel refused to provide Ukraine with its Iron Dome air defense system, in the face of Russia’s brutal aerial assault on Ukrainian infrastructure, Zelensky couldn’t contain his frustration in an with French TV: “You know there are many people in Ukraine of Jewish origin, and there are a lot of Ukrainians in Israel. How is it possible to have this attitude? I was shocked.”

All of Israel’s allies in the West have rallied behind Ukraine. Meanwhile, even as it claims to be fighting Nazis, Russian leaders have made outlandish, anti-Semitic claims, like Sergei Lavrov’s back in May that Hitler, too, had Jewish origins and the Russian foreign minister’s of Western strategy in Ukraine to Hitler’s “final solution.” And, of course, Russian attacks have killed real Jews, including Boris Romantschenko, a 96-year-old survivor of four Nazi concentration camps when a Russian missile destroyed his apartment building in Kharkiv last spring.

So, why on earth has the world’s only Jewish state failed to support the only other country with a Jewish leader? So much for conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the world. We can’t even get together to control the outcome of the war in Ukraine.

Dear Mr. Netanyahu, Do You Want Power at Any Cost?

The Return of Netanyahu

Ordinarily, power is attracted to power. How else to explain why authoritarian leaders seem to flock together, regardless of political ideology.

It must be the pheromones.

Donald Trump was so enamored of his “love letter��” from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that he breached national security to abscond with them after his term in office ended. Several prominent far right-wing politicians—Matteo Salvini of Italy, Marine Le Pen of France—couldn’t wait to kiss the ring of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, despite his background as a communist apparatchik.

So, too, has Benjamin Netanyahu spoken of his close relationship with Putin. Back in 2021, Bibi asked the Russian leader to help out with an Israeli woman detained in Syria. “I spoke twice with my friend Russian President Vladimir Putin,” Netanyahu . “I requested his assistance in returning her, and he acted.”

Of course there are much larger geopolitical reasons for the close relations between the Kremlin and the Jewish state. The Israeli government depends on the good graces of the Russian military, which effectively controls the airspace over Syria, to monitor what’s going on near the Israeli border and to over the border. Israel has also in the past relied on Russian channels to Palestinian groups, particularly Hamas.

For these reasons, Israel has condemned Russia for its invasion of Ukraine but hasn’t enforced the sanctions against the Kremlin or supplied any military assistance to Ukraine. That might change under Netanyahu, but only if Ukraine sides more explicitly with Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories.

The Truth About US Support for Ukraine, But Not Palestine

One day after he took office late last month, Netanyahu with a specific request. The UN General Assembly was voting on whether to authorize the International Court of Justice to issue a report on Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land. Netanyahu wanted Ukraine to vote against the resolution or at least abstain. In return, he promised to reconsider the provision of the Iron Dome system to Ukraine.

Disappointed that Bibi hadn’t provided a more concrete quid pro quo, Zelensky retaliated by instructing his UN representative not to attend the vote. This gap between Israel and Ukraine is not unbridgeable. But it would be a supreme irony if Ukraine managed to get an air defense system from Israel only by supporting the latter’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land.

Jews Speak Out

Since the invasion of Ukraine last February, have left Russia for Israel. Thousands of others have gone to other countries. A community that numbered around 165,000 before the invasion is rapidly shrinking.

Last month, one of the more prominent Jews to leave Russia, former chief rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the rest of the community to rush to the exits. “We’re seeing rising antisemitism while Russia is going back to a new kind of Soviet Union, and step by step the iron curtain is coming down again,” he told The Guardian. “This is why I believe the best option for Russian Jews is to leave.” Goldschmidt himself left because he wouldn’t succumb to government pressure to support the war.

The Jewish community in Ukraine, meanwhile, has mobilized to defend the country. It has that the Russian army has come to save them from Nazis. “Before the war, we laughed at this,” Avraham Wolff, chief rabbi of Odessa and southern Ukraine. “We thought it was a joke. But now, it’s a very painful joke. It hurts. It’s impossible to say that Ukraine is full of Nazis. It’s wrong.”

In a , only 5 percent of Ukrainians said they wouldn’t want Jews as neighbors, the lowest number in the region compared to 14 percent of Russians, 18 percent of Poles, and 23 percent of Lithuanians. Meanwhile, the influx of Ukrainian Jews fleeing Russian-occupied areas in the east has “created a miniature Jewish renaissance in Ukraine’s western regions,” according to .

On the ground in Ukraine and Russia, in other words, Jews have made their choice clear.

Meanwhile in Israel

During his most recent electoral campaign, Netanyahu promised to take another look at Israel’s refusal to offer military assistance to Ukraine. But given his relationship with Putin and the role that Russia plays in Israel’s geopolitics, Bibi will not likely change the status quo in any substantial way.

After all, the Israeli prime minister is already busy with radical moves elsewhere.

The is the most right-wing yet, with several noted political extremists, a couple convicted criminals, and representatives of the ultra-Orthodox Shas, Religious Zionism, and United Torah Judaism parties. The head of a far-right, anti-LGBT party, meanwhile, will be in charge of “Jewish national identity.”

Top of the list of priorities for the new government is to press forward on not just expanding Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories but effectively annexing Palestinian land. Several cabinet members come directly from the settler communities, like Itamar Ben-Gvir, the new national security minister who in the West Bank city of Hebron. The person in charge of settlement policy, Bezalel Smotrich, is himself an ultra-Orthodox settler leader.

To facilitate the makeover of Israeli society, Netanyahu has ambitions much larger than simply expanding Israeli territory at the expense of Palestinians. He has taken a page from the handbook of right-wing authoritarian leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán by going after the independence of the courts. In recent years, Israeli courts have been the one government institution that has preserved the civil liberties of citizens.

On this issue, at least, the Israeli public is making itself heard: 110,000 people recently showed up in Tel Aviv for a third week of protests over Netanyahu’s plans to transform the judiciary into his lapdog. “Night is descending upon Israel,” former deputy attorney general Dina Silber the protestors. “It’s a real alarm… We’re not imagining it.”

In other words, Netanyahu is busy turning Israel into Putin’s Russia: authoritarian governance combined with an ultra-conservative social policy and a colonial occupation of the “near abroad.” The early Zionists drew inspiration and support from the Soviet Union. Today, the right-wing in Israeli is following the example of a reactionary Russia.

Zelensky and Netanyahu may share the distinction of being Jewish leaders. But the Ukrainian should not expect much in the way of military help from Israel. Frankly, the latter is too busy heading in the direction of to be much help in defending a democratic state from Putinism.

[ first published this piece.]

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Astore went on to compare America’s political and military leaders to the disgraced Congressman Santos. “ appeared before Congress to testify the Iraq War was being won,” Astore wrote. “They appeared before Congress to testify the Afghan War was being won. They talked of “progress,” of corners being turned, of Iraqi and Afghan forces being and ready to assume their duties as US forces withdrew. As events showed, it was all spin. All lies.”

Spin and Lies Make a Comeback

Now America is at war again, in Ukraine, and the spin continues. This war involves Russia, Ukraine, the and its NATO allies. No party to this conflict has leveled with its own people to honestly explain what it is fighting for, what it really hopes to achieve and how it plans to achieve it. All sides claim to be fighting for noble causes and insist that it is the other side that refuses to negotiate a peaceful resolution. They are all manipulating and lying, and compliant media (on all sides) trumpet their lies. 

Fair is Foul: In Ukraine Fairer Can Also Be Fouler

It is a truism that the first casualty of war is the truth. But spinning and lying has real-world impacts in a war in which of real people are fighting and dying, while their homes, on both sides of the front lines, are reduced to rubble by hundreds of thousands of.

Yves Smith, the editor of Naked Capitalism, explored this insidious linkage between the information war and the real one in an titled, “What if Russia won the Ukraine War, but the Western press didn’t notice?” He observed that Ukraine’s total dependence on the supply of weapons and money from its Western allies has given a life of its own to a triumphalist narrative that Ukraine is defeating Russia, and will keep scoring victories as long as the West keeps sending it more money and increasingly powerful and deadly weapons.   

But the need to keep recreating the illusion that Ukraine is winning by hyping limited gains on the battlefield has forced Ukraine to keep its forces in extremely bloody battles, like its counter-offensive around Kherson and the Russian sieges of Bakhmut and Soledar. Lt. Col. Alexander Vershinin, a retired US tank commander, on Harvard’s Russia Matters website, “In some ways, Ukraine has no choice but to launch attacks no matter the human and material cost.” 

Objective analyses of the war in Ukraine are hard to come by through the thick fog of war propaganda. But we should pay attention when a series of senior Western military leaders, active and retired, make urgent calls for diplomacy to reopen peace negotiations, and warn that prolonging and escalating the war is risking a war between Russia and the United States that could escalate into. 

Back to the Future: World War I Again?

General Erich Vad, who was German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s senior military adviser for seven years, spoke to Emma, a German news website. He called the war in Ukraine a “war of attrition,” and compared it to World War I, and to the Battle of Verdun in particular, in which hundreds of thousands of French and German soldiers were killed with no major gain for either side. 

Vad asked the same persistent unanswered that The New York Times (NYT) editorial board asked of President Biden last May. What are the US and NATO’s real war aims? 

“Do you want to achieve a willingness to negotiate with the deliveries of the tanks? Do you want to reconquer Donbas or Crimea? Or do you want to defeat Russia completely?” asked General Vad. He concluded, “There is no realistic end state definition. And without an overall political and strategic concept, arms deliveries are pure militarism. We have a militarily operational stalemate, which we cannot solve militarily. Incidentally, this is also the opinion of the American Chief of Staff Mark Milley. He said that Ukraine’s military victory is not to be expected and that negotiations are the only possible way. Anything else is a senseless waste of human life.”

Whenever Western officials are put on the spot by these unanswered questions, they are forced to reply, as to the NYT eight months ago, that they are sending weapons to help Ukraine defend itself and to put it in a stronger position at the negotiating table. But what would this “stronger position” look like? 

When Ukrainian forces were advancing toward Kherson in November, NATO officials that the fall of Kherson would give Ukraine an opportunity to reopen negotiations from a position of strength. But when Russia withdrew from Kherson, no negotiations ensued, and both sides are now planning new offensives.

A False Narrative of War

The US media keep the narrative that Russia will never negotiate in good faith, and it has hidden from the public the fruitful negotiations that began soon after the Russian invasion but were quashed by the United States and United Kingdom. Few outlets reported the recent revelations by former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett about the ceasefire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Turkey that he helped to mediate in March 2022. Bennett said explicitly that the West or “stopped” (depending on the translation) the negotiations.

Can NATO and the Pentagon Find a Diplomatic Off-Ramp From the Ukraine War?

Bennett confirmed what has been reported by other sources since April 21, 2022, when Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, one of the other mediators, CNN Turk after a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting, “There are countries within NATO who want the war to continue… They want Russia to become weaker.”

Advisers to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy the details of Boris Johnson’s April 9 visit to Kyiv that were published in Ukrayinska Pravda on May 5, 2022. They said Johnson delivered two messages. The first was that Putin and Russia “should be pressured, not negotiated with.” The second was that, even if Ukraine completed an agreement with Russia, the “collective West,” who Johnson claimed to represent, would take no part in it.

The Western corporate media has generally only weighed in on these early negotiations to cast doubt on this story or smear any who repeat it as Putin apologists, despite multiple-source confirmation by Ukrainian officials, Turkish diplomats and now the former Israeli prime minister.

The propaganda frame that Western establishment politicians and media use to explain the war in Ukraine to their own publics is a classic “white hats vs black hat��” narrative, in which Russia’s guilt for the invasion doubles as proof of the West’s innocence and righteousness. The growing mountain of evidence that the US and its allies share responsibility for many aspects of this crisis is swept under the proverbial carpet, which looks more and more like The Little Prince’s of a boa constrictor that swallowed an elephant.

Western media and officials were even more ridiculous when they tried to for blowing up its own pipelines, the Nord Stream underwater natural gas pipelines that channeled Russian gas to Germany. According to NATO, the explosions that released half a million tons of methane into the atmosphere were “deliberate, reckless, and irresponsible acts of sabotage.” The Washington Post, in what could be considered journalistic malpractice, an anonymous “senior European environmental official” saying, “No one on the European side of the ocean is thinking this is anything other than Russian sabotage.”

It took former NYT investigative reporter Seymour Hersh to break the silence. He published, in a blog post on his own Substack, a spectacular account of how US Navy divers teamed up with the Norwegian navy to plant the explosives under cover of a NATO naval exercise, and how they were detonated by a sophisticated signal from a buoy dropped by a Norwegian surveillance plane. According to Hersh, President Biden took an active role in the plan, and amended it to include the use of the signaling buoy so that he could personally dictate the precise timing of the operation, three months after the explosives were planted.

The White House predictably Hersh’s report as “utterly false and complete fiction”, but has never offered any reasonable explanation for this historic act of environmental terrorism.

Eisenhower Was Right

famously said that only an “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” can “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

So what should an alert and knowledgeable American citizenry know about the role our government has played in fomenting the crisis in Ukraine, a role that the corporate media has swept under the rug? That is one of the main questions we have tried to answer in War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict. The answers include:

The US broke its not to expand NATO into Eastern Europe. In 1997, before Americans had ever heard of Vladimir Putin, 50 former senators, retired military officers, diplomats and academics President Clinton to oppose NATO expansion, calling it a policy error of “historic proportions.” Elder statesman George Kennan it as “the beginning of a new cold war.”

NATO provoked Russia by its open-ended to Ukraine in 2008 that it would become a member of NATO. William Burns, who was then the US Ambassador to Moscow and is now the CIA Director, warned in a State Department, “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red-lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin).”

The in Ukraine in 2014. This installed a government that of Ukraine’s people recognized as legitimate. The coup led to the disintegration of the country and a civil war that 14,000 people.

The 2015 peace accord achieved a stable ceasefire line and steady in casualties, but Ukraine failed to grant autonomy to Donetsk and Luhansk as agreed. Angela and Francois now admit that Western leaders only supported Minsk II to buy time for NATO to arm and train Ukraine’s military to recover Donbas by force.

During the week before the invasion, OSCE monitors in Donbas documented a huge escalation in explosions around the ceasefire line. Most of the in four days were in rebel-held territory, indicating incoming shell-fire by Ukrainian government forces. US and U.K. officials claimed these were “” attacks, as if Donetsk and Luhansk forces were shelling themselves, just as they later suggested that Russia blew up its own pipelines.

After the invasion, instead of supporting Ukraine’s efforts to make peace, the United States and the United Kingdom blocked or stopped them in their tracks. The U.K.’s Boris Johnson said they saw a chance to Russia and wanted to make the most of it, and US Defense Secretary Austin said their goal was to Russia.

What would an alert and knowledgeable citizenry make of all this? We would clearly condemn Russia for invading Ukraine. But then what? Surely we would also demand that US political and military leaders tell us the truth about this horrific war and our country’s role in it, and demand that the media transmit the truth to the public. An “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” would surely then demand that our government stop fueling this war and instead support immediate peace negotiations.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The Irony of the UNGA Vote

The war in Ukraine was the highlight of 2022. Notably, the West united against the Russian invasion. Led by the US, it placed crippling sanctions on the Kremlin, cut energy imports from Russia, and sent military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. to Ukraine and President Joe Biden signed off on an additional $47 billion in assistance. 

The US action against Russia is not new. In 2014, Russia took over Crimea. In response, the US led the effort to eject Russia from the United Nations Human Rights Council (), to censure the country in the UN General Assembly (), and to suspend it from the Group of Eight ().

Palestine and Israel: A Bloody Saga

In the words of US Secretary of State , the US stands for the “defense of the UN Charter and in resolute opposition to Russia’s devastating war of aggression against Ukraine and its people.” In addition to actions against Russia, the US has issued sanctions on Iran for supplying military drones to Russian troops. These are allegedly for surveillance of and then attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

Is the UN Charter absolute or subject to the selective judgment of the US? Is all aggression against any innocent civilians culpable, or does it apply just to the Russian invasion of Ukraine? The answer to this question was made abundantly evident on the penultimate day of 2022.

The UNGA on a resolution that asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to opine about the “legal consequences of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.” To put this context, Israel colonizes swathes of Palestinian land beyond the borders established under the. Since the, this illegal occupation also includes Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank. The UNGA resolution with 87 to 26 votes with 53 abstentions. 

Unsurprisingly, the states opposing the resolution were the US and the UK: the flag-bearers of justice for Ukraine. They supported Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for dragging Russia to the ICJ. This hypocrisy of the West is a historic phenomenon.

The Dualism of Western Justice

Last month, US House Representatives Steve Cohen and Joe Wilson a bipartisan congressional resolution “call[ing] on President Joe Biden to boot Russia from the United Nations Security Council ()” for its“” of the UN Charter. Those violations include Russia’s “illegal annexation vote in four Ukrainian oblasts [and] perpetuating atrocitie��” against civilians in Ukraine. While the expulsion proceedings of a permanent member of the UNSC are both obscure and, frankly, unrealistic without Russian consent, this scenario is spectacularly ironic given the UNSC’s seeming apathy towards Palestine.

The Roots of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

For historical context, in November 1967, the members of the UNSC voted unanimously for, calling on Israel to withdraw from the annexed territories seized in the. Yet 55 years later, Israel not only continues to violate the resolution, it also proceeds to expand settlements on expropriated Palestinian land with impunity. In the last five decades, the Israeli regime has demolished over Palestinian homes in the occupied territory. Israel also spawned more than settlements and outposts in this territory, leading to 600,000-750,000 moving into the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Often these settlers unleash violence on their Palestinian neighbors. This violence has never ceased and the West maintains a deafening silence.

The American opposition to Israeli settlements has always been rhetorical at best. The US officials have often maintained a programmed PR narrative of�����������’s to defend itself.” The Palestinians do not have a state and lack a functioning military. They are powerless and are being squeezed out of their homes. The question arises: from whom is Israel defending itself—children?

According to the World Health Organisation (), Israeli aggression in Gaza displaced more than Palestinians, including 7,000 children without a roof, scant food supplies, and virtually no access to medical assistance. The WHO also reported the decimation of in Gaza due to Israeli airstrikes. Yet, annualized military aid to the tune of continues to flow to Israel from the US.

According to the data from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (), a total of have been killed in Ukraine by Russian barbarity. Apartment blocks have been razed mercilessly and the electricity grid battered to the brink of collapse. The US has termed it a“” assault on humanity, and Biden even called it a“.” In May 2021, the OHCHR reported that the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip killed242 Palestinians, including . However, Biden supported Israel instead of holding them to account for their war crimes.

Rebalancing the Power Asymmetry Between Israel and Palestine

In fact, Biden praised the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—Biden’s proclaimed “” and architect of the 11-day war in 2021—on forming the government. In the same breath, Biden conspicuously ignores concerns regarding Netanyahu including far-right racist politicians in his cabinet. Note that Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has openly proclaimed Jewish supremacy in the past and argued for expulsion of indigenous Palestinians from Israel.  

Puritan US Is Not So Pure

History is riddled with American moral and political duplicity. For example, the US acquiesced to the1982 Israeli invasion of , which galvanized the Shiite Islamist group. The US the 1982 UNSC resolution—one of its time and again used to shield Israel from global denunciation—calling for an immediate Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon. An 49,600 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians died during the occupation. 

Over the years, the US has supported Israel regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats were in office. In fact, each successive American regime sets new records of cant and hypocrisy, as if trying to remind us of its duplicity and dishonesty.

Beirut Explosion One Year On: Are Israel and Hezbollah Responsible?

American military  interventions tend to be unjust like the Israeli ones. The US supported the Afghan mujahideen blindly against the Soviet Union. This led to the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The US invaded Iraq on the utterly bogus canard of Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction. Between 2003 and 2006, the US-led assault resulted in over Iraqi civilian casualties, primarily due to the indiscriminate aerial bombardment of Iraqi towns and cities by the US. After the war, the American policy of dismantling all Iraqi administration provided a fertile breeding ground for radical offshoots of Al-Qaeda, the most radical of which was the Islamic State. 

How can the US still enjoy a moral high ground when its historical scroll stands emblazoned with unilateral aggression, illegal intervention and unabashed obstruction of justice against its genocidal allies? The answer: it cannot and it does not.

The US has one set of principles for Ukraine and another for Palestine. This may be because of race, religion, interests, interest groups or geopolitics. Yet this dualism demonstrates that the puritanical US is far from pure and the Global South can no longer rely on the world policeman.
[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Truth About US Support for Ukraine, But Not Palestine appeared first on 51�Թ�.

After speaking to many German politicians and intellectuals, Atul Singh points out that Berlin’s policy is based on three principles:

1. Support Ukraine as much as possible.
2. Avoid direct conflict between NATO and Russia.
3. Avert unilateral action by any single supporting nation.

Simply put, this means that Germany is unwilling to send talks unilaterally. It wants to send its tanks whilst hiding behind the US. Germany is unwilling to be seen as an aggressor by Russia. Berlin wants to minimize the chances of an escalation of conflict with Moscow.

The current center-left coalition has always been more pacifist than its counterparts on the right. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and Alliance 90/The Greens are in power together. Their traditional colors are red, yellow, and green respectively. Hence, this government is called a traffic light coalition.

Until recently, the SPD championed change through rapprochement. Gerhard Schröder, the last SPD chancellor who was in power from 1998 to 2005, worked for Russian state-owned energy companies, including Nord Stream AG, Rosneft, and Gazprom. The FDP and, especially, the Greens are also peaceniks. Old habits die hard. Germany has a culture of restraint. Singh thinks a U-turn is bound to be difficult.

The Germans were once ruthless jackboot-wearing swashbucklers. Now, they have turned into soft and soggy sissy pants. Once led by authoritarians like Otto von Bismarck and Adolf Hitler, the Germans have swung to extreme consensual coalition politics. Germany has gone from the Führer to incoherence and paralysis.

Singh also points out that the war is not in German or even European economic interest. Industry in Europe relied on cheap Russian gas. With war breaking out in Europe, gas prices have gone up. European industry is withering on the vine. So, it is not in European interest to prolong the war. Hence, support for Ukraine is not in European or German interest. Therefore, this support is likely to wane in the coming months.

Besides, many are making the argument that the Russians are gradually recovering from their early blunders. Initially, they had an intelligence failure, their logistics were ghastly and they carried out a ham-handed version of blitzkrieg. They also lost a lot of senior officers and retreated poorly. Now, they seem to be improving.

Ukraine has a big problem: it is running out of fighting men. Recently, Ukraine lost many members of its top leadership in a helicopter crash. The country is also in the throes of a massive corruption scandal. Since 1991, Ukrainian women have had very few children.  In 2020, the country recorded just 1.22 births per woman. So, Singh believes Ukrainians might just run out of men. The disparate tanks coming from many countries might not be too few and too late to make a difference.

Carle takes the view that Ukraine will not run out of men, Western equipment will eventually make a difference and Russia will suffer increasing strains in 2023. The numbers of Russian tanks are inflated because many are obsolete and/or nonfunctional. Most of Russia’s modern armor has been destroyed. Russia is working its factories around the clock but it is no longer an industrial power and is unable to supply its military with much-needed tanks. This means that the West has a window of opportunity for the next 12 months to put pressure on Russia and help Ukraine achieve victory.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Exclusive: Germany in Spotlight as Russia-Ukraine War Intensifies appeared first on 51�Թ�.

So far, the debate about peace talks to resolve the conflict has revolved mostly around what Ukraine and Russia should be prepared to bring to the table in order to end the war and restore peace. However, given that this war is not just between Russia and Ukraine but is part of a “New Cold War” between Russia and the US, it is not just Russia and Ukraine that must consider what they can bring to the table to end it. The US must also consider what steps it can take to resolve its underlying conflict with Russia that led to this war in the first place. 

The US Broke Promises Not to Expand NATO

The geopolitical crisis that set the stage for the war in Ukraine began with NATO’s broken not to expand into Eastern Europe, and was exacerbated by its declaration in 2008 that Ukraine would join this primarily anti-Russian military alliance. 

Can NATO and the Pentagon Find a Diplomatic Off-Ramp From the Ukraine War?

Then, in 2014, a US-backed against Ukraine’s elected government caused the disintegration of Ukraine. Only 51% of Ukrainians surveyed told a Gallup poll that they recognized the of the post-coup government, and large majorities in Crimea and in Donetsk and Luhansk provinces voted to secede from Ukraine. Crimea rejoined Russia, and the new Ukrainian government launched a civil war against the self-declared “People’s Republic��” of Donetsk and Luhansk.

The civil war killed an estimated 14,000 people, but the Minsk II accord in 2015 established a ceasefire and a buffer zone along the line of control, with 1,300 international ceasefire monitors and staff. The ceasefire line largely held for seven years, and casualties substantially from year to year. But the Ukrainian government never resolved the underlying political crisis by granting Donetsk and Luhansk the autonomous status it promised them in the Minsk II agreement. 

Now former German Chancellor and French President have admitted that Western leaders only agreed to the Minsk II accord to buy time, so that they could build up Ukraine’s armed forces to eventually recover Donetsk and Luhansk by force.

In March 2022, the month after the Russian invasion, ceasefire negotiations were held in Turkey. Russia and Ukraine a 15-point “neutrality agreement,” which President Zelenskyy publicly presented and to his people in a national TV broadcast on March 27th. Russia agreed to withdraw from the territories it had occupied since the invasion in February in exchange for a Ukrainian commitment not to join NATO or host foreign military bases. That framework also included proposals for resolving the future of Crimea and Donbas.

But in April, Ukraine’s Western allies, the US and UK in particular, refused to support the neutrality agreement and persuaded Ukraine to abandon its negotiations with Russia. US and British officials said at the time that they saw a chance to “” and“” Russia, and that they wanted to make the most of that opportunity. 

The US and British governments’ unfortunate decision to torpedo Ukraine’s neutrality agreement in the second month of the war has led to a prolonged and devastating conflict with hundreds of thousands of . Neither side can decisively defeat the other, and every new escalation increases the danger of “a major war between NATO and Russia,” as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recently . 

Peace Talks, Not More War

US and NATO leaders now to support a return to the negotiating table they upended in April, with the same goal of achieving a Russian withdrawal from territory it has occupied since February. They implicitly recognize that nine more months of unnecessary and bloody war have failed to greatly improve Ukraine’s negotiating position.

Instead of just sending more weapons to fuel a war that cannot be won on the battlefield, Western leaders have a grave responsibility to help restart negotiations and ensure that they succeed this time. Another diplomatic fiasco like the one they engineered in April would be a catastrophe for Ukraine and the world.

So what can the US bring to the table to help move towards peace in Ukraine and to de-escalate its disastrous Cold War with Russia?

Like the Cuban Missile Crisis during the original Cold War, this crisis could serve as a catalyst for serious diplomacy to resolve the breakdown in US-Russian relations. Instead of risking nuclear annihilation in a bid to “w�𲹰���” Russia, the US could instead use this crisis to open up a new era of nuclear arms control, disarmament treaties and diplomatic engagement.

Making Sense of Vladimir Putin’s Long Game

For years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has complained about the large US military footprint in Eastern and Central Europe. But in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the US has actually its European military presence. It has increased the of American troops in Europe from 80,000 before February 2022 to roughly 100,000. It has sent warships to Spain, fighter jet squadrons to the UK, troops to Romania and the Baltics, and air defense systems to Germany and Italy. 

Even before the Russian invasion, the US began expanding its presence at a missile base in Romania that Russia has objected to ever since it went into operation in 2016. The US military has also built what The New York Times “” in Poland, just 100 miles from Russian territory. The bases in Poland and Romania have sophisticated radars to track hostile missiles and interceptor missiles to shoot them down. 

The Russians worry that these installations can be repurposed to fire offensive or even nuclear missiles, and they are exactly what the 1972 ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) between the US and the Soviet Union prohibited, until President Bush withdrew from it in 2002. 

While the Pentagon describes the two sites as defensive and pretends they are not directed at Russia, Putin has that the bases are evidence of the threat posed by NATO’s eastward expansion.

Fair is Foul: In Ukraine Fairer Can Also Be Fouler

Here are five steps the US could consider putting on the table to start de-escalating these ever-rising tensions and improve the chances for a lasting ceasefire and peace agreement in Ukraine:

1. The US and other Western countries could support Ukrainian neutrality by agreeing to participate in the kind of security guarantees Ukraine and Russia agreed to in March, but which the US and U.K. rejected.

2. The US and its NATO allies could let the Russians know at an early stage in negotiations that they are prepared to lift sanctions against Russia as part of a comprehensive peace agreement. 

3. The US could agree to a significant reduction in the 100,000 troops it now has in Europe, and to removing its missiles from Romania and Poland and handing over those bases to their respective nations.

4. The US could commit to working with Russia on an agreement to resume mutual reductions in their nuclear arsenals, and to suspend both nations’ current plans to build even more dangerous weapons. They could also restore the Treaty on Open Skies, from which the US withdrew in 2020, so that both sides can verify that the other is removing and dismantling the weapons they agree to eliminate.

5. The US could open a discussion on the removal of its nuclear weapons from the five European countries where they are presently: Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Turkey.

The Ukraine Crisis Is a Classic “Security Dilemma”

If the US is willing to put these policy changes on the table in negotiations with Russia, it will make it easier for Russia and Ukraine to reach a mutually acceptable ceasefire agreement, and help to ensure that the peace they negotiate will be stable and lasting. 

De-escalating the Cold War with Russia would give Russia a tangible gain to show its citizens as it retreats from Ukraine. It would also allow the US to reduce its military spending and enable European countries to take charge of their own security, as most of their want. 

US-Russia negotiations will not be easy, but a genuine commitment to resolve differences will create a new context in which each step can be taken with greater confidence as the peacemaking process builds its own momentum.

Most of the people of the world would breathe a sigh of relief to see progress towards ending the war in Ukraine, and to see the US and Russia working together to reduce the existential dangers of their militarism and hostility. This should lead to improved international cooperation on other serious crises facing the world in this century–and may even start to turn back the hands of the Doomsday Clock by making the world a safer place for us all.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Five Simple Steps for US to End Toxic Russia-Ukraine War appeared first on 51�Թ�.

This is an alarming statement from a man who is not given to alarming statements. While this is a war of aggression by Russia, the aggression was  driven, at least in part, by fear. Russia feared being encircled by NATO and EU countries that were hostile to it. Yet these same countries had clamored to join NATO because of their fear of Russia. For its part, the US pushed the expansion of NATO into central Europe because it feared a China-Russia alliance dominating the Eurasian landmass. 

My direct experience is that security issues dominate diplomatic thinking in Washington, DC,  in a way that they do not dominate thinking in Brussels. The loss of life that has already taken place as a result of the Russian invasion is enormous. The physical infrastructure destroyed by Russian weapons will take 10 years, and tens of billions of euros, to rebuild.

There are eight million Ukrainian refugees in EU countries, and this number is bound to increase. The EU is directly helping a country at war, something it never did before in its 70-year history.

Europe is unprepared for a wider war

The war could widen. The possibility of Russian forces using Belarus as a jumping-off point for a new front in Western Ukraine is being discussed. This would bring the fighting much closer to NATO members: Poland and Lithuania. If either of them are dragged into conflict, it could set off a chain reaction dragging all of Europe into war.

The preparedness of EU countries for such a wider war is not great. These countries have significant and well equipped forces, but getting them to the front, where they would be needed, is something for which Europeans rely on America. Airlift capacity is a major European weakness. Since World War II, the road and rail systems in Europe have not been designed for the swift transportation of heavy military equipment. 

Furthermore, there is a lot of duplication and waste in European armies. They have 170 different (national) weapons systems, In contrast, the US, with a much bigger military, has only 30 different systems.

Meanwhile, the weapons that have been supplied to Ukraine from European stocks have not entirely been replaced. Money has been allocated but orders have not been placed. In case of all-out war, Europe could be caught unawares.

Europe is also suffering deeply from inflation. The dramatic increase in food prices, and in the price of inputs necessary to produce food — fertilizer and energy — is a direct consequence of the Russian invasion. Over of the world population is already facing hunger. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that the number of people facing “acute hunger” has multiplied 2.6 times since 2019. The spike in global hunger is affecting poorer countries more severely but Europe is suffering too.

Wheat prices will stay at 250 euros per tonne for the next two years, as against an average of  175 euros per tonne over the previous 20 years. The price increase for cereals since 2004 has been almost twice that for meat and dairy. The world is facing an escalating, war-driven, food price crisis.

What can Europe do to reduce hunger and boost peace?

When it comes to fighting food insecurity, I have four suggestions for the EU:

1. Reconsider the policy of subsidizing fallow arable land. About six million hectares of land are lying fallow right now. These could be used to grow crops.
2. Do not encourage use of land that could grow food to produce biofuels. About nine million hectares are now being used to produce biofuels. Instead, farmers could grow crops.
3. Encourage farming systems that maximize the efficient conversion of sunlight into consumable calories.
4. Discourage food waste. An estimated 17% of food is wasted, mostly by households because of  over purchasing and poor meal planning.

On the conflict front, Europe must make a concerted effort to identify the fears that are fanning the warlike atmosphere today. The fears of all parties have to be taken into account. We must remember that, while it may be impossible to do business with the current regime in Moscow, Russia will still exist when the war is over. The West needs to think through the postwar relationship it could have with a Russia that was willing to respect the territorial integrity of all its neighbors. That could boost the prospects of peace.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post War Is Now Turning Dangerous: What Can Europe Do? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

It was a rare admission from someone so involved in the war, and reflects the dichotomy in recent statements between US and NATO political leaders on one hand and military officials on the other. Civilian leaders still appear committed to waging a long, open-ended war in Ukraine, while military leaders, such as the US Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, have spoken out and urged Ukraine to “” for peace talks.

Retired Admiral Michael Mullen, a former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair, spoke out first, maybe testing the waters for Milley, ABC News that the US should “do everything we possibly can to try to get to the table to resolve this thing.” 

Asia Times that other NATO military leaders share Milley’s view that neither Russia nor Ukraine can achieve an outright military victory, while French and German military assessments conclude that the stronger negotiating position Ukraine has gained through its recent military successes will be short-lived if it fails to heed Milley’s advice.

So why are US and NATO military leaders speaking out so urgently to reject the perpetuation of their own central role in the war in Ukraine? And why do they see such danger in the offing if their political bosses miss or ignore their cues for the shift to diplomacy?

A Study Reveals a Terrible US Dilemma

A Pentagon-commissioned Rand Corporation published in December, titled Responding to a Russian Attack on NATO During the Ukraine War, provides clues as to what Milley and his military colleagues find so alarming. The study examines US options for responding to four scenarios in which Russia attacks a range of NATO targets, from a US intelligence satellite or a NATO arms depot in Poland to larger-scale missile attacks on NATO air bases and ports, including Ramstein US Air Base and the port of Rotterdam.

These four scenarios are all hypothetical and premised on a Russian escalation beyond the borders of Ukraine. But the authors’ analysis reveals just how fine and precarious the line is between limited and proportionate military responses to Russian escalation and a spiral of escalation that can spin out of control and lead to nuclear war. 

The final sentence of the study’s conclusion reads: “The potential for nuclear use adds weight to the US goal of avoiding further escalation, a goal which might seem increasingly critical in the aftermath of a limited Russian conventional attack.” Yet other parts of the study argue against de-escalation or less-than-proportionate responses to Russian escalations, based on the same concerns with US “credibility” that drove devastating but ultimately futile rounds of escalation in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and other lost wars.

US political leaders are always afraid that if they do not respond forcefully enough to enemy actions, their enemies (now including China) will conclude that their military moves can decisively impact US policy and force the United States and its allies to retreat. But escalations driven by such fears have consistently led only to even more decisive and humiliating US defeats. 

In Ukraine, US concerns about “credibility” are compounded by the need to demonstrate to its allies that NATO’s Article 5—which says that an attack on one NATO member will be considered an attack on all—is a truly watertight commitment to defend them.

So US policy in Ukraine is caught between the reputational need to intimidate its enemies and support its allies on the one hand, and the unthinkable real-world dangers of escalation on the other. If US leaders continue to act as they have in the past, favoring escalation over loss of “credibility,” they will be flirting with nuclear war, and the danger will only increase with each twist of the escalatory spiral.  

As the absence of a “military solution” slowly dawns on the armchair warriors in Washington and NATO capitals, they are quietly slipping more conciliatory positions into their public statements. Most notably, they are replacing their previous insistence that Ukraine must be restored to its pre-2014 borders, meaning a return of all the Donbas and Crimea, with a call for Russia to withdraw only to pre-February 24, 2022, positions, which Russia had previously in negotiations in Turkey in March.

A Time for Realism?

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken The Wall Street Journal on December 5th that the goal of the war is now “to take back territory that’s been seized from [Ukraine] since February 24th.” The WSJ that “Two European diplomats… said [US National Security Adviser Jake] Sullivan recommended that Mr. Zelenskyy’s team start thinking about its realistic demands and priorities for negotiations, including a reconsideration of its stated aim for Ukraine to regain Crimea, which was annexed in 2014.”

The Ukraine Crisis Is a Classic “Security Dilemma”

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In article, The Wall Street Journal quoted German officials saying, “they believe it is unrealistic to expect the Russian troops will be fully expelled from all the occupied territories,” while British officials defined the minimum basis for negotiations as Russia’s willingness to “withdraw to positions it occupied on February 23rd.”

One of Rishi Sunak’s first actions as UK Prime Minister at the end of October was to have Defence Minister Ben Wallace call Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu for the first time since the Russian invasion in February. Wallace told Shoigu the UK wanted to the conflict, a significant shift from the policies of former Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

A major stumbling block holding Western diplomats back from the peace table is the maximalist rhetoric and negotiating positions of President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian government, which has insisted since April that it will not settle for anything short of full sovereignty over every inch of territory that Ukraine possessed before 2014.

But that maximalist position was itself a remarkable reversal from the position Ukraine took at cease-fire talks in Turkey in March, when it agreed to give up its ambition to join NATO and not to host foreign military bases in exchange for a Russian withdrawal to its pre-invasion positions. At those talks, Ukraine agreed to the future of Donbas and to a final decision on the future of Crimea for up to 15 years.

The Financial Times broke the of that 15-point peace plan on March 16, and Zelenskyy the “neutrality agreement” to his people in a national TV broadcast on March 27, promising to submit it to a national referendum before it could take effect. 

But then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson intervened on April 9 to quash that agreement. He told Zelenskyy that the UK and the “collective West” were “in it for the long run” and would back Ukraine to fight a long war, but would not sign on to any agreements Ukraine made with Russia. 

This helps to explain why Zelenskyy is now so offended by Western suggestions that he should return to the negotiating table. Johnson has since resigned in disgrace, but he left Zelenskyy and the people of Ukraine hanging on his promises. 

In April, Johnson claimed to be speaking for the “collective West,” but only the US publicly took a similar, while, and all called for new cease-fire negotiations in May. Now Johnson himself has done an about-face, writing in an for The Wall Street Journal on December 9 only that “Russian forces must be pushed back to the de facto boundary of February 24th.”

Johnson and Biden have made a shambles of Western policy on Ukraine, politically gluing themselves to a policy of unconditional, endless war that NATO military advisers reject for the soundest of reasons: to avoid the world-ending World War III that Biden himself to avoid. 

US and NATO leaders are finally taking baby steps toward negotiations, but the critical question facing the world in 2023 is whether the warring parties will get to the negotiating table before the spiral of escalation spins catastrophically out of control.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Can NATO and the Pentagon Find a Diplomatic Off-Ramp From the Ukraine War? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Those rare analysts curious enough to tease out the tangled threads of Ukrainian history that led up to the December border standoff knew that Ukraine’s drama was complex. Seven years after the signing of the Minsk II accord, the Normandy format had failed to achieve anything that resembled a possible resolution. Ukraine was a divided country with powerful pressure coming from two sides and a divided population inside the nation. Ukraine had been living through a decade of what those too squeamish to call it civil war may have thought of as a “civil misunderstanding” between the European-focused west of Ukraine and the Russia-rooted east. In other words, Ukraine was a powder keg and there were people on either side playing with matches.

But the reigning belief among the pundits in 2021 was that if warlike gestures were possible, war itself, within Europe, was a thing of the past. After all, despite numerous warnings whispered or intoned over three decades by a series of Russian leaders – Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin – the eastward expansion of NATO, which none of those leaders said they would tolerate, had taken place without the slightest hiccup and only occasional tension. If integrating Ukraine, as promised by George W Bush in 2008, was likely to grate on Russian nerves, Westerners assumed that one more fait accompli would follow the same logic that permitted the easy integration of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999, seven others in 2004, and a handful more in 2009, 2017 and 2020. As John Mearsheimer frequently explains: for the West, Russia was weak. However aggrieved it might be by the events it was forced to witness, a weak nation will never be capable of countering a well-rehearsed game plan that had proved successful for more than two decades.

By October 2021, Vladimir Putin’s unusual demonstration of force had become evident and appeared alarming to most observers. It would be followed in December by a formal proposal Putin sent to both NATO and the US to sit down and hammer out a solution and avoid confrontation. But the West was busy explaining away Putin’s folly and the sources of his misguided histrionics, believing at the time that he would back down and accept the inevitable, as Russia had consistently done in the face of NATO’s “manifest destiny.” Even Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, days before the actual invasion, thought the troop buildup was little more than a theatrical. He complained about the deleterious effects of Western fearmongering. Military action was unthinkable.

Ukrainian Oligarchs Go to Acting Class

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How things have changed! To get a better idea of how much, The Guardian deemed on October 3, 2021 – a mere five months before Russia’s invasion –  to be the appropriate moment to the scandals of what it described as Zelenskyy’s corrupt government, including the president himself among the explicitly corrupt. The lede of the article read: “Volodymyr Zelenskiy has railed against politicians hiding wealth offshore but failed to disclose links to BVI firm.”

This revelation from the Pandora Papers seemed to contradict the mission of reform proudly proclaimed by the Ukrainian president five months earlier. In May 2021, The Atlantic Council published an authored by Zelenskyy himself announcing his commitment to “deoligarchization.” The article ended with these words: “Our ultimate objective is to destroy the traditional oligarchic order and replace it with a fairer system that will allow Ukraine to flourish.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Fairer system:

The same system as before but with a few superficial cosmetic improvements designed to reduce chatter about its failings or dysfunction.

Contextual note

Today, of course, the media and Western politicians compare Zelenskyy to Churchill. He is the heroic defender of liberal values against the forces of evil. Nit-picking about corruption in Ukraine would no longer be tolerated in any Western media, just as pointing to the enduring influence of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi ultra-nationalists – once a topic of media reportage – could have no place in today’s news cycle.

The now independent journalist Patrick Lawrence who once worked for The New York Times, after describing Zelenskyy’s sanctions and of the Ukrainian branch of the Russian Orthodox Church, the logic at the core of this “fairer system.” “Making Ukraine ‘Western’,” he writes, “requires that a nation with pronounced differences turn itself into a profoundly and comprehensively intolerant society in contradiction of the most basic assumptions of Western liberalism.” Banning the traditionally dominant religion of at least a significant part of a nation has never been considered a liberal ideal or one of the “freedom��” we associate with democracy.

Historical note

In other words, what was previously a lambent civil war has now become – if we are to believe no less an expert than former CIA director, Leon Panetta – a proxy war between the US and Russia. The civil war itself took a dramatic form in 2014, producing a historical situation that led the Ukrainian government to begin acquiring some of the characteristics we associate with the worst fascist regimes.

Oligarchy is one part of it, but oligarchies are not necessarily fascist. The of opposition parties is one salient feature of fascism. A form of cultural genocide, which began in Ukraine with the of the Russian language long before the Russian invasion, is something we clearly associate with fascism. The demonizing of Vladimir Putin was an expected consequence of war, especially following a brutal invasion. But Zelenskyy’s government has pushed things further, vilifying nor only everything Russian but all Russians.

What might seem slightly more surprising is that this hatred of everything Russian has spread to the West and is now routinely echoed in Western media. But another reading of modern history tells us that hatred of Russia and Russianness began in the West long ago. In recent years it became useful in some sectors of the United States because of an atavistic but inappropriate association with communism. It has proved convenient to use it to explain away various embarrassments, such as Hillary Clinton’s loss of the 2016 election to Donald Trump.

Associative Xenophobia in Europe: a New Old Trend

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Scapegoating a nation and its people in time of war has been a standard response in the history of nation states. During World War I, the United States performances of Beethoven and renamed sauerkraut “liberty cabbage.” Germany. George W Bush even renamed French fries “freedom fries,” not because France was at war with the US, but because it refused to be associated with the invasion of Iraq, done in the name of democracy and liberal values. Turbaned Sikhs were murdered after 9/11, on the mistaken belief by “patriotic” Americans that they were Arabs and therefore responsible for the destruction of the Trade Towers. This, of course, wouldn’t have happened if the Bush administration had treated the attack as a spectacular crime to be prosecuted rather than an act of war conducted by a nation (Afghanistan), a people (Arabs) and a religion (Islam).

So what about Zelenskyy’s “fairer system”? The historical reality is that oligarchic and plutocratic systems can rarely be made fairer because they are based on the idea that success in the acquisition of wealth, whether realized through cheating or hard work, will always be its own reward and the key to power. And cheating, if it can go unpunished, is always more efficient than hard work. Oligarchs defend their system by calling it a “rules-based order” because the rules of power relationships make it possible to cheat. Tax havens are perfect examples of that.

In a published by The Guardian titled, “Europe put tax havens in the Caribbean – and now punishes them for it,” Kenneth Mohammed described a system that works smoothly and applies its rules efficiently.

“Opaque money eventually equates to opaque power; if dirty money is left to flow unhindered into the financial system, the cancer of corruption spreads, global development is retarded and inequity and inequality escalate.”

Zelenskyy was doing nothing wrong. He was simply playing by the rules.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Fair is Foul: In Ukraine Fairer Can Also Be Fouler appeared first on 51�Թ�.

A country transformed into an NGO 

In the first month following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Warsaw’s population has grown by , whereas Poland has become a country with the second-largest refugee population in the world. Approximately out of 4.6 million people fleeing Ukraine in the first two months of the war found shelter in Poland; currently, 1.5 million remain there. 

This sudden influx of refugees caught Polish authorities by surprise even though since 2015, they had rejected relocation of refugees from the Middle East under the claim that Poland had to be ready to escalate the war in Ukraine. Despite the unpreparedness, the Polish government quickly lent a helping hand to Ukrainians by simplifying border crossing procedures, offering free transportation, and enabling them to receive a Polish personal identification number (PESEL) which provided access to education, health care, labor market, and financial assistance. 

However, the secret of why Poland stood up to the challenge has much more to do with the exceptional commitment of civil society and grassroots activism. Poles from all over Poland picked up refugees from the border, provided them with rooms in their own houses, helped with bureaucracy, organized crowdfunding, cooked meals, and opened free “shops.” According to Karolina Jeznach and Steffen Lüdke: “The feeling that Poland might be the next victim of Russian imperialism has transformed the country into something like a .”

Good will may not be enough 

So far, Poland seems to have passed the “solidarity test.” Still, there have been fears that even the best intentions and open doors might not be enough to assist Ukrainian refugees in the long term perspective and considering that Russian disinformation on Polish social media has not said the last word yet, Ukrainians arriving in Poland belong to particularly vulnerable groups: they are predominantly women, children and the elderly. 

The need for assistance is enormous, but among volunteers, there might also be people with ill intentions. Therefore, they should be verified to exclude those sentenced for various forms of abuse. This is one of the cases where state coordination is crucial. 

Many refugees express interest in staying and working in Poland due to its geographical, cultural, and linguistic proximity to Ukraine. But although the country has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the EU, the market can absorb only every willing to work.

The Polish government does not consider relocation of refugees to other EU countries, but it expects EU financial aid in return. NGOs that more funding should be transferred to the local actors and organizations on the front lines rather than the government.

There is also a risk that populists could exploit challenges stemming from a sudden wave of refugees (and some groups already do) to stir up hatred since Poland is facing some critical burning issues: galloping inflation, underfinanced public services, the lowest number of in the EU and the on health care, soaring rents and flat shortage. The grievances about the “privilege��” of Ukrainians seem relatively isolated, but the support has decreased. 

Whereas of Poles felt optimistic about Ukrainian refugees in April 2022, favored taking up refugees in Poland. Some paint a gloomier picture: they show that although the Poles support the Ukrainian cause, they harbor grievances against Ukrainian refugees for – amongst others – the reasons mentioned above.  Therefore this issue should be addressed timely to avoid social tensions and being turned into a political weapon in the parliamentary elections in 2023.

Refugees welcome 

The underlying reasons for the warm welcome of Ukrainians are manifold. As neighboring Slavic countries, Ukraine and Poland share many cultural, linguistic, and historical ties (although history often proved to be the bone of contention). 

On the eve of the war Ukrainian diaspora in Poland amounted to about a , and Ukrainians also constituted more than of international students.  Therefore, the first wave of refugees fled predominantly to their relatives and friends. Many Poles know someone from Ukraine. This does not mean that the relationship was free of discrimination: cases of abusing Ukrainian workers or politically incorrect remarks were many.

Another factor that unites both countries is the common enemy. Unlike Hungary, Poland has been strongly resenting Russian political elites for decades, if not centuries. Poles fear that their country could become the next target of Russian aggression and identify themselves strongly with the plight of Ukraine. In the days following the Russian attack, shelves in many shops in eastern Poland turned empty, and long lines were built in front of ATMs and petrol stations.

People all over Poland applied for new passports in masses. Most Poles know of war from history, but the memory of World War II is still very vivid in the collective memory. To many, the unjustified Russian aggression against Ukraine echoes Poland’s fate: the attack by Nazi Germany and the subsequent charge of the Soviet Union under the guise of “brotherly help” against the Nazis.

Last but not least, refugees from Ukraine fit well in the “romantic” perception: they are predominantly women and children, in the eyes of many, “the proper refugees.” This is mainly because Ukrainian men between 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave Ukraine.  

Refugees unwelcome 

The warm welcome of Ukrainians is in stark contrast with the treatment of refugees on the Poland-Belarus border, where many people are still trapped. Polish Border Security Guard regularly informs about push backs and “illegal crossings to Poland” on the Poland-Belarus border by people from Yemen, Ethiopia, Syria, and Afghanistan – countries torn by conflicts or in dire humanitarian situations. 

From the beginning of 2021 until Dec. 19, approximately people tried to enter Polish territory over the Poland-Belarus border. For many, deportations would equal death. Their plight did not go unnoticed among Ukrainian organizations, which wrote an to the Polish government and Border Security Guard pledging equal treatment of all refugees.

A decisive factor differentiating the treatment of refugees is the intervention of authorities and politicization of the issue. On the border with Ukraine, the government did not erect walls or penalize any attempt to help by the locals, media, doctors, or volunteers. NGOs were not banned from the border area. But this has been common practice just a hundred kilometers up north. 

The government and the public broadcaster quickly labeled refugees from the Global South as “dangerous,” “illegal,” or “economic” migrants sent by the much-scorned Belarussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko to destabilize Poland. The last argument is true, which is why many EU countries supported Poland. Still, less attention was given to the fact that those people were deceived and involuntarily turned into pawns in Lukashenko’s vendetta.   

Many helped refugees despite legal consequences and the“criminalization of solidarity.” Some fed or allowed them in their homes, volunteers from all over Poland searched for them in forests close to the special emergency zone to help them apply for asylum and offer warm clothing and food, and some also cut the barbed wire on the border. 

Numerous demonstrations in large Polish cities and small towns close to the special emergency zone took place. Polls published in early January 2022 indicated that of Poles supported the “illegal” assistance to refugees. 

This is not to say that the hostile policies of the Polish government do not enjoy the support of some groups in Polish society. Poland is one of the most ethnically and religiously homogeneous countries in Europe. Few people know a Muslim or someone from a Middle Eastern country. All information they receive comes from media and history textbooks. 

In this overwhelmingly Catholic country, one of the most commemorated historical events is the Battle of Vienna 1683 against the Ottoman Empire, which perpetuates the self-perception of many Polish nationalists as Antemurale Christianitatis (Bulwark of Christendom). Even if widely reported, wars in Syria, Yemen, or Afghanistan are distant and incomprehensible to an average Pole. 

However, it might be worth noting that in previous decades Poland accepted many Chechen refugees who were Muslims, and religion did not play a significant role in public discourse back then. It has become politicized in the last decade.   

Poland as an immigration country

In the past decades, Poland used to be a country that people would migrate from or through rather than to. The last few years have shown that this trend has changed. However, the authorities and society might not be aware of and ready to embrace the ongoing changes. 

Poland’s ethnic, cultural, and religious homogeneity is not necessarily an advantage. Unfortunately, the topic of refugees has too often been weaponized for political gains, affecting societal attitudes. 

This can be illustrated by the year 2015 when most Poles initially stood behind the idea of supporting refugees but changed their approach radically when the issue became a leitmotif of the electoral campaign of the Law and Justice Party. Let us hope that the Polish parliamentary elections in 2023 will not follow the same pattern.

[ edited this piece.]

[51�Թ� is a  partner of .] 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Exploring Poland’s Refugee Crisis: Uncovering the Reasons for Neglect appeared first on 51�Թ�.

That same year, France, Italy and the UK sold Czechoslovakia down the river at the Munich Conference. They gave Sudetenland to Nazi Germany without the consent or involvement of the government in Prague. At that time, Sudetenland had 3.63 million inhabitants, of which 2,9 million were of German descent. Berlin claimed that ethnic Germans wanted to be a part of the Third Reich. Propaganda and money helped to stir these Sudeten Germans.

A year later, World War II broke out. After numerous killings of Jews since he seized power in 1933, Adolf Hitler unleashed the Final Solution in 1941. Six million people whom Nazi authorities considered Jewish were killed. Many members of the Petschek family perished and their entire property was confiscated by the Nazi regime.

A rather important conference

After the end of World War II, communists expropriated the former Petschek family property behind the Iron Curtain. Even the Federal Republic of Germany returned only a small part of their property. The Otto Petschek Villa is now the residence of the US ambassador to the Czech Republic. Recently, this residence was host to the welcome reception of a conference on the. This 2009 declaration took “note of the special social and medical needs of all survivor��” and “the importance of restituting communal and individual immovable property that belonged to the victims of the Holocaust.”

The Holocaust: A Synopsis

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In normal times, this conference would not have caught much attention. To be fair, the Terezin Declaration is not very well known to this day. Yet both the declaration and the conference assume immense importance today. Yet again an ideological hyper-nationalist autocrat justifies invasions of sovereign states with a new form of völkische Großraumpolitik (ethnic greater area politics). Russian President Vladimir Putin is committing war crimes against civilians and critical infrastructure. He is also practicing population exchange in Crimea and Donbass, which is considered by experts to be a form of ethnic cleansing. Russian troops are engaging in the destruction and theft of art and cultural artifacts. 

This raises some key questions. How will we deal with Russian crimes after the war? How will Ukrainians displaced and/or left destitute by the Russian invasion secure justice? Questions like these have always been tricky but the Terezin Declaration offers a good roadmap. Led by the US and signed by 46 states, this declaration is clear and comprehensive. It supplements the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art. 

Over the last 14 years, different signatory states have applied these principles unevenly. Matthias Weller of the University of Bonn has conducted a comparative study on the implementation of these principles and come to this conclusion. Even though implementation may have lagged intentions, James D. Bindenagel, the ambassador who represented the US in the 1998 conference, thinks Weller’s research is critical. For Bindenagel it is the only way to bring about fair and equitable solutions in the future.

What more needs to be done

The Washington Principles are a good starting point but more needs to be done. Victims should have a low threshold and low expense way of applying for justice and compensation. The principles do not apply to real estate or company holdings. Restitution of such assets is important too. Similarly, Holocaust (Shoah in Hebrew) survivors must be eligible for supplementary pensions. Many live in abject poverty. They suffered lifelong damage and are now very old. They need justice before they die.

Not all countries take this point of view. Poland has banned all restitution by law regardless of whether it was Nazis or communists who looted or expropriated property. The country has chosen an extreme version of let bygones be bygones policy.

Other countries differ from Poland. Latvia recently compensated Jewish communities for the property that was looted from them. Germany has restituted and compensated Holocaust victims and their families. The US State Department:

“From 1945 to 2018, the German government paid approximately $86.8 billion in restitution and compensation to Holocaust victims and their heirs.  Germany has also identified Nazi-looted objects – including art works, books, and objects within larger collections – and has returned 16,000 objects to survivors and their heirs over the last 20 years.”

Even this amount covers only a fraction of the current values of all looted (real) estates. To be fair, German museums are generally quite generous in returning cultural property. 

At the recent conference in the Czech foreign ministry, no one expected current private owners to return formerly looted or confiscated property 83 years after World War II kicked off. However, everyone expected the state to protect citizens’ property rights. They also expected the state to recover property of those robbed. If the state fails in its duty to protect or recover citizens’ property, it must be held accountable for its failure. This accountability does not always have to be financial. Education programs that remember the Holocaust are a good example of non-financial methods of accountability.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has brought back large-scale war to Europe., a one of the finest American diplomats in recent decades, pointed out at the Prague Conference that many Shoah survivors fled to Russia to escape the Nazis. Today, many are forced to flee Russia. Eizenstat also pointed out that the Shoah could have been prevented. Hitler’s initial goal had been to expel the Jews. None of the neighboring European states and even the US were willing to accept Jewish refugees though. Consequently, Hitler’s Nazi regime decided upon the Final Solution that involved the murder of millions of Jews.

This harking back to the Nazi past is relevant. Europe seemed to have banished military aggression as a foreign policy tool to the distant past. Ukraine proves that is no longer true. Unsurprisingly, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský advocated taking in Ukrainian refugees and militarily supporting Ukraine. The politicians, academics and NGo representatives applauded this stance at the conference.

Yet, as we all know only too well, words are cheap. Words must be followed by actions as Israeli President Isaac Herzog warned. The expertise of the Prague conference can be put to good use for dealing with crimes by Putin’s Russia. Anyone who loses his property, his painting, his library or his company to Russian profiteers today must not be left alone with the fear that, like the Petschek family, he will have to wait for justice for three quarters of a century. The time for justice is now.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post How to Deal with Russian Crimes in Ukraine appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Kuleba proposed a “peace summit” in February to be chaired by UN Secretary General Guterres, but with the precondition that Russia must first face for war crimes in an international court. On the other side, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov issued a chilling that Ukraine must accept Russia’s terms for peace or “the issue will be decided by the Russian Army.”    

But what if there were a way of understanding this conflict and possible solutions that encompassed the views of all sides and could take us beyond one-sided narratives and proposals that serve only to fuel and escalate the war? The crisis in Ukraine is in fact a classic case of what International Relations scholars call a “,” and this provides a more objective way of looking at it. 

Understanding the Security Dilemma

A security dilemma is a situation in which countries on each side take actions for their own defense that countries on the other side then see as a threat. Since offensive and defensive weapons and forces are often indistinguishable, one side’s defensive build-up can easily be seen as an offensive build-up by the other side. As each side responds to the actions of the other, the net result is a spiral of militarization and escalation, even though both sides insist, and may even believe, that their own actions are defensive. 

In the case of Ukraine, this has happened on different levels, both between Russia and national and regional governments in Ukraine, but also on a larger geopolitical scale between Russia and the United States/NATO.

The very essence of a security dilemma is the lack of trust between the parties. In the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Cuban Missile Crisis served as an alarm bell that forced both sides to start negotiating arms control treaties and safeguard mechanisms that would limit escalation, even as deep levels of mistrust remained. Both sides recognized that the other was not hell-bent on destroying the world, and this provided the necessary minimum basis for negotiations and safeguards to try to ensure that this did not come to pass.

After the end of the Cold War, both sides cooperated with major reductions in their nuclear arsenals, but the United States gradually withdrew from a succession of arms control treaties, violated its not to expand NATO into Eastern Europe, and used military force in ways that directly the UN Charter’s prohibition against the “threat or use of force.” US leaders claimed that the conjunction of terrorism and the existence of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons gave them a new right to wage “,” but neither the UN nor any other country ever agreed to that.

US aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere was alarming to people all over the world, and even to many Americans, so it was no wonder that Russian leaders were especially worried by America’s renewed post-Cold War militarism. As NATO incorporated more and more countries in Eastern Europe, a classic security dilemma began to play out. 

President Vladimir Putin, who was elected in 2000, began to use to challenge NATO expansion and US war-making, insisting that new diplomacy was needed to ensure the security of all countries in Europe, not only those invited to join NATO. 

The former Communist countries in Eastern Europe joined NATO out of defensive concerns about possible Russian aggression, but this also exacerbated Russia’s security concerns about the ambitious and aggressive military alliance gathering around its borders, especially as the United States and NATO refused to address those concerns. 

In this context, broken promises on NATO expansion, US serial aggression in the greater Middle East and elsewhere, and absurd claims that US missile defense batteries in Poland and Romania were to protect Europe from Iran, not Russia, set alarm bells ringing in Moscow. 

The US withdrawal from nuclear arms control treaties and its refusal to alter its nuclear first strike policy raised even greater fears that a new generation of US nuclear weapons were being to give the United States a nuclear first strike capability against Russia.

On the other side, Russia’s increasing assertiveness on the world stage, including its military actions to defend Russian enclaves in Georgia and its intervention in Syria to defend its ally the Assad government, raised security concerns in other former Soviet republics and allies, including new NATO members. Where might Russia intervene next?

As the United States refused to diplomatically address Russia’s security concerns, each side took actions that ratcheted up the security dilemma. The United States backed the violent overthrow of President Yanukovych in Ukraine in 2014, which led to rebellions against the post-coup government in Crimea and Donbas. Russia responded by annexing Crimea and supporting the breakaway “people’s republic��” of Donetsk and Luhansk. 

Even if all sides were acting in good faith and out of defensive concerns, in the absence of effective diplomacy they all assumed the worst about each other’s motives as the crisis spun further out of control, exactly as the “security dilemma” model predicts that nations will do amid such rising tensions.

Of course, since mutual mistrust lies at the heart of any security dilemma, the situation is further complicated when any of the parties is seen to act in bad faith. Angela Merkel, Germany’s former chancellor, recently admitted that Western leaders had no intention of enforcing Ukraine’s compliance with the terms of the Minsk II agreement in 2015, and only agreed to it to to build up Ukraine militarily.

Diplomacy, the Only Way Forward

The breakdown of the Minsk II peace agreement and the continuing diplomatic impasse in the larger geopolitical conflict between the United States, NATO and Russia plunged relations into a deepening crisis and led to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Officials on all sides must have recognized the dynamics of the underlying security dilemma, and yet they failed to take the necessary diplomatic initiatives to resolve the crisis. 

Peaceful, diplomatic alternatives have always been available if the parties chose to pursue them, but they did not. Does that mean that all sides deliberately chose war over peace? They would all deny that. 

Yet all sides apparently now see advantages in a prolonged conflict, despite the relentless daily slaughter, dreadful and deteriorating conditions for millions of civilians, and the dangers of full-scale war between NATO and Russia. All sides have convinced themselves they can or must win, and so they keep escalating the war, along with all its impacts and the risks that it will spin out of control. 

President Joe Biden came to office promising a of American diplomacy, but has instead led the United States and the world to the brink of World War III.         

Clearly, the only solution to a security dilemma like this is a cease-fire and peace agreement to stop the carnage, followed by the kind of diplomacy that took place between the United States and the Soviet Union in the decades that followed the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. This led to the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963 and successive arms control treaties. Former UN official Alfred de Zayas has also called for UN-administered to determine the wishes of the people of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk.

It is not an endorsement of an adversary’s conduct or position to negotiate a path to peaceful coexistence. We are witnessing the absolutist alternative in Ukraine today. There is no moral high ground in relentless, open-ended mass slaughter, managed, directed and in fact perpetrated by people in smart suits and military uniforms in imperial capitals thousands of miles from the crashing of shells, the cries of the wounded and the stench of death.

If proposals for peace talks are to be more than PR exercises, they must be firmly grounded in an understanding of the security needs of all sides, and a willingness to compromise to see that those needs are met and that all the underlying conflicts are addressed. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Ukraine Crisis Is a Classic “Security Dilemma” appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Having suffered an egregious and unjust assault from its powerful eastern neighbor, Ukraine is not only standing up to defend its territorial integrity, it has embarked on a process of change that will transform a theater of war into what already resembles a theater of the absurd. Theatrical it will be, just as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the US Congress turned out to be an example of choreographed performance art. The Washington Post and US media are doing their damnedest to present the current tragedy as the prelude to a joyous comedy.

The script for what sounds like a double bill goes something like this. As a Ukrainian victory approaches, the reigning oligarchs who have dominated public life in Ukraine for three decades will gracefully leave the stage and return to their dressing rooms. After a quick wardrobe change, they will reappear as modern business executives dedicated — not to greed, as in the previous script — but to the efficient running of a modern European economy functioning inside a shining democracy from which political corruption has been banished and public service enshrined for the benefit of the entire population.

The Washington Post’s writing team, consisting of Kevin Sullivan, David L. Stern and Kostiantyn Khudov, appears to be working on the second script. Earlier this month, they penned an whose subtitle announces the theme of the drama:“Ukraine may have the opportunity to rebuild a post-war society that is more democratic, less corrupt and more economically diversified.”

As creative fiction this reads well. But apparently the writers see themselves not as creative writers but as earnest analysts of future reality. They want us to believe in the likelihood of the scenario they delineate. This is where readers of the news expecting to gain some serious perspective on how the future will play out should remember a simple rule: to be wary of sentences that insert “may” before the verbs they use to define a political or economic future. “May” is a very convenient auxiliary when predicting the future. It’s the perfect tool for hedging one’s bets. Their forecast that there “may” be a democratic, corruption-free future is equally as truthful as saying “Ukraine may not even exist in two years time.” Both are possible. Neither can be classified misinformation.

The news that founds the state of affairs that “may” exist is based on a theme that has been discussed since the adoption last year of a law passed by the Ukrainian government. The law’s title bore the word “de-oliharkhizatsia.” The Washington Post journalists explain: “The word of the moment in Ukrainian politics is ‘de-oliharkhizatsia’ or de-oligarchization: a renewal of the long-held goal — and sometimes only faint hope — to free the country’s political system of domination by the ultrarich.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

De-oligarchization:

1. The voluntary transformation of a regime built on personal greed into one guided by the notion of excellence, efficiency and public service.
2. The title of a contemporary Ukrainian fictional drama written for the theater of neoliberal hyperreality.

Contextual note

In an earlier for The Washington Post, David Stern quoted the assessment of an official who admitted that the system of corruption was ”so strong and well institutionalized that it was quite difficult to break” while promising to “do everything we can to make sure it never recovers.” Stern describes the official, Rostyslav Shurma, as “a close economic aide to Zelensky who previously worked for many years as a top executive in Akhmetov’s steel company, Metinvest.” Who could doubt that the same team that has so successfully resisted Putin’s army will do an equally good job making sure Ukraine’s corrupt oligarchy “never recover��”?

In one of the articles, the authors cite another official, Viktor Andrusiv, who appreciates the difficulty of the task that consists of removing or at least seriously diminishing the power of oligarchs. “They are not disappearing,” he asserts. “The key thing is to end their monopolies, which were produced by their political connections. Now they will have to act more like big businessmen.”

The language here gives the game away. This is the world not of business but of political theater. It’s all about “acting” a role one is not used to. The oligarchs, unlike the proverbial leopard, will change their spots. It may not be as far-fetched as it sounds. After all, Ukraine’s Actor-in-Chief, Volodymyr Zelenskyy —  who also happens to be the nation’s president — learned to act like a president as the star of the TV series, Servant of the People. Following his lead and perhaps thanks to his coaching, the oligarchs, who will neither be exiled nor dismissed, will learn “to act more like big businessmen.”

The two articles in The Washington Post demonstrate the nature of this ambitious project: recasting the old troupe of oligarchs – literally bad guys – in the role of modern executives. In other words, good guys. They are expected to leave behind them the costumes they donned and the manners they cultivated while playing the oligarch. Their histrionics that were more appropriate to tragedy – or rather bad melodrama – will give way to sophisticated comedic banter aimed at promoting the general welfare. That supposes, of course, that yesterday’s oligarchs can equal in performance the part played by their obviously talented president.

Historical note

Readers should note that the authors call the effort at de-oligarchization “a renewal of the long-held goal — and sometimes only faint hope — to free the country’s political system of domination by the ultrarich.” Why has the goal been held for so long with no result? And how long has it been held? Why should we believe this time around that the hope is no longer faint?

Perhaps they want us to believe that the popular uprising in 2014 that resulted in a successful coup – ably assisted by the likes of Victoria Nuland, John Kerry and Joe Biden –entertained the goal of rooting out corruption? Apparently not, if we are to judge by the performance of the new president, Petro Poroshenko. Mike Eckel writing for Radio Free Europe, days before the Russian invasion, that “Poroshenko was seen by critics as being slow to make fundamental changes, or go after powerful officials seen as corrupt.” Most people classify Poroshenko himself as an oligarch.

Eckel recalled that “Zelenskiy won the presidency by a landslide over Poroshenko after campaigning on pledges to end the conflict with Russia and to tackle the corruption and bureaucracy that has hamstrung the economy and hurt living standards.” Like Obama in the US in 2008, for the people, the new president represented hope and change. And as with Obama, hope waned as change faltered. “Results have been mixed at best,” Eckel recounts, “and there is growing suspicion that Zelenskiy administration officials may be undermining those efforts themselves.”

Decades after achieving independence from the Soviet Union, the long-held hope of fighting corruption has gone nowhere. Corruption has become a way of life. Zelenskyy himself was propelled forward in his acting and political career by a prominent oligarch, Ihor Kolomoisky, a man Anthony Blinken’s State Department banned from entry to the US last March. Four months later Zelenskyy stripped his former promoter of Ukrainian nationality. Some have suggested that this might have been designed to shield the oligarch from the wrath of the de-oligarchization law. Kolomoisky is for the moment safe in Israel, whose nationality he holds.

Now that Ukraine is enduring a glorious war that “may” lead to a triumphant outcome for the valorous regime – incidentally supported by its oligarchs – hope appears reborn. When the dust settles, and corruption is definitively uprooted, Ukrainians in the postwar years may have to end up thanking Vladimir Putin for provoking what none of their own presidents was capable of accomplishing.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Ukrainian Oligarchs Go to Acting Class appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Feffer is absolutely right to notice a parallel between Bosnia and Ukraine today. But why stop at only one? Describing his reaction at that moment in history, Feffer recounts that he “roundly criticized the knee-jerk ‘pro-Serbian’ analyses of some leftists who parroted the propaganda of strongman Slobodan Milošević’s government just as naïve leftists unwittingly follow Kremlin talking points on Ukraine today.”

Feffer makes no clear case to justify his characterization of leftists as naïve, nor does he explain why those same leftists “follow” rather than simply happen to share what he calls “Kremlin talking points.” His shortcut shouldn’t surprise us. That imagined connection has become a fixture of the pervasive “” that has infected so much of US media since Donald Trump’s election in 2016. It relies on accepting a pseudo-logical rule that if two people provide the same analysis of any political situation, one must be echoing the other or, worse, be programmed by it. That kind of guilt by coincidental agreement and “associative xenophobia” are well-known symptoms of a deep-seated pathological trend towards binary thinking at the core of US culture. It systematically seeks to polarize every difference of opinion or point of view.

How It Took Six Years to Achieve the Victory of Polarization

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An astute reader, curious about logic and semantics, might even ask what it really means to “unwittingly follow.” If you don’t know you’re following someone, can it really be called following? In evoking the “naïve leftists,” Feffer himself seems to be following the often-cited idea of “useful idiots,” a phrase traditionally attributed to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. In the preceding sentence, I used the verb “to be following” in the strictly chronological sense. It indicates that one event occurred later in time (Lenin’s phrase came before Feffer’s evocation of it). It does not necessarily imply that the second event depended on, was inspired by or even connected to the initial event for its formulation. Propaganda often exploits this ambiguity of the verb follow that confuses its chronological and causal sense.

Comparing different lessons

Feffer’s article clearly explains the lesson he claims to have learned from the history of Bosnia. But other observers, not necessarily “naïve leftists,” have taken away very different lessons. It might also be instructive to consider these when attempting to decipher the contemporary situation in Ukraine.

The best place to start would be the Sir Alfred Sherman, an adviser to Margaret Thatcher, sent to the UK Prime Minister. This is how he summed up the Bosnian war for Mrs Thatcher:

“The war in Bosnia was America’s war in every sense of the word. The US administration helped start it, kept it going, and prevented its early end. Indeed all the indications are that it intends to continue the war in the near future, as soon as its Moslem proteges are fully armed and trained. How it did so is common knowledge. Why it did so, and the implications for American defense and foreign policy generally remain to be elucidated.”

Feffer could have used the opportunity to fulfill Sherman’s wish and elucidate American policy then and now. But that is one of the lessons Feffer prefers to leave to others, perhaps to naïve leftists who appear, paradoxically, to be “following” the right-wing Alfred Sherman’s talking points.

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Then there’s the analysis of Sean Gervasi, one of John F Kennedy’s economic advisers, who wrote a book with the title, NATO in the Balkans. In it he explains the fundamental logic of the entire Yugoslavian drama.

These powers carefully planned, prepared and assisted the secessions which broke Yugoslavia apart. And they did almost everything in their power to expand and prolong the civil wars which began in Croatia and then continued in Bosnia-Herzegovina. They were involved behind the scenes at every stage of the crisis. Foreign intervention was designed to create precisely the conflicts which the Western powers decried. For they also conveniently served as an excuse for overt intervention once civil wars were under way. Such ideas are, of course, anathema in Western countries. That is only because the public in the West has been systematically misinformed by war propaganda. It accepted almost from the beginning the version of events promulgated by governments and disseminated through the mass media.

Can any open-minded reader of these lines today not see possible parallels with the situation in Ukraine? This might be worth debating, but it appears that there aren’t many people in the West today curious enough to publicly engage in such a debate. Gervasi’s comment about the role of the mass media is echoed by contemporary commentators. Critics such as former New York Times journalist or the former diplomat, Chas Freeman. Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies quoted the latter in their recent book on the Ukraine war: “This war in Ukraine is the most intense information war humanity has ever seen. There are so many lies flying about that it’s totally impossible to perceive the truth.”

In another presented in 1996 with the title “Why Is NATO In Yugoslavia?” Gervasi wrote: “By any standards, the sending of a large Western military force into Central and Eastern Europe is a remarkable enterprise, even in the fluid situation created by the supposed end of the Cold War.” So why did this happen? Gervasi explains that “the sending of NATO troops into the Balkans is the result of enormous pressure for the general extension of NATO eastwards.”

What can Bosnia’s fate really tell us about Ukraine?

Might any of Sherman’s or Gervasi’s remarks have any bearing upon the events in Ukraine? Not for John Feffer. Perhaps he considers those two men from the past examples of naïve rightists (Sherman) and leftists (Gervasi) bent on following Kremlin talking points. Since he is interested in “lessons,” does Feffer even acknowledge that the issues they raise merit analysis and discussion that may be applied to the situation in Ukraine today? Apparently not. There are US State Department talking points he prefers to follow.

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In 2015, investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed stood out as someone who had taken the trouble to process the testimony of Sherman and Gervais. He it in these words: “The most important lesson from Yugoslavia is not only that all NATO nations lied in the most totalitarian manner, used false flags, fabrications and extremist Mujahideen mercenaries there. The most important lesson is that the War in Yugoslavia made NATO and the Western nations into a single completely cynical totalitarian info- and war machine.”

Feffer would be right to signal that such a judgment, made in the year following the February 2014 Maidan revolt that ousted an elected president, could only please the Kremlin. But does that mean Ahmed was “following” the Kremlin? Award-winning British author and journalist, Jonathan Cook Ahmed as “that rare breed of journalist who finds stories everyone else either misses or chooses to overlook; he regularly joins up the dots in a global system of corporate pillage.” In other words, not the kind of journalist people inside the Beltway are likely to “follow.” They prefer to the New York Times, always attentive to themes defined by the US security state.

But even the NYT had this to say back in 1993:

Almost a year and a half ago, the United States opposed a partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina that had been agreed to by leaders of the republic’s Serbs, Croats and Muslims. The idea was to stave off a civil war.

Now, tens of thousands of deaths later, the United States is urging the leaders of the three Bosnian factions to accept a partition agreement similar to the one Washington opposed in 1992.

Can anyone fail to notice a parallel here with Ukraine? It was a Ukrainian news service, Ukrainska Pravda, that in April UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s strict instructions to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy not to negotiate a peace deal with the Russians. Will the deal that is eventually signed to end the war two or three years down the line — following tens of thousands more deaths — be a carbon copy of the one Johnson rejected?

No one knows the answer to that question, just as we don’t know whether such a dramatic situation, if forced to continue, may not descend into nuclear war, well before any negotiation begins. The fact that decisions are made in Washington DC means we will have to wait. Sometimes for decades, as we did in Afghanistan. The George W Bush administration could have accepted in 2001 the offer of the Taliban government to cooperate in arresting Osama Bin Laden as a response to 9/11. It didn’t because it saw the attacks on New York and Washington not as a crime to be solved but as a pretext for overthrowing the Afghan government. Instead, 20 years of war conducted to spread the truths NATO believes in ended with total victory for the Taliban, and in thoroughly degraded conditions. 

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Bosnia’s political troubles today, which John Feffer accurately describes, may, as he concludes, be the result of a bad peace agreement, but the two years of additional conflict caused by US Ambassador Zimmerman’s refusal to consider a peace agreement certainly contributed to the hopelessness of the current situation. Harvard Law School summarized the reality of that episode in a with the title, “Conflict Resolution: Lessons from the Dayton Peace Process.” The author of that study makes the point that, whereas at the beginning of the war, 20% of Bosnians had “ethnically mixed parent��” and “as few as 17 percent of Bosnians considered themselves religious,” the unnecessarily prolonged war had long-lasting deleterious effects. The case analysis concludes with this devastating observation: “fueled by propaganda, the Bosnian War reconstructed BiH’s identity groups.” It is that identity conflict that explains the dire state of contemporary Bosnian politics that Feffer accurately describes.

The Minsk accords were officially meant to find some way of attenuating the cultural divergences between ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russian speakers. They aime at fostering conditions of mutual tolerance by granting autonomy to the Donbas. We now know, thanks to the of Angela Merkel, that despite sponsoring those accords, Germany and France had no intention of applying them. They were designed to gain time for a NATO buildup in Ukraine. The result: eight years of sporadic civil war degenerated into a full-fledged war initiated by Russia. So, yes, we all need to follow Feffer’s lead and think about when the rest of us might learn the lessons of Bosnia. And after doing that perhaps also apply them to Ukraine. The debate is open. Let’s start by going after all the facts, not just the ones that are convenient for anyone’s argument.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post From Bosnia to Ukraine: A Deeper, More Worrying Lesson appeared first on 51�Թ�.

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The war had begun in earnest in 1991, particularly after Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia that June. Ethnic Serb enclaves in turn broke away from Croatia, and the Yugoslav army intervened on their behalf. Beginning with the siege of Vukovar in August, the war escalated with terrifying rapidity.

In early 1992, the war spread to the multiethnic republic of Bosnia, after ethnic Serbs there followed the example of their brethren in Croatia and created their own Republika Srpska. In late February 1992, Bosnia held a referendum on independence. The result was overwhelming: over 99 percent wanted Bosnia to become a new state. Many ethnic Serbs, however, boycotted the vote. The government of Alija Izetbegović nevertheless went ahead and declared Bosnia independent on March 3.

As soon as Bosnia declared independence, Serbia widened the war by “defending” Serbian-controlled areas of the new state. The Bosnians formed an ad hoc partnership with Croatian forces, and the war devolved into a succession of atrocities: the siege of the capital Sarajevo, the massacres of Bosnians in Srebrenica, the widespread ethnic cleansing. Ethnic Serbs committed the lion’s share of these atrocities.

Bosnians appealed to the outside world for money and arms to fight back and preserve their new country. Except for some majority-Muslim countries that provided aid and a few fighters, those appeals fell on deaf ears. ”Unfortunately, what is happening in Bosnia is that the world is sitting and watching the most advanced Muslim community in the world being wiped out,” Adnan Iskandar of the American University in Beirut said at the .

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I was horrified by the violence that had accompanied the break-up of Yugoslavia. I was clear that Serbian aggression was responsible for the wars even if nationalists elsewhere in the disintegrating country had abetted those wars. And I roundly criticized the knee-jerk “pro-Serbian” analyses of some who parroted the propaganda of strongman Slobodan Milošević’s government just as naïve leftists unwittingly Kremlin talking points on Ukraine today.

Nevertheless, I opposed the transfer of weapons to the Bosnians because I thought it would simply add fuel to the fire of the conflict. I was firmly in favor of the further integration of Europe, not the further disintegration of its border regions.

I was wrong about not helping Bosnia with weapons. My misreading of that war—and my analysis of what has happened to Bosnia since the war—explains in part why I support Ukraine today.

How Wars End

The wars in Yugoslavia did not end because of a peace treaty. They did not end because all sides sensibly agreed to a ceasefire.

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The wars in Yugoslavia ended because the primary aggressor, Serbia, was defeated militarily. In the first case, in August 1995, the U.S.-assisted Croatian army expelled ethnic Serbian militias from land it controlled in Croatia and Bosnia in what was then the largest military campaign in Europe since World War II. The Croatian army committed various war crimes during , including the expulsion of tens of thousands of ethnic Serbs and the execution of civilians, though international courts subsequently rejected the Serbian claim of genocide.

In the second case, NATO bombed Serbia from March to June 1999, forcing it to pull its troops out of the disputed region of Kosovo. NATO never received authorization from the UN Security Council, so the bombing was technically in violation of international law. A number of civilians also died as a result of the attacks, including three Chinese journalists when the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was hit.

In the first case, the Croatian operation set the stage for the Dayton Accords that ended the Bosnian conflict. In the second case, the NATO operation prepared the ground for the Kumanovo Agreement that ended the Kosovo War.

Sometimes wars end in stalemates. Sometimes one side is decisively defeated. The conflict in Ukraine, at this point, could go either way. Given that Russia is a powerful country with nuclear weapons, the Serbia scenario will probably not happen. Putin, unlike Milosevic, is unlikely to be toppled by a popular uprising and then trundled off to a war crimes tribunal. But the Russian army could still be decisively defeated in its effort to bite off as much of Ukraine as it can chew. Ukraine has the will and, unlike Bosnia, the capacity to defend itself.

How the war ends in Ukraine is important, but equally important is how the future peace is constructed.

The Problem with a Dictated Peace

Serbia lost the war in Bosnia. But Bosnia did not win. It didn’t have a sufficient military force to dictate facts on the ground.

So, the Dayton Accords imposed a faulty peace on the country that continues to plague Bosnia today. As a result of Dayton, the military conflict among Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats has been transposed to a political register. Instead of fighting it out with weapons, the three principal groups now battle each other in the unwieldy political institutions that Dayton created. This is good, in that people are no longer killing each other. It is bad, however, in that Bosnia is today barely a country.

There are two principal parts of Bosnia: Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which consists of the often-quarrelsome duo of Croats and Bosniaks. These two autonomous entities also jointly administer a third area, the Brcko District. The presidency rotates among three members, a Serb, a Croat, and a Bosniak, elected by their respective communities. The ethnic divisions that gave rise to the war—exploited by opportunistic politicians—has resulted not in a democracy but an ethnocracy.

Nor does the country really function as a country, not with the Republika Srpska continually threatening to secede from the state, Croats perpetually tired of being a junior partner, and Bosniaks wanting a unitary state that better reflects their demographic (50.1% of the population compared to 30.8% Serbs and 15.4% Croats). The elections that periodically take place have been “the most complicated in the world.” A foreigner actually administers the territory like a neocolonial governor. German politician Christian Schmidt, the High Representative for Bosnia Herzegovina, demonstrated his neocolonial role by  intervening in the most recent elections this year to unilaterally changes in the election law.

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Bosnia has applied for membership in the European Union, which is one of the few things that of the benighted state support. Despite this support, the divided political institutions can’t agree on the constitutional, judicial, economic, and other steps necessary to qualify for EU membership. Corruption is , the per-capita GDP of roughly puts it at least $3,000 behind the EU’s poorest country, Bulgaria, and nearly half of all young Bosnians want to because their future inside the country looks bleak.

The Dayton Accords froze in place many of the dynamics that tore Bosnia apart in the first place. The prospect of future EU membership could serve as the force to push the country together, just as accession for Serbia can encourage greater democracy in that country and accession for Kosovo can help smooth the way for its international recognition.

Whether this happens or not, however, Bosnia is just the kind of solution that Ukraine is trying to avoid. Anyone who believes in a just peace in Ukraine must consider all the strategies that can forestall the Bosnian fate. These strategies all involve reducing Russian occupation of territory and involvement in Ukrainian affairs to as little as possible.

Avoiding a Dayton “Solution” in Ukraine

Serbia continues to a spoiler role in Bosnia because of its close relations with Republika Srpska. That’s the fallback position Putin would accept if he can’t absorb all of Ukraine into Russia or install a puppet government in Kyiv. He will use the Donbas and Crimea to disrupt the functioning of Ukraine just as Serbia interferes in Bosnia through its proxy.

As an all-but-failed state with uncertain borders, Ukraine wouldn’t be able to qualify for EU membership. With an economy devastated by Russia’s relentless attacks, Ukraine would not pose any economic threat to Russian interests. Disarmed and neutral, Ukraine could be invaded at will by any future Russian government that doesn’t like what its neighbor is doing.

Of course, I’m not the only one who sees the parallels with Bosnia. Here’s an associate professor at the University of Sarajevo:

If Zelenskyy ​​were forced to allow autonomy in the east, he would risk overseeing the establishment of a Republika Srpska-type entity. This would effectively give pro-Russian rebels a say in the governance of Ukraine, likely through veto powers akin to those of Republika Srpska, which would render the country dysfunctional like Bosnia has been. This would not only upend the development of the country but also block its integration into the EU and NATO.

To avoid this scenario, Ukraine has to win. It has to preserve the very sovereignty that Putin pretends to support, at least in theory, with his foreign policy. It has to use force of arms not only to repel the Russian invaders but to prevent the kind of “frozen conflict” that Russia has used so effectively to hamstring Georgia and Moldova after earlier military interventions in those countries.

It’s not clear whether Ukraine can recapture Crimea or all of the Donbas, or what the price of those campaigns will be for Ukrainians and the world. But some kind of forced peace along the lines of the Dayton accords is not in the interests of Ukraine or, frankly, anyone outside of the Kremlin. The Ukrainians are right to be wary of its allies dictating the terms of a future agreement. They can see the challenges Bosnia faces today, nearly 30 years after the war.

The question is: when will the rest of us learn the lessons of Bosnia, too?

[ first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Changing My Mind on Ukraine appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Such unequal mercy would be no surprise from nations like Ukraine’s neighbors Hungary and Poland, controlled by nationalist parties that have rarely welcomed anyone not white and Christian. However, the same thing is happening in Western Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, and here in the United States, the very democracies sworn to protect those fleeing war and persecution and that, in the case of America, sometimes turned those people into refugees in the first place. Our Global War on Terror alone has displaced an estimated people since we invaded Afghanistan in 2001.

One of the worst examples of this unequal mercy is taking place in Greece, a major gateway to Western Europe for anyone fleeing the Middle East or Africa. Between February and mid-April of this year, some 21,000 Ukrainians made it to Greece — more in three months than the total number of asylum seekers who entered the country in all of 2021. There, the Ukrainians were instantly granted temporary status, giving them access to medical care and jobs, subsidized housing and food allowances, schooling for their children, and Greek language classes for adults.

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This is an admirable example of how all people who flee danger and war should be welcomed. But I’ve been visiting Greece for years now to research my new , Map of Hope and Sorrow: Stories of Refugees Trapped in Greece, and I know a lot of refugees there who have found no such generosity. Most are Syrian, Afghan, or Iraqi, but some are Kurdish or Palestinian, while others come from African countries, including Cameroon, Eritrea, Gambia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and the Republic of Congo.

They, too, escaped war, violence, and other kinds of persecution. In fact, the Syrians, just like the Ukrainians, fled Putin’s bombs when he was helping Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, hold onto power. Yet unlike the Ukrainians, these refugees are forced to languish for years in inhumane, slum-like camps, while their children are denied schooling. They are routinely turned away from hospitals, doctors, or dentists, and are all too often treated with disrespect, even hatred, by landlords, employers, and regular citizens. That hurts. As my friend and co-author, the Syrian writer and refugee Eyad Awwadawnan, whom I first met in Greece, put it, “I think the world should do all it can for Ukrainian refugees, but we are getting a clear message from the Greek government that we are worth less than they are.”

Doomed to Helplessness

During my visits to Greece between 2018 and 2022, I witnessed many examples of its appalling treatment of refugees. At one point, in a camp on the Northern Aegean island of Samos, I found more than 3,000 people living in shipping containers or tents in and around an old military base, surrounded by piles of garbage swarming with rats. They had no potable water, the few toilets were broken, the food mostly inedible, and there was no security for women, children, LGBTQ+ people, or anyone else particularly vulnerable to bullying, assault, or rape. Thousands more asylum seekers were similarly trapped on other islands with nowhere to go and nothing to do, while yet others were in Greek prisons for merely exercising their right to seek asylum. In our book, Eyad and I describe the way people are arrested and imprisoned simply for steering their boats to Greece, or for coming from the wrong country.

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Since its New Democracy government took power in 2019, well into the anti-immigrant, Muslim-bashing administration of Donald Trump here in the United States, the Greek government has been ratcheting up its mistreatment of Middle Eastern and African refugees even further. One of its first acts was to evict everyone granted asylum from subsidized housing or camps, while also withdrawing all financial aid. In this way, they were flung into a homeless, jobless void — that is, into forced helplessness. Winning asylum is supposed to mean winning international protected status as a refugee, but in Greece it now means the opposite — getting no protection at all.

Then, in June 2021, just before the Taliban took over Afghanistan, the Greek Minister of Migration, Notis Mitarachi, announced that all new arrivals from Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Somalia, and Syria would be the chance to apply for asylum and deported to Turkey, which he deemed a “safe third country,” a legal term for a safe haven for asylum seekers. Yet as have made clear, Turkey is anything but safe for those in flight from war or persecution. Not only does Turkey refuse to recognize Syrians as refugees, but it never signed onto the part of the U.N. 1951 Refugee Rights declaration banning refoulement, the term used for returning refugees to a country where they may be subjected to persecution. This means that Turkey can legally send refugees back to the nations they fled, no matter what dangers await them there.

Last April 16th, Greece upped its persecution even further by the housing it offers vulnerable people, such as victims of torture, trafficking, and rape, and sending them to live in camps where there is no security at all. 

None of these policies to Ukrainians.

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At sea, matters are even worse. The Greek authorities and , Europe’s border and coast guard agency, have been pushing refugees out to sea instead of rescuing them. They have left families and children abandoned on flimsy rafts or inflatable boats, or on tiny islands without shelter or food. During the pandemic, Greece and Frontex treated some 40,000 refugees this way, causing at least to drown — abuse that’s been by human rights groups. Yet Greece’s immigration minister has that any of this is happening. 

No less shocking is the way Greece has the rescue of refugees at sea. Volunteers who go out to search for and rescue the capsized boats of desperate immigrants are being arrested and charged with human trafficking. Sara Mardini, a Syrian professional swimmer portrayed in Netflix’s new movie , is one of these. If convicted, she faces 20 years in prison.

Hard as it may be to grasp the idea of making it illegal to rescue drowning people, Greece is far from alone in engaging in such behavior. Just this month, Italy, Malta, and Cyprus banded together with that country to call for the European Union (EU) to take against civilian sea rescuers. Of course, the train drivers and airplane pilots who brought Ukrainians into the rest of Europe are never similarly targeted.

The Greek government has justified all this unequal mercy with chilling language, declaring Ukrainians “” and everyone else an “.” In just that spirit, last month, Greek authorities Afghans in a camp outside Athens to cede their housing to Ukrainians and instead live in filthy and derelict shipping containers. 

That government has long that it is not at fault for treating refugees so badly because it lacks the money and personnel to handle so many of them. But the minute those 21,000 Ukrainians arrived, the same officials suddenly found themselves able to help after all.

Greece is not entirely to blame for such violations of international law, because many of them are underwritten by the EU, which has been pumping money into the country to keep refugees out of Western Europe since 2016. Recently, for example, the EU paid to the Greek government to build five remote prisons for asylum seekers. I saw the prototype for them on the island of Samos: , a collection of white metal shipping containers on a bare patch of land in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a double layer of hurricane fences topped with barbed wire and surveilled by closed-circuit cameras. It is hot, bare, and hideous. Such prisons will not, of course, hold Ukrainians.

Breaking Hearts and Laws

Greece is hardly the only country meting out all this unequal treatment. The persecution of non-white refugees seems to be on the rise not just in countries with far-right governments, but in those previously known for their liberality. Along with this persecution, of course, goes the same sort of racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric Donald Trump (not to speak of the Republican Party as a whole) continues to use about those crossing our own border.

Take the United Kingdom, for example. The new Conservative Party Prime Minister Rishi Sunak just offered France to increase its border security by 40% with the goal of arresting more “illegal migrant��” and smugglers to stop them from crossing the English Channel.  (An asylum seeker, by the way, is not an “illegal migrant.” The right to cross borders to seek asylum is enshrined in the .) That same $74 million could have been put toward legal and humanitarian services for asylum seekers, helping them find safe ways to apply for protection in either France or the United Kingdom, and so depriving smugglers of business without throwing those refugees into even further danger.

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Within France itself, while President Emmanuel Macron quarrels with the British over who is to blame for the rising number of refugees trying to cross the Channel, Jordan Bardella, the new leader of the country’s increasingly popular far-right party, has rested his entire platform on closing France’s borders to “” immigration. He has made it clear that he’s talking about Muslims and Africans, not immigrants like his own Italian parents.

Meanwhile, in Italy, Giorgia Meloni, the new right-wing prime minister, has just issued a forbidding male refugees from getting off rescue boats or setting even one foot on Italian soil. Similarly, Sweden, once a bastion of progressive ideas, elected a new government this past September that cut its refugee quota from 5,000 people a year to 900, citing the white supremacist trope that non-white, non-Christian refugees will otherwise “” traditional Swedes.

I could go on: France, Greece, Italy, Malta, and Spain are over who will (or won’t) take stranded boats of refugees, pushing those desperate sea goers from shore to shore like so much litter. The Danes are Syrians back to Syria, even after they’ve lived in Denmark for years. Australia is asylum seekers under horrifying conditions in detention centers and on isolated islands. And Britain has locked thousands of refugees in warehouses, passed laws them basic services like health care and housing, and tried to implement a policy of forcibly deporting some of them to .

Here in the U.S., we’re not doing much better. True, President Biden has managed to curtail some of the worst of Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, undoing the former president’s Muslim ban and raising the number of refugees allowed into the country every year, but his efforts have been inconsistent. Just this October, shortly before the Democrats barely held onto the Senate in the midterm elections, he expanded the Trumpian Title 42 border policy to include , who, only a week or so earlier, were being welcomed into the country. That policy uses Covid fears to force asylum seekers to stay in dangerous, sometimes deadly camps in Mexico, while rendering it virtually impossible for them to even apply for, let alone win, asylum in the U.S. (Biden originally promised to do away with Title 42 altogether, but the Supreme Court blocked his effort. After declaring that he would continue the fight, he now appears to have course.)

Ukrainians are, however, from this Mexican purgatory as a way of “recognizing the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine” (to quote the Department of Homeland Security). Some are similarly exempt, but only those who worked with the U.S. during our devastating 20-year war in their country. Everyone else is kept for months or even years for their asylum decisions, many of them in detention, regardless of the humanitarian crises they also fled.

All the unequal mercies described here are not only breaking hearts, but laws. A little history: In 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt and the newly formed United Nations created the in reaction to the shocks of the Holocaust and the mistreatment of Jews seeking asylum. Three years later, the U.N. held a in Geneva to create a bill of refugee rights, which were ratified into law by 149 nations, including Australia, Britain, Canada, Greece, most of the rest of Europe, and the United States. (Some countries didn’t sign on until 1967.) The idea was to protect the dignity and freedom of human beings everywhere, while never again spurning refugees in the way that had sent so many Jews back to their deaths.

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The Geneva Convention defined refugees as people forced to flee their countries because of “a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group” and who “cannot return home or [are] afraid to do so.” It gave them the right to international protection from discrimination and persecution; the right to housing, schooling, and the chance to work for a living; the right not to be criminalized for simply seeking asylum; and, most importantly, the right not to be subjected to refoulement — and be returned to the countries they had fled.

Thanks, in part, to that convention, when people are driven to flee their countries, they head for the safety and dignity they believe they will find in the West, a belief we are now betraying. To rectify this, the EU’s governing arm, the European Commission, must insist that Europe’s unequal treatment of refugees be replaced with humane, accessible processes that apply consistently to all asylum seekers, regardless of where they come from. The same should be done in Australia, Britain, and the United States. After all, the way we treat refugees today speaks volumes not only about how humanitarian we are, but about how we are likely to act in the future when forces ever more people to flee their homes just to stay alive.

On the other hand, should we continue to favor white Christian refugees over everyone else, we will not only shred the promises and values enshrined in our democracies, but fertilize the poison of white supremacy already festering in the very heart of the West.

[ first published this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post If You’re a Refugee, Best to be White and Christian appeared first on 51�Թ�.

I mention these facts concerning his background to remind readers that 51�Թ� is a crowdsourced journal open to a great diversity of points of view. We feel it is important for readers to hear varied arguments concerning the issues of the day. We also believe that it is important to understand, wherever possible, the background and backstory of the voices who share their punditry with the world. In everyone’s writing, reasoning and rhetoric stand side by side and even hold hands. Understanding means coming to grips with both.

Most of 51�Թ�’s authors, unlike Feffer, are not professional pundits or seasoned writers. We encourage unknown voices to contribute. These are people who have something valuable to share with the world in a space where seasoned journalists and pundits are also published. We invite our authors to enter the arena of public debate alongside heavyweights we regularly publish, such as Feffer, Medea Benjamin, Gary Grappo or Tom Engelhardt, to mention only a few. 

At 51�Թ�, we never presume to know who is right or wrong about any issue, a fact that doesn’t prevent the members of the editorial team from having their own viewpoints. And the naked, but also stimulating truth is that we in the team have our own very real, sometimes deep divergences. Disagreement can and should be productive. It is the foundation of the kind of dialogue that true democracy requires.

Alas, in times of geopolitical tension, the tolerance of diversity and the taste for constructive dialogue tend to wane. An opposite trend, strongly encouraged by governments themselves, pushes many people to suppress all divergences from official truth, often branding it disinformation. When the idea of some noble common cause, especially of a military nature, comes to the fore, the dominant forces in society seek to apply subtle, and sometimes less subtle pressure aiming at establishing and enforcing conformity of thought around what emerges.

9/11 defined the political culture of the 21^st century 

There are moments – think of the immediate aftermath of the 2001 attacks on New York’s trade towers and the Pentagon – when all voices are expected to sing in unison. One false note, one example of dissonance, will bring instant opprobrium. When comedian Bill Maher blurted out only a few days later, “We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That’s cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building – say what you like about it, it’s not cowardly,” the sponsors of his TV show their contracts. Maher was forced to apologize. Then there was the case of the avant-garde German composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen who, six days after the events of 9/11 “the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos.”

Stockhausen’s music had always been ultra-provocative, built of planned and random dissonance, but no one ever reacted with shock or disapproval to the most outlandish musical examples composed and performed by a man considered to be the leader in the field of electronic classical music. I attended a Stockhausen which in 1964 at UCLA’s Royce Hall where, exposed to the deliberately chaotic assemblage of jarring sounds, the audience sat in solemn, respectful silence. Everyone, that is, but the most respected professor of UCLA’s music department, a disciple of Arnold Schoenberg’s, who was falling out of his seat roaring with delighted laughter. He was clearly the only one in the auditorium with a clue to what Stockhausen was doing. His behavior upset the man sitting behind him, who upbraided him for his lack of decorum, scolding him to be quiet. 

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Stockhausen’s outrageously unharmonic musical creations could thus draw rapt admiration from an intellectual elite; his equally unharmonic verbal notes in 2001 turned him into a pariah. Yet in both cases, he developed a cutting irony that targeted conventional taste and conventional thinking. Six months earlier, in the same hall, I had sat listening in stunned silence to John Coltrane make musical history. John Kennedy had been assassinated the previous day. Coltrane’s challenge to the order took place on a different plane and its effects are still being felt. Deviating from the norm even at the cost of being misunderstood was possible then. That era was a moment in history when non-commercial music could still have a powerful impact on people’s lives. 

The world in which musicians like Stockhausen and Coltrane could thrive — both considered masters of a music that pushed art too far for most people’s taste — has definitively disappeared. In 2001 Stockhausen learned a fundamental lesson about the character of the 21^st century. Saying something deemed inappropriate can be fatal, at least in the US. Speech and thought must now be policed. That is even true for artists whose activity traditionally belonged to a world unconnected to political discourse and social norms. 

Future historians may remember this first quarter of the 21st century as an age of extreme censorship applied to anything deemed sensitive or capable of “triggering” a negative emotion in the mind or heart of someone who happens to be present. Visible in the purely social culture of PC (politically correct), it has become a fixture of serious political discourse and a major factor in democratic elections. This is an ear in which noticing that Israel has created something that resembles apartheid system brands the observer as anti-Semitic. Using the wrong English pronoun to refer to a person is a crime against identity. Citing a word associated with racism, even in the context of historical analysis, constitutes proof that one is a racist. Pointing out that Russia may have felt threatened by the growing military power of NATO is a proof of complicity in the evil designs of the Satanic Vladimir Putin.

The triumph of conformity in the name of security

Today thought must be controlled and discussion restrained. In the purely political realm, our modern nation states have elaborated exquisitely complex methods and means of both provoking and especially enforcing conformity of thought and ensuring that no one, whatever they may privately believe, may be permitted publicly to deviate from the official assessment of what is good and what is to be condemned. Joe Biden himself has made that clear. Democracy — even when controlled by money rather than people — is good and autocracy, even when it reflects the will of the majority, is bad. Believing that opens the door to the rule of money, identifying it with democratic virtue. It’s a system that makes political decision-making easier, since decision-making can be essentially confided in a moneyed elite. 

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But the ultimate effect of such conformist thinking imposed by a restricted elite is to divide society, possibly irreparably. The cultural examples of individuals choosing and imposing their  pronouns and forbidden words, or designating as suspect expressions such as “Happy holiday��” instead of “Merry Christmas,” foster ongoing cultural dramas that keep the two sides who revel in their binary opposition engaged in what each sees as a noble combat. 

Bitter disagreement and binary opposition are now structuring elements of US culture. Every issue can and indeed must be reduced to two opposing positions. That deep-seated reflex explains why the US can never go beyond a two-party system. Even when the two parties agree in pragmatic terms on all the essentials — unbridled financialized capitalism, global military domination, the divine status of the dollar, gun ownership and the virtues of consumerism — they draw all their political energy from hating the other side.

But there are matters about which Americans are not free to disagree. The example of 9/11 showed there is at least one general idea everyone must uncritically embrace: the defense of the nation. In its most extreme form it has produced the popular slogan: “Love it or leave it.” It translates as the duty of ordinary Americans never to call into question America’s military cause of the moment. In a world beset by obvious dangers related in part to the increasingly destructive nature of technologies that may end up in the “wrong hands,” the insistence on conformity makes a lot of sense. Especially when one assumes that one’s own hands are always the “right hands.” So defense is such a fundamental priority that the decisions made in its name can never be criticized, just as ever-expanding defense budgets are never called into question by anyone other than marginal leftwing extremists and demented pacifists. 

How did the “defense instinct” become so dominant in the culture? In former times, the notion of a nation’s foreign policy focused on trade and access to resources, in other words, the need to exchange with other regions and nations. Those exchanges could have a commercial or cultural nature. Power relationships were important but they weren’t defined in purely military terms. 

World War II changed everything, partly because of its scale but also because of the invention and use of the atomic bomb. Today we accept the idea that foreign policy is less about the quality of international relations than it is about security in a purely physical sense. Defense is defined by weaponry to the detriment of social life and civilized behavior. 

But there is another less obvious dimension of defense, the one George Orwell anticipated in his novel 1984: speech and thought control. No one can ignore the frequency with which, since 2001, policies focused on national security in the US have ended up challenging what people still refer to as “constitutional rights.” This sacrifice of traditional rights is always justified in the name of “national security.” No serious observer could doubt that the of October 2001, passed in the name of countering terrorism, has had, among its effects, the very real suppression of some of the rights Americans take for granted: notably the two pillars of the “Bill of Rights,” the first and fourth amendments (freedom of expression and freedom from unwarranted search).

The rights of a nation’s citizens are one thing. They will always be the object of internal debate. Foreign policy poses a problem of a different order. In recent decades, the idea of protecting “national security whatever the price” has led to the justification of the morally egregious concept of preventive war. This became the foundation of the Bush doctrine, used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. 

The same logic lies behind the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It relies on the perception of a nation’s duty to respond militarily if necessary to an “existential threat.” We now know that the threat Iraq represented in 2002-3, with its dreaded “weapons of mass destruction,” was imaginary. Most analysts today agree that the threat to Russia by Ukraine’s dallying with NATO was exaggerated, but no one can credibly claim it was purely imaginary. However, making the claim that it could have been real is now treated as the equivalent of Stockhausen’s characterization of 9/11 as the “greatest work of art.”

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In purely rational terms, the very notion of preventive war should be considered the opposite of defense. It means going elsewhere —  with guns blazing, drones buzzing and bombs dropping —  to counter a supposed future threat. Tradition tells us that ‼�����vention is better than cure” and “a stitch in time saves nine.” But if the supposedly preventive act produces a Humpty-Dumpty result, that can never be stitched back together again, the proverbial wisdom may prove far worse than any imaginable cure. Over the past 75 years, US foreign policy in Korea, Southeast Asia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria – to name only those obvious theaters of preventive war – has left a lot of gaps in the landscape that remained unstitched and often unstitchable to this day.

What is national defense?

Both of the terms — nation and defense —  require some serious historical and philosophical reflection. The nation state is, after all, a modern creation. We assume today it is a fact of nature, but it is an artificial invention that historians trace back to 1648 and the Treaty of Westphalia. That type of political entity has clearly supplanted all earlier examples of social and political organization. So what is a nation? Are the people of any nation thoroughly happy with the result of historical processes through which their nation has been defined? Are they even clear about what, in the concept of nation, needs to be defended? Is it land, property, the people themselves, their laws, their culture, their shared (or imposed) ideology, their songs and their movies?

Although the idea of the nation is recent in human history, it will always benefit from a diversity of visible clues relating to geography, language, ethnicity, religion and political ideology. Defining defense turns out to be more problematic. In most people’s naïve perception, the literal connotation of the word defense expresses an attitude of protective concern. In reality, when policies of armament are in play, it embraces something that goes far beyond the genteel notion of conservation of property, institutions or even general welfare. In its military dimension, it includes a measure of active threat, bravado and aggressive display.

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In our age of powerful industrial organization and sophisticated technology, those who have a role in institutional decision-making have succeeded in pushing the notion of defense well beyond its traditional connotation. Originally formulated as the instinct of protection, in the nuclear age, it has evolved into embracing in the mindset of those focused on defense the most extreme form of intentional aggression. Who are the decision-makers our democracies have designated as their agents of defense? They happen to be a relatively small loosely defined group of politicians, industrialists, bankers and intellectuals, the producers of ideology. The latter group includes well-financed media, the advertising industry,a segment of academia and another modern creation: think tanks.

Perhaps without realizing it, our democracies, particularly in the West, have accepted a system in which this international elite that dominates all the visible institutions in a globalized economy can dictate, largely in private, the themes and even the positions deemed legitimate in public debate. It is precisely to counter that domination that 51�Թ� seeks to open the dialogue to other voices. But it isn’t just by letting other voices become heard that we achieve our goal. It is also by using that opening of the public dialogue to stimulate critical thinking.

The marginalization of critical thinking

Many lucid observers have noticed that our civilization, so perfectly organized to produce a maximum of convenient material goods, has not only done little to maintain existing traditions of critical thinking, but has put in place the means to actively suppress it. Our increasingly “standardized” education has no time for critical thinking. We literally teach citizens to do little more than learn to repeat the messages they receive from both the official and unofficial channels that dominate all our media. Education has long adopted the model, which is now aided and abetted by technology, symbolized by standardized curricula and the dictatorship of the multiple choice question. The media and our governments play their role in creatively promoting triviality and restricting reflection on “serious issues.”

The emphasis on critical thinking is particularly important at this moment of history in which people’s thinking is alternatively guided by commercial institutional media on one side and the chaos of social media on the other. From the first — which extends from corporate news media to think tanks — we derive the notion of “authoritative voice��” who can guide our thinking. From the second we allow ourselves to be guided by “influencers,” random voices in social media with the cheek and style to push their version of reality as compelling. 

For that reason, here at 51�Թ�, we believe it is every citizen’s duty to dig deeper. That means listening to different voices, developing an awareness of the impact of commercial interests and recognizing the intimidation factor that exists on the side of authority. It implies making the effort to become aware of the background and connections of those who claim to tell us how to think, whether they speak with the authority of their very real expertise or have simply acquired the skill set that turns them into a social media influencer.

Examining the discourse of an established pundit

As a political commentator with decades of experience and acknowledged authority, Feffer has become accustomed to the idea that his job is to analyze complex situations and recommend not only possible political solutions but also the specific actions that will enable those solutions. That is, after all, what think tanks are designed to do.

True to his vocation, the liberal Feffer —  in a recent article with the title “Ukraine Now Holds a Strong Edge Over Russia” — has recently offered to enlighten our readers on US foreign policy regarding that war. His time-tested technique consists of presenting a series of apparently observations based on facts gleaned from his research and building them into a form of reasoning that points to what he considers to be the best course of action. He is clearly doing the job: think tanks think with a view to telling actors how to act.

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Some may think this is a fairly comfortable job, since a pundit can never be held directly accountable for the actions of those who act according to such recommendations, even when the actions go uncontrollably awry. That consideration alone explains why it’s important for readers to examine the methodology think tank and media pundits use. Unavoidably, like everyone else in their position, they tend to mix judgment calls and even gut instinct with simple facts. In this piece, for example, Feffer draws strong conclusions from very partial evidence. He assumes that because the facts he chooses to cite appear to point in a certain direction, his theory must be accepted as fact. 

Feffer’s method in this article can help us understand how facts and apparently solid reasoning may not be enough to make a strong case. We should begin by acknowledging that all facts are not created equal. In the world of political discourse that depends on someone else’s reporting, there may even be good facts and bad facts. Good facts must be both incontrovertibly true, meaningful in their broader context and not excessively contaminated by interpretative ambiguity. They must also be pertinent to the argument. Readers should also realize that when describing situations of conflict, other potentially contradictory facts may exist that have an equal claim to truth. Those facts may or may not be pertinent to any particular argument. 

If facts themselves may be problematic, reasoning – the procedure of moving from the facts to reach a reliable conclusion – is a traditional mare’s nest. The path is fraught with errors that begin when one attempts to establish the literal meaning of the terms mentioned as fact. It ends —  messily in general — with the psychology of the reasoner. At least since the first day Socrates put the question of reasoning on spectacular public display while deambulating through the streets of Athens, philosophers have been having fun as well as experiencing deep anguish dealing with the question of how logic can ever produce an acceptable conclusion. To appreciate the degree of risk in following a pundit’s limpid reasoning, see Wittgenstein’s (“The common mistake is to assume that truth has a nature of the kind that philosophers might find out about and develop theories of.”) 

Ukraine Now Holds a Strong Edge Over Russia

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A closer reading of Feffer’s argument

Feffer’s reasoning begins to falter in the title of the article: “Ukraine Now Holds a Strong Edge Over Russia.” Apart from the fundamental semantic question of what having an edge means in the context of a war – wars are full of sharp edges as well as twists and turns – his claim in the subtitle that “Ukraine is successfully ejecting the invading army” is simply untrue. It is certainly the kind of observation a journalist in the New York Times or The Daily Beast may decide to write or communicate. Such “fact��” are often due to an anonymous source in the intelligence community. But, whatever the source, this is clearly over the top. Ejecting means eliminating, cleansing, clearing out. The Russians appear to be conducting tactical retreats in some warzones, but no serious military expert sees them running for the borders. A wish is not a fact.

It is standard practice in contemporary journalism to use polls to prove a point. Feffer cites a poll released by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, whose findings, he tells us, reveal that “86% of Ukrainian respondents believe that it’s necessary to keep fighting despite the devastating air strikes.” Feffer doesn’t bother to mention that, according to those very pollsters, the “sample did not include residents of territories that were not temporarily controlled by the authorities of Ukraine until February 24” (whatever that double negative formulation means). More to the point, he fails to acknowledge or seems to wish to ignore a more fundamental historical fact that the US government and the media have consistently hidden from view: that Ukraine is a divided nation that has been experiencing a very real civil war for at least the past eight years, a civil war based on culture, language and historical identity. As Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies have done in a book we recently reviewed, the whole history of the past 30 years demonstrates that those unresolved internal tensions remain major factors that compromise the idea of Ukrainian identity. Why does that fact not interest Feffer, to the point of skewing the meaning of the statistics he cites?

There is of course a reason for Feffer’s sleight-of-hand. It is a documented fact that the continuous shelling by the Kyiv government of the Donbas over the past eight years in defiance of the terms of the Minsk II accord contributed to provoking the Russian aggression. But citing that fact would make it impossible to make the standard claim that the Russian invasion was “unprovoked.” It would also invalidate the necessary fiction that characterizes Ukrainians as a unified people seeking their independence.

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Later in the article, Feffer offers another poll result that appears to bolster his case when he claims that “three out of four Americans support the continuation of both economic and military aid to Ukraine.” That is true enough. But he neglects to cite another poll whose findings contradict his main argument, that “this is no time to call for a ceasefire.” That September, reported by Business Insider tells us that “nearly half of the respondents (47%) said they only support the continuation of US military aid to Ukraine if the US is involved in ongoing diplomacy to end the war.”. Furthermore, Business Insider’s report concludes with the observation that “Americans are growing tired of support for Ukraine without diplomacy as the war against Russia drags on.”

To make the point that even the most progressive Democrats align with Feffer’s position, he quotes at length a witness, Congressman Jamie Raskin. Feffer identifies him as “a prominent Congressional Progressive Caucus member.” But how representative of the left is Raskin? As investigative reporter Max Blumenthal has in detail —  offering a video of an interview with the Congressman for proof —   Raskin was not only a Russiagate zealot, but someone who blithely cites “fact��” that he knows to be false. Certainly, Feffer could have found a more reliable witness.

Accepting and confronting contrary readings

Feffer is clearly in phase with the US State Department that has consistently opposed the very idea of peace talks. But he finds himself in contradiction with the Pentagon’s Joint Chief of Staff General Mark Milley, who has pushed for, estimating that “the likelihood of Ukraine fully vanquishing Russia on the battlefield is ‘not high,’” Milley is President Joe Biden’s principal military adviser. Perhaps he remains unaware of the fact that the Ukrainians are “successfully ejecting” the Russians from their territory. 

Former UN weapons inspector and Marine Corp intelligence officer Scott Ritter, a vocal critic of US foreign policy, in vehement terms the opposite point of view. Few would argue with the fact that Ritter has remained closer to the facts than Feffer throughout the conflict. “Let’s be clear,” Ritter writes, “if you stand with Ukraine, you stand for the precipitous expansion of NATO, of outside powers fomenting illegal coups designed to overthrow the constitutional authority of a sovereign state, and the empowerment of white supremacist neo-Nazi ultra-nationalist movements who worship the memory of mass murderers whom they have elevated to the status of national heroes.”

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Ritter doesn’t hold back, pushing towards what may appear as the opposite extreme. It is possible to debate all these points, including obviously the relative clout of the neo-Nazis in Ukraine, whose presence and influence cannot be denied, though all commentators in the West, including Feffer, carefully avoid evoking them or when they do, dismiss them as marginal. That remains a legitimate debate. What is less legitimate is avoiding the debate altogether. Which is what commentators such as Feffer prefer to do. And why shouldn”t they? No one in the government or the media will stand up to encourage the debate.

My point is simple. As concerned citizens, we should listen to those, such as Feffer, who have experience and a track record of careful analysis of the topics they write about. But we shouldn’t accept at face value their conclusions simply on the grounds of their reputation or supposed authority. We should look elsewhere, examine the evidence and the case for its credibility. We should above all exercise that skill we call critical thinking.

Every citizen’s duty: to be informed and think critically

History has taken a dangerous turn. The issues we are talking about now may spin out of control with a real chance of provoking a nuclear holocaust. Bravado alone cannot produce lasting solutions. Democracies and indeed the human race can only hope to function correctly and prosper if we learn to critically examine the discourse of those who claim to speak with authority in the public square. 

51�Թ� itself will continue to publish those who want to make their case, as Feffer has done and as I myself have done here. That is our vocation. The points of view and interpretations we publish often fail to coincide. In cases like this one, they may even be diametrically opposed. We need to hear them. We need to assemble more facts than those each of us choose for the convenience of argument. And each of us needs to be in a position not just to explore and compare, but also to dig deeper with all the resources at our disposal. Concerning Feffer’s article, I can only add this personal note: that I’m disappointed when a quality researcher and thinker believes, for whatever reason, it is more prudent to follow the drift of official propaganda, especially in times of war and global danger, than to examine the complexity of the issues he is addressing. Our platform at 51�Թ� remains open to Feffer and others for dialogue and debate on these very issues as well as others raised by the articles we publish.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Why John Feffer’s Careful Reasoning Still Looks like Propaganda appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Danielle Smith, Conservative premier of the province of Alberta in Canada, mused in April on a talk show, that given Ukraine’s proximity to Russia, why are we “surprised if Russia is upset because Ukraine has nuclear weapons and is aligned with the United States?” and therefore proposed that “the only answer for Ukraine is neutrality”. She faced severe condemnation for the statements, leading her to recently apologize for her “ill-informed comment��”.

During the summer, US Democratic Congressperson Pramila Jayapal, together 30 progressive members of the Democratic party, wrote a letter to Biden urging him to engage in “direct talks with Russia” in order to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. When that letter became public last week, she hastily retracted it and is now facing anger from her own party.

Granted, one is an eccentric businessperson and the others are politicians. But upon calmer and wider reflection, their sentiments may not be totally bizarre, unacceptable or immoral. Firstly, Ukraine itself in March to accept neutral country status, dependent on certain security assurances from the West. And secondly, over the course of the past few months, several seasoned experts in foreign affairs have suggested similar compromises to end the war and calm relations with Russia.

Classifying the styles of foreign policy

The foreign policy of many nations  can be plotted somewhere along a continuum from that ranges from isolationism at one extreme to restraint and on to primacy (hegemony) at the other extreme. Isolationism  simplistically involves focusing exclusively on issues within one’s own country. Restraint entails being engaged with the outside world but limiting one’s geographic sphere of involvement and active engagement. Restrainers are seen as being more pragmatic and ready to consider compromises. Primacy means intervening in the situation of other countries, wherever they may be, and sometimes even preemptively. Primacists are seen as being idealists, viewing the world in black and white, and ready to fight for a cause till absolute victory. Today a significant number of foreign policy experts, cognizant of recent historical trends  and  aware of the importance of peace to enable cooperation on critical global issues, seem to be veering towards restraint.

Even before the Russia-Ukraine War began, with Russian troops  massing at the border, Stephen Van Evera, professor of Political Science at MIT, published a detailed titled To Prevent War and Secure Ukraine, Make Ukraine Neutral. In it he highlighted a key message: “Ukraine is a top priority for Russia, but it is not for the US “. 

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In May, senior statesman and master strategist Henry Kissinger Ukraine to give up some of its territory in order to broker a peace with Russia. This, from a man who had fled Nazi Germany as a Jewish refugee, became US secretary of state under President Richard Nixon, was known as a practitioner of Realpolitik, and played the key role in opening channels of communications between the US and both Russia and China.

Emma Ashford, Senior Fellow in the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center, the West to adopt a policy of restraint in the Russia-Ukraine War. That means supporting Ukraine while at the same time avoiding escalation, and being open to engaging in conversations about conditions for resolving the conflict. How could or should this war end? What might  an end to the war look like? Peering into the future, she hopes that “we will reach a point where both sides have, to some extent rethought their war aims and lowered those aims enough that there might be a settlement there”.

Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow at the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace ( ), also restraint. He points out that Biden’s positioning of the Russia-Ukraine War as a combat between the forces of autocracy and democracy has two serious weaknesses. The first is that it puts on display the hypocrisy of the US and the West in general, who have no qualms about being on friendly terms with Saudi Arabia, an intensely autocratic nation with serious human rights issues, including the gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.  The second is that the democracy vs. autocracy dichotomy is not clearly seen as good vs bad in many parts of the world, which helps to explain why the current US-led coalition against Russia does not include half the world. In addition, many people of color see it as a ‘white people’s war’. Countries that have decided to remain neutral include China, India, Indonesia, much of Latin America and Africa, and even Turkey.

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Interestingly, the West’s coalition does not include Israel, which has remained neutral because it has good relations with Russia and particularly with Putin. Israel has side-stepped Ukraine’s request for air defense systems and has limited its involvement to humanitarian aid.

A just war is always in the mind of the believer

Wars can rarely be deemed fair. Outcomes do not always favor “the good guy��” and often, it can be difficult to determine who are the good guys. Usually both sides feel they are fighting a just war. But justice is seldom served. The aggressors are not always roundly defeated in the end. That only happens in Hollywood movies. Nobody is saying that Putin was right to invade Ukraine; in fact, even those who have accused the West of provoking the war have unanimously condemned Russia’s invasion. Sovereignty is something all nations hold dear. The differences lie now in their appreciation of how to best resolve the issue.

Zelensky sounds heroic when says he’ll fight to the last Ukrainian. But that cannot be entirely his decision when he is demanding other nations’ tax dollars and their unlimited commitment to the cause. In the coming year, theInternational Monetary Fund (IMF) that Ukraine will need external financing to the tune of $3-5 billion a month. 

The money and effort could instead be spent on each country’s urgent internal issues, notably around the question of healthcare in countries such as Canada, the UK and the US. Alternatively, the money and attention could be spent on critical global issues, such as combating the rising prices of food and fuel, the looming recession, future pandemics, and of course climate change. 

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This war has already created a food crisis throughout the world. While the privileged among us  will have to merely deal with rising food prices, others will face starvation. Money could be spent helping to feed people in need. In the midst of already rising fuel prices, OPEC Plus – which includes Saudi Arabia and Russia – decided to reduce their oil production. Europe in particular faces a cold winter. Money could be spent on developing alternative sources of energy, with the aim of liberating these nations from the grip of “petro-dictators.”. The World Bank of a global recession in 2023, along with “a string of financial crises in emerging markets and developing economie��” Money could be spent on supportive measures for threatened economies. Finally,with the world distracted and divided by this war, it is difficult to focus and collaborate on future existential fights against new pandemics and climate change, that will need all our resources.

The morality of war and the complexity of history

Negotiation is always required to end a war. However, it becomes more difficult when one side believes it occupies the moral high ground and when the other side can be simplistically characterized as ‘evil’. When the US and its allies invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, did anyone place sanctions on the invaders? Whoever starts a war always deems the war just, believing that it is being conducted for valid reasons. The US made such arguments when it invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. Russia is now trying to do the same thing with Ukraine. 

The major difference is that the US crossed an ocean and a continent to start a war, while Russia is fighting a neighbor. The US sees its sphere of influence as far-reaching and unlimited, while Russia is attempting to gain a bit of control over its own neighborhood. NATO expansion up to Russia’s doorstep is a key factor in Putin’s decision to go to war in Ukraine. As Ted Galen Carpenter, senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, ; “Putin bears primary responsibility for this latest development, but NATO’s arrogant, tone-deaf policy toward Russia over the past quarter-century deserves a large share as well.” 

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Knowledge of history can help by putting events into perspective. Russia is neither the first nor the only country that has played the role of invader. In 1961, the US invaded Cuba in an attempt to overthrow the communist government of Fidel Castro The attempt failed after  three days but the US continues its embargo and imposes draconian sanctions against the small island country to this day. More recently, the US invaded Iraq on the spurious pretext of possessing weapons of mass destruction. That was shortly after invading Afghanistan in a war against terrorism. 2,456 US military personnel were killed, and some 176,000 to 360,000 Afghanis are to have died over the first 13 years of the 20-year presence of NATO troops.

Before the start of the Russia-Ukraine War, the renowned Canadian historian, and currently a professor at Oxford University, Margaret McMillan said : “History can help us to understand others … The more you know about them, the more success you’re likely to have in avoiding things that they may feel angry about or dealing with, the more finding ways of negotiating … I think we can see Putin as a typical authoritarian leader, but his particular goals and his particular animosities and his particular wishes for Russia are shaped by Russian history and by his own experience of Russian history.” 

In the interest of arriving at a quick resolution, minimizing human suffering and extensive damage to Ukrainian infrastructure, to say nothing of  the hopes of a peaceful future for our children, we cannot afford to be continuously swayed by the simplistic, subjective, and emotional rhetoric of conventional media. Even less so by social media. We cannot afford to be drawn into unthinking, jingoistic fervor. We’re happy to get teary-eyed when we hear John Lennon sing “Give Peace a Chance”, but we refuse to engage with the practical implications of his lyrics. We idealistically and lazily tend to see countries and people – especially those in conflict – in binary terms: as good or bad, right or wrong. But reality is more nuanced, more complicated, and more difficult to deal with.

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We need to educate ourselves on history. We cannot see incidents as isolated, but as part of an ongoing story. And we need to develop a more mature, pragmatic and broader perspective about possible solutions. This would serve us well, not only in this war with Russia, but in a long list of possible future conflicts. There are plenty to choose from, including ones that involve Haiti, Ethiopia, Iran, Afghanistan, the Koreas, and most threateningly, China.

The disapproving reaction to the comments of Danielle Smith in Canada and to Elon Musk’s and Pramila Jayapal’s in the US, does not reflect well on either nation. Both are supposed to be liberal democracies, where freedom of speech is respected and the voicing of different perspectives is encouraged. Suppressing differing perspectives limits our society’s capacity for problem-solving. Suppressing perspectives that point towards restraint and encourage negotiation will inevitably result in a protracted war in Ukraine, increasing tensions with Russia, likely future conflicts with China, and a poorer future for us all. As a civilization, we deserve better.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Restraint, an Intolerable Alternative to the Excitement of War? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

This comes as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its ninth month. While numbers are difficult to verify, it is estimated that the has left both Russia and Ukraine with over 100,000 troops dead or wounded. With Russia still attempting to advance further into Ukrainian territory and with Ukraine’s recent offensive to retake Kherson, there is no end in sight for this conflict.

From the beginning of the invasion, the US, the UK, the EU and Australia haveprovided with humanitarian and military aid to protect its sovereignty and its people. The US has provided over $38 billion in military and humanitarian aid. Similarly, the UK and the EU have both provided around $4 billion.

What the Realists Do Not Realize

In the eyes of critics, such as the prominent realist academic John Mearsheimer, this assistance represents a dangerous escalation that will lead to the unnecessary deaths of Ukrainians. These critics instead argue that Ukraine should sue for peace and accept territorial loss to Russia.

But this criticism falls over for multiple reasons.

First and foremost, Russia has illegally invaded Ukraine, a sovereign state under international law. Since 1945, the world has moved on from territorial expansion through force of arms, where powerful states devour small, less powerful ones. Instead, the 20^th century saw the construction of international laws, treaties, and norms on how states should behave. Russia’s actions in Ukraine are a direct violation of these tenets. Therefore, the implementation of economic sanctions and providing aid to a state fighting for survival is not an act of escalation. It is to ensure that international rule of law is upheld and no longer undermined. 

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Second, Russia has clearly committed war crimes in Ukraine, a gross violation of international human rights law. Ukrainians have been killed by targeted missile strikes on civilian areas, including the total destruction of the port city of Mariupol, resulting in over 4,000 deaths according to the.

has also documented war crimes committed by Russian forces in Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Kyiv as well as the now infamous massacre in Bucha where Russian troops carried out executions and extrajudicial killings of civilians. HelpingUkrainians protect their homes and families from such atrocities is to stand in solidarity against a despotic state. 

Third, critics of the West ignore one crucial factor: that Ukrainians widely support defending themselves, and their sovereignty. A has found that an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians, 89%, do not support a peace deal that involves losing territory to Russia. Further, 78% approve of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s response to the invasion. 

Peace Under Western Hegemony

Peace advocates have challenged the motives of the West in their support of the Ukrainian cause. The claim is that the West’s involvement has less to do with aiding Ukraine and more to do with maintaining its hegemony. 

This mirrors comments made by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who declared recently that the conflict is a ”“ between NATO and Russia. This argument is designed to remove any agency from Ukrainians to make their own decisions and it is demonstrably wrong, particularly when defending the country is so popular with Ukrainians.

Critics also ignore that Russia has no interest in peace. While there are demands that Ukraine cede  the Donbas and the south to Russia in a peace deal, it ignores that Russia has recently, and publicly, stated that it has greater than these two regions. This is obvious considering that Russia initially attempted to take Kyiv and topple the Ukrainian government. These calls are also offensive to Ukrainians who have spent the past six months defending their country from what is an illegal invasion.

Even if a deal is reached, history shows us it wouldn’t result in long-term stability for Ukraine. Russia has been destabilizing Ukraine for decades, including the illegal invasion and annexation of Crimea or by sending troops into the Donbas to support separatists. Critics fail to understand that Russia will not stop intervening in Ukrainian affairs because it does not tolerate the country’s desire to improve political and economic ties with the West.

Ukraine Is Inching Towards Victory

Most importantly, Ukraine is winning this war. Russia has failed to meet its initial objectives in occupying Kyiv and forcing regime change. It has pivoted strategically and publicly to focus on the Luhansk and Donetsk regions and the south of the country. It has also lost tens of thousands of men and countless numbers of vehicles and equipment. With economic sanctions targeting military technology, replacing this equipment is difficult. Ukrainian bravery and ingenuity aside, military aid from the West has undoubtedly played a large role in this success.

This support has culminated in the recent acquisition by Ukraine of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or , which has enabled its military to strike successfully at Russian targets in the Donbas and the Crimea. On November 11th, Ukraine entered the city of , pushing Russian troops to the east.  Both Ukrainians and the West want peace. But this shouldn’t come at the expense of Ukraine’s dignity, territory, and sovereignty. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the war crimes it has committed, is a clear affront to international law. Therefore, supporting Ukraine in its defense is not just a fight to assist an innocent party against a larger aggressor, as worthwhile as that is. It is also a fight to protect  the international rule of law and human rights. That is a fight worth supporting. 

[Naveed Ahsan edited this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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