A plea from Senator Bernie Sanders

As the world focuses on the horrific war in Ukraine, Senator Bernie Sanders urges us not to forget another ongoing crisis, the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few in the US and throughout the world. In the US, the billionaires and big business, led by private equity firms, banks, big Pharma, and the military-industrial complex, continue to take advantage of the multiple crises we face (the war, COVID, inflation, and so on) to pad their balances. In our system, it should be evident that the very rich never met a crisis that they couldn’t exploit. Senator Sanders urges us not to despair, but rather to double down and to do so with a clear understanding of what is going on behind the scenes. We must say NO to war, NO to exploitation, NO to the oligarchs(here as well as abroad) who would undermine democracy. 

Senator Bernie Sanders

If you watch the corporate media, you'll often hear the word 'oligarch' preceded by the word 'Russian.' But oligarchs aren't uniquely a Russian phenomenon or a foreign concept. No. The United States has its own oligarchy. 

Today, in the United States, the two wealthiest people own more wealth than the bottom 42 percent of our population – more than 130 million Americans. And the top one percent now owns more wealth than the bottom 92 percent. During the last 50 years there has been a massive transfer of wealth in our country, but it’s going in the wrong direction. The middle class is shrinking while the people on top are doing better than ever. 

 Further, in terms of the global economy, there is no question that we are seeing a huge and destructive increase in income and wealth inequality. While the very, very richest people become much wealthier, ordinary people struggle and the most desperate starve. While massive levels of inequality existed before the rise of COVID, that situation has become much worse over the past two years. Today, around the world, the wealthiest 10 multi-billionaires now own more wealth than the bottom 3.1 billion – almost 40 percent of the world’s population. Unbelievably, the wealth of these ten multi-billionaires has doubled during the pandemic, while the income of 99 percent of the world’s population has declined. 

The oligarchs spend huge amounts of money buying fancy yachts, mansions and great paintings while 160 million people throughout the world have slipped into poverty. According to Oxfam, global income and wealth inequality has led to the deaths of more than 21,000 people each and every day throughout the world as a result of hunger and the lack of access to healthcare. Yet the world’s 2,755 billionaires saw their wealth go up by $5 trillion since March 2021 – increasing from $8.6 trillion to $13.8 trillion. 

But it’s not just the increased income and wealth gap between the very rich and everyone else. It’s a growing concentration of ownership and brute economic and political power. Something which is not talked about much, either in the media or political circles, is the reality that a handful of Wall Street firms, Black Rock, Vanguard and State Street, now control over $21 trillion in assets – roughly the GDP of the United States. This gives a tiny number of CEOs enormous power over hundreds of companies and the lives of millions of workers. 

The result: in recent years we have seen the ultra-wealthy significantly increase their influence over media, banking, health care, housing and many other parts of our economy. In fact, never before have so few owned and controlled so much. Add it all together and what you see is a nation and world trending very strongly toward oligarchy – where a small number of multi-billionaires exercise enormous economic and political power. 

So, in the midst of all of this, where do we go from here? Clearly, while we face oligarchy, COVID, attacks on democracy, climate change, the horrific war in Ukraine and other challenges it is easy to understand why many may fall into cynicism and hopelessness. This is a state of mind, however, that we must overcome – not only for ourselves, but for our kids and future generations. The stakes are just too high, and despair is not an option. We must come together and fight back. 

What history has always taught us is that real change never takes place from the top on down. It always occurs from the bottom on up. That is the history of the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the environmental movement and the gay rights movement. That is the history of every effort that has brought about transformational change in our society. That is the struggle we must intensify today. We must bring people together around a progressive agenda. We must educate, organize and build an unstoppable grassroots movement that helps create the kind of nation and world we know we can become. One that is based on the principles of justice and compassion, not greed and oligarchy. 

We must never lose our sense of outrage when so few have so much and so many have so little. We must not allow ourselves to be divided up based on the color of our skin, where we were born, our religion or our sexual orientation. The greatest threat of the billionaire class is not simply their unlimited wealth and power. It is their ability to create a culture that makes us feel weak and hopeless and diminishes the strength of human solidarity. 

Yet, as a result of the horrific Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the extraordinary courage and solidarity of the Ukrainian people, countries throughout the world are waking up to the fact that there is a global struggle taking place between autocracy and democracy, between authoritarianism and the right of people to freely express their views. Now is the time to build a new progressive global order that recognizes every person on this planet shares a common humanity and that all of us – no matter where we live or the language we speak – want our children to grow up healthy, have a good education, breathe clean air and live in peace. 

What we are seeing now is not just the incredible bravery of the people in Ukraine, but thousands of Russians who have taken to the streets to demand an end to Putin’s war in Ukraine, knowing that it’s illegal to do so and that they will likely be arrested and punished. We have seen the courage of working people here in our country who are coming together to take on corporate greed and organize for better wages, benefits and working conditions. Sisters and brothers, right now we are in a struggle between a progressive movement that mobilizes around a shared vision of prosperity, security and dignity for all people, against one that defends oligarchy and massive global income and wealth inequality. It is a struggle we cannot lose. And it is one that we can overcome, as long as we stand together. 

In solidarity, 

Bernie Sanders

Censorship American (Corporate) Style

Censorship is not as simple as it seems. In modern society it can be accomplished without the brutal apparatus of an authoritarian state.

As U.S. media reports a narrow narrative on the war in Ukraine, social media platforms are also increasingly censoring critical voices for peace. To understand how censorship in the US works, without the government's active involvement (in most cases), please watch this discussion between Abby Martin, Lee Camp, and Chris Hedges with CODEPINK moderator Jodie Evans on the impacts and implications of this censorship at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=revx-akHmAM

About the participants

• Lee Camp is an American writer and television host.
• Abby Martin is an American journalist, TV presenter, filmmaker and activist. She founded Empire Files and co- found the citizen journalism website Media Roots and serves on the board of directors for the Media Freedom Foundation which manages Project Censored.
• Chris Hedges is an American journalist, Presbyterian minister, and author. A former reporter for The New York Times, Hedges is a progressive commentator, activist, and critic of American liberalism.

All these voices have been censored, as they are voices that speak for peace and don't support the corporate narrative.

When is an attack on a peacekeeping center not an attack on peace?

News Flash!!! Putin has ordered a deadly rocket attack on the International Peacekeeping and Security Center in western Ukraine. It’s one more example of the brutality of the Russian dictator, who attacks those who are working for peace as well as civilians. Well not quite. Turns out that this “peacekeeping” center is actually a joint NATO/Ukrainian military base, where US and NATO military trainers have worked with Ukrainian troops, teaching them the finer points of handling the equipment being supplied to them by the US and some NATO nations, long before the Russian invasion. Another example of how the mainstream media is stoking the fires of war in the West.

What a wonderful juxtaposition for the American media, prone to superficial analyses in any case. In the one corner we have a young, photogenic actor (or was it, comedian) and in the other, a dour former KGB official. What else do we need to know? Oh, the former presides over a liberal political democracy (forget the issues of corruption that have plagued his presidency and party and the ongoing violent oppression of a minority by a militia with neo-Nazi roots), while the other is the latest autocrat, in a long line, to exercise one man rule in Russia going all the way back to Stalin, or was it Ivan the Terrible. You know those Russians, they love dictators. (Wait, didn’t they have two revolutions against autocratic governments in the 20^th century, one violent and not to the liking of the US and the other peaceful and applauded here?)

To facilitate this picture, let’s wipe out the history that got us to the point (anything that happened more than a couple of months ago is really not relevant, unless it shows what a ruthless villain one of the characters is) and also deny any relevance to the roles played by anyone (or country) outside of our two main characters. And finally, make sure everyone understands that this is a struggle between David and Goliath.

While this might play well in the media and give politicians like my Congressman, David Rouzer, a platform to divert attention from their attacks on democracy at home, it is a recipe for disaster, because it rules out the only real path out of this crisis. Note that wars can resolve into one of three situations: one or the other side wins and dictates the peace; a stalemate, in which both sides continue fighting over a long period of time, exhausting the people and resources of both sides and frequently resulting in an overthrow of the government of one of the belligerents; escalation and expansion of the war, bringing in more nations.

In the case of the war in Ukraine, the first of these resolutions would undoubtedly mean a Russian victory. However bravely the Ukrainians fight and however many weapons the US and NATO send, Ukraine will not be able to defeat the Russians. Should the Russians win, they would impose a government to their liking and rule Ukraine as a vassal state. BAD!

The second scenario, which played out in the first Cold War in a number of situations (Vietnam, Afghanistan, twice), would mean a level of death and destruction in Ukraine that would dwarf what has happened so far. It appears to be a solution favored by the war hawks in the West, mostly in the US. Let the Ukrainians fight and die in order to bleed Russia dry. Well, they don’t actually say that, but it’s the logical conclusion of their position. WORSE!!

Finally, further escalation (sending massive amounts of arms to Ukraine and putting sanctions on Russia are already escalations) would move us closer to nuclear confrontation between the two major nuclear powers, Russia and the US. It may be a possibility too horrible to even contemplate, but it is a very real danger. If this were to happen, WWIII would become the war to end all wars. Need I say it? WORST!!!

There is a fourth path which could be taken, but to go there we have to firmly reject the picture being painted by the corporate media and through their control of social media. What we need to look at is the backstory of the conflict, which involves more than the leaders of the two countries, and has its origins at least as far back as the break up of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

That backstory, which I dealt with in an earlier posting, points to what the basic issues in this war are and explicitly involves a third party, the US/NATO. CODEPINK has proposed some ideas on which a negotiated settlement could be based. I listed them in an earlier posting, but they are worth repeating. We need to demand that the US and NATO take these proposals seriously (there is some indications that the Ukrainians may be) and reject the drums of war being sounded by the corporate media and their fellow travelers.

From CODEPINK

We must demand that RUSSIA WITHDRAW ITS TROOPS and commit to respecting the sovereignty of Ukraine, but the United States must also be clear that it supports and is ready to commit to the following:

·         Continued rejection of a no-fly zone over Ukraine;

·         No NATO expansion;

·         Recognition of Ukraine as a neutral country;

·         An off-ramp for sanctions on Russia to be lifted;

·         Support for an international security agreement to protect the interests of all people on the European continent to remain free from war and occupation; 

·         Support for Ukrainian demilitarization to the degree that missiles would be banned;

·         Supply humanitarian aid to Ukraine and support Ukrainian refugees. 

 

One additional point I think must be added:

·         US must commit to reinstating the nuclear weapons agreements it has abrogated over the past few years and begin negotiations on removing all nuclear weapons from Europe. (Perhaps, in return, the US could demand that the Russians withdraw their nuclear missiles from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.)

More on the War in Ukraine: Have we forgotten Afghanistan?

I am speaking today at a Prayer Rally for Ukraine. I must admit that I am not much for praying for peace, since, in my experience, the people who control the massive military apparatuses around the world (and I note that this applies in particular to the country where I live) aren't moved by prayers, but rather by $$$ and power, which in our society are basically the same thing.

Below are the remarks I will make. In that connection, I am also posting an article which I found relevant to my message. 

Remarks at the Rally for Ukraine in Wilmington, NC

My name is George Vlasits and many of you know me as an activist for public education, for reform of the criminal justice system and for racial equity. But today I’ve come here as an antiwar activist who has opposed wars since the 1960s from Vietnam to Iraq, wars that have cost the lives of millions of people of color in the Global South.

YES, I am appalled by the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine and believe that we must condemn Russia and demand an immediate end to their invasion,

BUT, I am also appalled by the fact that the same media that carries heartbreaking stories of Ukrainian civilians caught in the warzone, has ignored the plight of civilians caught in warzones in the Middle East and Central Africa, most of who have no place to flee to, or the civilians, mostly children, who face starvation in Afghanistan because the US has seized their country’s assets

YES, I am horrified by the bombs dropped on a hospital in Ukraine,

BUT, I am old enough to remember carpet bombing and napalm in Korea and Vietnam, not to mention “Shock and Awe” in Iraq. It reminds me of the biblical canon – let he who has not sinned, throw the first stone.

YES, I support the idea that we should pray for peace,

BUT, I know from almost 60 years of experience we have to do more. We have to counter those who beat the drums of war and militarism here in the US. We must demand that the US & NATO encourage and engage in negotiations, rather than provide more arms to Ukraine which only prolongs the conflict.

AND, at home, we must demand that our own military/industrial complex not be allowed to profit from this. We must oppose what the Congressman who misrepresents our area wants and I quote him: “We must send more weapons, more planes, more missiles, whatever is needed. The Ukrainians are going to fight to the very end.” And what then, Mr. Rouzer?

Escalation is not the way to peace. More weapons to Ukraine and more sanctions on the Russians will not end the war, only increase the human suffering.  It is not the way to save lives in Ukraine. It is the way to more death and destruction.

From Juan Cole's Weblog, Informed Comment 

The US 20-year war and occupation in Afghanistan, waged to avenge the September 11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, has taken the lives of more than 71,000 Afghani and Pakistani civilians. A massive increase in civilian deaths ensued there in 2017 when the US military loosened its rules of war regarding airstrikes. After the US withdrawal in 2021, in part because of severe US sanctions, millions there face food insecurity.

The country is left littered with unexploded ordnance, which kills and injures unknowing civilian adults and children as they move through their land. The war also forced six million people to flee their homes, almost half as refugees to other countries.

None of this tragedy of the US war in Afghanistan has been in our mainstream news. Could it be because at the war’s onset, George W Bush advised Americans to “go shopping” and forget about our war in a poor, remote, non-Western country?

During the war in Afghanistan, the US poured money into the country, money that flowed to oligarchs within regimes our government propped up, and to US military contractors, civilian contractors and warlords, for which there is little to show. The US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction concluded, in his March 2021 assessment of the 20 year war, that much of the [US] spending has been “woefully out of touch at best, and delusional at worst” and much of it has gone to simple graft and corruption by US and Afghan profiteers.

When the US fled Afghanistan eight months ago, most foreign funding upon which the country was dependent for its GDP and 75 percent of its public funding also left. According to the UN, Afghanistan has a 41% rate of stunting in children under five, among the world’s highest; and one-half the population of 40 million are suffering a record level of acute hunger.

After fleeing the country, the US quickly enacted economic sanctions against the brutal Taliban government. These sanctions, inevitably borne by the Afghani people, “are on track to take the lives of more civilians in the coming year than have been killed by 20 years of warfare,” according to economist Mark Weisbrot.

Why is our news media silent on the US inhumane economic war there?

On February 11, 2022 President Biden signed an Executive Order to free $7 billion of frozen Afghani assets held in the Federal Reserve in NYC – savings of ordinary citizens not the Taliban government – and to split them between humanitarian aid for starving, sick Afghanis and legal fees of surviving relatives of the September 11 attacks. Even the former US-supported Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called on Biden to reverse his decision and to return the full $7 billion to the Afghanistan Central Bank.

His words: “Withholding money or seizing money from the people of Afghanistan…is unjust and unfair and an atrocity against the Afghan people.”

Half of Afghani citizens were born after the US launched war in Afghanistan. And yet, they are being punished by our homicidal economic sanctions and the subsequent theft of Afghani citizens’ savings in the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City. Further, the Afghani people did not plan and attack the United States on 9/11. It was primarily Saudi Arabian members of al-Qaeda, who hatched their plot in Germany out of anger for the US setting up military bases in their country and perpetrating war in the Middle East. No Afghan people were involved. Why didn’t the US use the CIA, noted for sleuth, entrapment, and assassination of its targets in foreign countries and governments, to capture or, more to their habit, assassinate, Osama bin Laden?

The logical and ethical response to compensating 9/11 victims’ families would be to withhold the millions of dollars in military aid that our government gives to Saudi Arabia each year to finance their purchase of U.S. military training and equipment, and to use that “blood money” for the 9/11 victims. Doing so, the US would also limit our government’s collusion with Saudi Arabia in the most extreme humanitarian crisis today – the military war on Yemen with its bombing of hospitals and schools and blockades of food and medical supplies. Two-thirds of the 20 million Yemeni people are in critical of food, shelter, medicines, and health care.

And why is none of this in our news media?

Because the greatest military empire in history failed in Afghanistan?

Because poor, darker-skinned, Muslim, non-Western people on the other side of the world are of no financial or security value to our government?

Because the 700 Congressional lobbyists for the weapons industry have turned Congressional attention to their new business opportunity – war in Ukraine?

Because the US government has now subordinated its War on Terror to a testosterone-filled Great Power conflict with Russia and China, now inflamed by Russia’s threat of using nuclear weapons.

"There must be some way out of here" - A possible basis for negotiations to end the war in Ukraine

I just watched Biden’s response to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s address to the US Congress. Basically, he reiterated the US/NATO’s commitment to supplying more arms to Ukraine, while avoiding the issue of a “no fly zone”, which NATO had ruled out earlier in the day. The question Biden did not address is whether the current escalation (more arms to Ukraine, ramping up sanctions on Russia) is more or less likely to end the violence being suffered by the people of Ukraine.

Weapons transfer by the US, the world’s largest arms dealer, began before the Russian invasion. The Obama administration resisted providing overt lethal assistance to Ukraine, concerned that such a move by the U.S. would provoke Russia. But, first under Trump and then, to a greater extent, under Biden, the US began to send large amounts of military “aid” to Ukraine, some $650 million in 2021 alone. Since the invasion the US has added at least $1 billion more, and that does not include other NATO nations’ contributions.

Western nations must ask themselves whether the current course of action is more or less likely to help end the violence being imposed on Ukraine’s civilian population. It should be clear that Ukraine cannot defeat the Russians militarily, so, barring a negotiated end to the war, Ukraine will be subjected to a long and brutal military occupation/urban guerilla war. If the US/NATO strategy is heading in that direction, it will not in any way benefit the people of Ukraine.

If you are interested in a more complete analysis of the futility of pursuing escalation, check out - Jeremy Scahill’s article from the Intercept - https://theintercept.com/2022/03/10/ukraine-russia-nato-weapons/

The following proposal for beginning talks on a negotiated settlement is from CODEPINK. It should be noted that the Ukrainian president has already hinted that he would accept the second and third points, which have been the crux of the Russian demands. Much of the rest is up to the US/NATO, who must be recognized as a party to the conflict, since they are providing billions in arms to Ukraine.

In addition, others have argued (and I agree), if the situation in Eastern Europe is to be stabilized, the US must commit to reinstating the nuclear weapons agreements it has abrogated over the past few years and begin negotiations on removing all nuclear weapons from Europe (in exchanged for the Russians removing their nuclear weapons from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Oh, I forgot, the Russians don't have nuclear weapons in those countries.)

On a more serious note, ideas on the road to peace from CODEPINK

RUSSIA MUST WITHDRAW ITS TROOPS and commit to respecting the sovereignty of Ukraine, but the United States must also be clear that it supports and is ready to commit to the following:

• Continued rejection of a no-fly zone over Ukraine;
• No NATO expansion;
• Recognition of Ukraine as a neutral country;
• An off-ramp for sanctions on Russia to be lifted;
• Support for an international security agreement to protect the interests of all people on the European continent to remain free from war and occupation; 
• Support for Ukrainian demilitarization to the degree that missiles would be banned;
• Supply humanitarian aid to Ukraine and support Ukrainian refugees. 

Book: The Life & Thought of John Maynard Keynes.

Son of a bitch, this is a brilliant "must read" book, from blurbs, TOC & Introduction, to Acknowledgements!!

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/14/the-price-of-peace-by-zachary-d-carter-review-how-liberals-betrayed-keynes

While you were sleeping

 

I hope everyone got a good night’s sleep some time in the last 24 hours. If you did get 8 hours rest, I wanted you to know that according to Oxfam International, while you were sleeping, Pfizer made $8,000,000 in profits in those 8 hours from “its” vaccine (with research funded, in part by our tax dollars) and in that same eight hours, an estimated 2,300 people died of COVID worldwide.

At the same time as you and I were hopefully snug in our beds, as many as 30 Americans under the age of 65 died because they didn’t have healthcare while the health insurance companies in the US made more than $33,000,000 in just 8 hours.

In those same 8 hours, the richest man in the universe, Elon Musk, made $82,000,000 so he can take joy rides in space, while, according to CARE, fully ½ of the population of Afghanistan is facing acute hunger as they lay down to a fitful rest.

And the rest of the US’s 703 billionaires (who collectively, with Musk, now have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the country’s population) socked away some $700 million, almost all of which is tax free, while they slept, because, when you are a billionaire, your money makes money without you putting in an ounce of effort. In the meanwhile, our underpaid teachers (and healthcare workers, and grocery store workers, etc., etc.) are probably not getting that 8 hours to rest, as they work to keep the country functioning despite the pandemic.

And finally, in that same 8 hours, the Pentagon will spend $710 million (about ½ of which goes directly to big corporations) and in the near future even more, as the military-industrial complex, which a Republican President warned us about 61 years ago, demands more “defense” spending from a compliant Congress following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That’s the same Congress that can’t find the wherewithal to fund an anemic Build Back Better plan.

If you don’t see what I’m getting at, then you must still be sleeping.

Whitewashing Ukraine

 “There are no Nazis Ukraine”

This statement by former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul, which has been used by the media as part of their characterization of Ukraine as a liberal democracy, is blatantly false. While the statement by Putin, that he ordered the invasion of Ukraine to “denazify” its government is also false, the truth is that the recent history of Ukraine is rife with evidence of the sway of neo-Nazi forces.

The reality behind the propaganda is that the West and its Ukrainian allies have opportunistically exploited and empowered the extreme right in Ukraine, first to pull off the 2014 coup, and then by redirecting it to fight separatists in Eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and its founders played leading roles in the U.S-backed coup in February 2014. As the Maidan movement moved from peaceful protests to pitched battles with police and violent, armed marches and rejected the agreement negotiated by the French, German and Polish foreign ministers for new elections, the Right Sector (associated with Svoboda) refused to disarm and led the climactic march on Parliament that overthrew the government.

After the coup, the Right Sector helped to consolidate the new order by attacking and breaking up anti-coup protests, in what their leader described to Newsweek as a “war” to “cleanse the country” of pro-Russian protesters. This campaign climaxed on May 2nd with the massacre of 42 anti-coup protesters in a fiery inferno, after they took shelter from Right Sector attackers in the Trades Unions House in Odessa.

What followed was a struggle of Russian separatists for autonomy in the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, where over 14,000 have died since 2014. The Azov Battalion, founded by an avowed white supremacist who claimed that Ukraine’s national purpose was to rid the country of Jews and other inferior races, led the post-coup government’s assault on the self-declared republics. In 2014 the Battalion was incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard.

While this is the history of extreme rightwing involvement in the coup that established the current government, the question might be posed, what about today. The Svoboda Party’s standing in the government has diminished significantly, but that could well be due to the rise of other anti-Russian parties. It also may be due to the acceptance of the ultra-nationalist and racist ideas by the mainstream in Ukraine.

A recent report from the NAACP about the refugees from the Russian invasion, discloses that Black and brown men and women have been forced off trains and buses, others have been verbally and physically attacked and still more have been refused entry in Poland by Ukrainian security forces and border guards. In the letter to the EU, the NAACP wrote:

"We write today with an urgent concern regarding reports that Black families, immigrants from the African diaspora, and other people of color who reside in Ukraine have been treated in a discriminatory manner as they flee the escalating war in Ukraine. Press reports and online videos reflect the use of racial hierarchy, violence, and state action taken against refugees of color as they attempt to flee Ukraine and enter bordering states of the European Union."

The NAACP, the African Union and a coalition of Black lawyers have filed an urgent appeal with the UN seeking to ensure that border guards and security forces respect the human rights of Black and brown people.

The cleansing of the Ukraine’s current government is clearly necessary for the US and NATO to take sides and escalate the crisis, rather than work towards negotiations and de-escalation. Ramping up arms shipments to Ukraine and putting sanctions on Russia are not going to resolve this crisis, but they will increase the suffering of the people of Ukraine. If we understand the backstory of the war (see my earlier post) then an article I saw recently rings very true: the US and NATO ignited the crisis in Ukraine and have left the Ukrainians to do the fighting and dying.

What’s next if the two sides continue to escalate could be even worse - for the Ukrainians, for the Russians, for the Americans, for the world. What is needed to end this crisis is diplomacy to guarantee the independence of Ukraine and the security concerns of the Russians. To have those negotiations, a third party (the US/NATO) must agree to end its attempts to expand its military power and come to the table with sincere proposals for nuclear and other military drawdown in Europe.

Another Voice for Sanity - CODEPINK

As the old song goes "There must be some way out of here..."

In this clear and well documented piece, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies

point out that the Russian invasion is "illegal" despite its claims of provocation. But they argue convincingly that it was provoked, both by Ukraine and the US/NATO. The conclusion is that the US/NATO and the Ukraine must negotiate in good faith around the security concerns raise by the Russians & ethnic Russians in Ukraine, concerns that were raised BEFORE the current crisis and were met by stonewalling on the part of the US/NATO.

How the US started a cold war with Russia and left Ukraine to fight it (March 1, 2022)

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies

The defenders of Ukraine are bravely resisting Russian aggression, shaming the rest of the world and the UN Security Council for its failure to protect them. It is an encouraging sign that the Russians and Ukrainians are holding talks in Belarus that may lead to a ceasefire. All efforts must be made to bring an end to this war before the Russian war machine kills thousands more of Ukraine’s defenders and civilians, and forces hundreds of thousands more to flee. 

But there is a more insidious reality at work beneath the surface of this classic morality play, and that is the role of the United States and NATO in setting the stage for this crisis.

President Biden has called the Russian invasion “unprovoked,” but that is far from the truth. In the four days leading up to the invasion, ceasefire monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) documented a dangerous increase in ceasefire violations in Eastern Ukraine, with 5,667 violations and 4,093 explosions.

Most were inside the de facto borders of the Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR) People’s Republics, consistent with incoming shell-fire by Ukraine government forces. With nearly 700 OSCE ceasefire monitors on the ground, it is not credible that these were all “false flag” incidents staged by separatist forces, as U.S. and British officials claimed.

Whether the shell-fire was just another escalation in the long-running civil war or the opening salvos of a new government offensive, it was certainly a provocation. But the Russian invasion has far exceeded any proportionate action to defend the DPR and LPR from those attacks, making it disproportionate and illegal.

In the larger context though, Ukraine has become an unwitting victim and proxy in the resurgent U.S. Cold War against Russia and China, in which the United States has surrounded both countries with military forces and offensive weapons, withdrawn from a whole series of arms control treaties, and refused to negotiate resolutions to rational security concerns raised by Russia.   In December 2021, after a summit between Presidents Biden and Putin, Russia submitted a draft proposal for a new mutual security treaty between Russia and NATO, with 9 articles to be negotiated. They represented a reasonable basis for a serious exchange. The most pertinent to the crisis in Ukraine was simply to agree that NATO would not accept Ukraine as a new member, which is not on the table in the foreseeable future in any case. But the Biden administration brushed off Russia’s entire proposal as a nonstarter, not even a basis for negotiations.

So why was negotiating a mutual security treaty so unacceptable that Biden was ready to risk thousands of Ukrainian lives, although not a single American life, rather than attempt to find common ground? What does that say about the relative value that Biden and his colleagues place on American versus Ukrainian lives? And what is this strange position that the United States occupies in today’s world that permits an American president to risk so many Ukrainian lives without asking Americans to share their pain and sacrifice?

The breakdown in U.S. relations with Russia and the failure of Biden’s inflexible brinkmanship precipitated this war, and yet Biden’s policy “externalizes” all the pain and suffering so that Americans can, as another wartime president once said, “go about their business” and keep shopping. America’s European allies, who must now house hundreds of thousands of refugees and face spiraling energy prices, should be wary of falling in line behind this kind of “leadership” before they, too, end up on the front line.

At the end of the Cold War, the Warsaw Pact, NATO’s Eastern European counterpart, was dissolved, and NATO should have been as well, since it had achieved the purpose it was built to serve. Instead, NATO has lived on as a dangerous, out-of-control military alliance dedicated mainly to expanding its sphere of operations and justifying its own existence. It has expanded from 16 countries in 1991 to a total of 30 countries today, incorporating most of Eastern Europe, at the same time as it has committed aggression, bombings of civilians and other war crimes. 
In 1999, NATO launched an illegal war to militarily carve out an independent Kosovo from the remnants of Yugoslavia. NATO airstrikes during the Kosovo War killed hundreds of civilians, and its leading ally in the war, Kosovo President Hashim Thaci, is now on trial at The Hague for the appalling war crimes he committed under the cover of NATO bombing, including cold-blooded murders of hundreds of prisoners to sell their internal organs on the international transplant market. Far from the North Atlantic, NATO joined the United States in its 20-year war in Afghanistan, and then attacked and destroyed Libya in 2011, leaving behind a failed state, a continuing refugee crisis and violence and chaos across the region.In 1991, as part of a Soviet agreement to accept the reunification of East and West Germany, Western leaders assured their Soviet counterparts that they would not expand NATO any closer to Russia than the border of a united Germany. U.S. Secretary of State James Baker promised that NATO would not advance “one inch” beyond the German border. The West’s broken promises are spelled out for all to see in 30 declassified documents published on the National Security Archive website.

After expanding across Eastern Europe and waging wars in Afghanistan and Libya, NATO has predictably come full circle to once again view Russia as its principal enemy. U.S. nuclear weapons are now based in five NATO countries in Europe: Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Turkey, while France and the U.K. already have their own nuclear arsenals. U.S. “missile defense” systems, which could be converted to fire offensive nuclear missiles, are based in Poland and Romania, including at a base in Poland only 100 miles from the Russian border.

Another Russian request in its December proposal was for the United States to simply rejoin the 1988 INF Treaty (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty), under which both sides agreed not to deploy short- or intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe. Trump withdrew from the treaty in 2019 on the advice of his National Security Adviser, John Bolton, who also has the scalps of the 1972 ABM Treaty, the 2015 JCPOA with Iran and the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea dangling from his gun-belt.

None of this can justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the world should take Russia seriously when it says that its conditions for ending the war and returning to diplomacy are Ukrainian neutrality and disarmament. While no country can be expected to completely disarm in today’s armed-to-the-teeth world, neutrality could be a serious long-term option for Ukraine.

There are many successful precedents, like Switzerland, Austria, Ireland, Finland and Costa Rica. Or take the case of Vietnam. It has a common border and serious maritime disputes with China, but Vietnam has resisted U.S. efforts to embroil it in its Cold War with China, and remains committed to its long-standing “Four Nos” policy: no military alliances; no affiliation with one country against another; no foreign military bases; and no threats or uses of force. 
The world must do whatever it takes to obtain a ceasefire in Ukraine and make it stick. Maybe UN Secretary General Guterres or a UN special representative could act as a mediator, possibly with a peacekeeping role for the UN. This will not be easy – one of the still unlearned lessons of other wars is that it is easier to prevent war through serious diplomacy and a genuine commitment to peace than to end a war once it has started.

If and when there is a ceasefire, all parties must be prepared to start afresh to negotiate lasting diplomatic solutions that will allow all the people of Donbas, Ukraine, Russia, the United States and other NATO members to live in peace. Security is not a zero-sum game, and no country or group of countries can achieve lasting security by undermining the security of others.

The United States and Russia must also finally assume the responsibility that comes with stockpiling over 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons, and agree on a plan to start dismantling them, in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the new UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

Lastly, as Americans condemn Russia’s aggression, it would be the epitome of hypocrisy to forget or ignore the many recent wars in which the United States and its allies have been the aggressors: in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Somalia, Palestine, Pakistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen.We sincerely hope that Russia will end its illegal, brutal invasion of Ukraine long before it commits a fraction of the massive killing and destruction that the United States and its allies have committed in our illegal wars.

Chronicle of a war foretold

I thought about writing about this outstanding analysis by Chris Hedges, but decided to post it as is, since it clearly demonstrates what I've been struggling to say about the backstory of the war in Ukraine. Only one thing is missing and I hope to be able to write about that soon; besides the profits of the military-industrial complex, which Eisenhower warned us about 61 years ago, what are the economic forces driving BOTH the US/NATO and Russia/China in this new Cold War. (I'm somewhat reluctant to call it "new", since as Hedges points out, this started just as the "old" Cold War was ending.)

Hedges: Chronicle of a War Foretold - Feb. 26, 2022

After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a near universal understanding among political leaders that NATO expansion would be a foolish provocation against Russia. How naive we were to think the military-industrial complex would allow such sanity to prevail.

I was in Eastern Europe in 1989, reporting on the revolutions that overthrew the ossified communist dictatorships that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was a time of hope. NATO, with the breakup of the Soviet empire, became obsolete. President Mikhail Gorbachev reached out to Washington and Europe to build a new security pact that would include Russia. Secretary of State James Baker in the Reagan administration, along with the West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, assured the Soviet leader that if Germany was unified NATO would not be extended beyond the new borders. The commitment not to expand NATO, also made by Great Britain and France, appeared to herald a new global order. We saw the peace dividend dangled before us, the promise that the massive expenditures on weapons that characterized the Cold War would be converted into expenditures on social programs and infrastructures that had long been neglected to feed the insatiable appetite of the military.

There was a near universal understanding among diplomats and political leaders at the time that any attempt to expand NATO was foolish, an unwarranted provocation against Russia that would obliterate the ties and bonds that happily emerged at the end of the Cold War. 

How naive we were. The war industry did not intend to shrink its power or its profits. It set out almost immediately to recruit the former Communist Bloc countries into the European Union and NATO. Countries that joined NATO, which now include Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia were forced to reconfigure their militaries, often through hefty loans, to become compatible with NATO military hardware.

There would be no peace dividend. The expansion of NATO swiftly became a multi-billion-dollar bonanza for the corporations that had profited from the Cold War. (Poland, for example, just agreed to spend $ 6 billion on M1 Abrams tanks and other U.S. military equipment.) If Russia would not acquiesce to again being the enemy, then Russia would be pressured into becoming the enemy. And here we are. On the brink of another Cold War, one from which only the war industry will profit while, as W. H. Auden wrote, the little children die in the streets.

The consequences of pushing NATO up to the borders with Russia — there is now a NATO missile base in Poland 100 miles from the Russian border — were well known to policy makers. Yet they did it anyway. It made no geopolitical sense. But it made commercial sense. War, after all, is a business, a very lucrative one. It is why we spent two decades in Afghanistan although there was near universal consensus after a few years of fruitless fighting that we had waded into a quagmire we could never win.

In a classified diplomatic cable obtained and released by WikiLeaks dated February 1, 2008, written from Moscow, and addressed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, NATO-European Union Cooperative, National Security Council, Russia Moscow Political Collective, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of State, there was an unequivocal understanding that expanding NATO risked an eventual conflict with Russia, especially over Ukraine.

“Not only does Russia perceive encirclement [by NATO], and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests,” the cable reads. “Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face. . . . Dmitri Trenin, Deputy Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, expressed concern that Ukraine was, in the long-term, the most potentially destabilizing factor in U.S.-Russian relations, given the level of emotion and neuralgia triggered by its quest for NATO membership . . . Because membership remained divisive in Ukrainian domestic politics, it created an opening for Russian intervention. Trenin expressed concern that elements within the Russian establishment would be encouraged to meddle, stimulating U.S. overt encouragement of opposing political forces, and leaving the U.S. and Russia in a classic confrontational posture.”

The Obama administration, not wanting to further inflame tensions with Russia, blocked arms sales to Kiev. But this act of prudence was abandoned by the Trump and Biden administrations. Weapons from the U.S. and Great Britain are pouring into Ukraine, part of the $1.5 billion in promised military aid. The equipment includes hundreds of sophisticated Javelins and NLAW anti-tank weapons despite repeated protests by Moscow. 

The United States and its NATO allies have no intention of sending troops to Ukraine. Rather, they will flood the country with weapons, which is what it did in the 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia. 

The conflict in Ukraine echoes the novel “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  In the novel it is acknowledged by the narrator that “there had never been a death more foretold” and yet no one was able or willing to stop it. All of us who reported from Eastern Europe in 1989 knew the consequences of provoking Russia, and yet few have raised their voices to halt the madness.  The methodical steps towards war took on a life of their own, moving us like sleepwalkers towards disaster. 

Once NATO expanded into Eastern Europe, the Clinton administration promised Moscow that NATO combat troops would not be stationed in Eastern Europe, the defining issue of the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act on Mutual Relations. This promise again turned out to be a lie. Then in 2014 the U.S. backed a coup against the Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych who sought to build an economic alliance with Russia rather than the European Union. Of course, once integrated into the European Union, as seen in the rest of Eastern Europe, the next step is integration into NATO.  Russia, spooked by the coup, alarmed at the overtures by the EU and NATO, then annexed Crimea, largely populated by Russian speakers. And the death spiral that led us to the conflict currently underway in Ukraine became unstoppable. 

The war state needs enemies to sustain itself. When an enemy can’t be found, an enemy is manufactured. Putin has become, in the words of Senator Angus King, the new Hitler, out to grab Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe. The full-throated cries for war, echoed shamelessly by the press, are justified by draining the conflict of historical context, by elevating ourselves as the saviors and whoever we oppose, from Saddam Hussein to Putin, as the new Nazi leader. 

I don’t know where this will end up. We must remember, as Putin reminded us, that Russia is a nuclear power. We must remember that once you open the Pandora’s box of war it unleashes dark and murderous forces no one can control. I know this from personal experience. The match has been lit. The tragedy is that there was never any dispute about how the conflagration would start. 

 

COVID relief in Alabama - Build more prisons (and its not just Alabama)

In Alabama, state officials and Governor Kay Ivey proposed to use upwards of $500 million in COVID relief funds for the financing of new prisons. The move, which was blocked by the Biden Administration, is just one of many to respond to the COVID crisis with more money for police and prisons. 

And not to fear. Despite the ruling against using the COVID relief funds, Alabama's Governor continues to push for building two new men’s prisons that “will be larger than any current prisons”.

And Alabama is not alone. As the continuing psychological, social and economic effects of the pandemic (on top of the other crises we are facing) are reflected in harmful behaviors, the response is  LAW & ORDER!

After the protests over the murder of George Floyd and countless others, there were timid (to say the least) moves in some places to reign in the growth of police and the use of force in responding to crises. Those are gone, as on the local, national and international level, we see the ramping up of the police and the military to preserve "a rules based order" which supports a system that benefits the few and controls the many. Our nation's priorities, at every level, are reflected in what our government spends and doesn't spend. 

Until we address the harm that our economic, political and social system perpetrates from the cradle to the grave, there will be no justice. And for those who demand justice, there will be no peace.

The Backstory on the War in Ukraine

 Some preliminary thoughts:

 

The same people who condemn the Russians for invading Ukraine have no problem with the US invading countries, overthrowing governments and using drones to attack wedding parties. They seem to have forgotten the Iraq War, a war of choice that the US launched with massive bombing (Shock and Awe) and 250,000 ground forces. The only difference I see is that it was us, not them, doing the killing.

The same media, which is bringing us minute by minute accounts of the brutality of war in Ukraine, seems to have forgotten that the US sent 550,000 troops into a small Asian country 7,000 miles from our borders and used more ordnance than was used by all sides in WW II to subdue a popular nationalist revolution and that still today, our country’s actions are causing mass casualties in Afghanistan, throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and elsewhere. Why is the liberal-dominated media covering this attack on the people of Ukraine so differently? Is it because the people who are dying in Ukraine are white?

The War in the Ukraine

As Russian tanks roll into Ukraine and Russian planes bomb sites in Ukrainian cities creating misery and death and the worst international crisis since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the US Government and its allies and a compliant media offer a simplistic explanation of what this war is all about. A petty autocrat, described by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as “small and pale”, is bent on restoring the power and glory of the former Soviet Union, and has launched this invasion in an attempt to overthrow a democratic government and expand the power of the nation he rules on his way to restoring the old Soviet empire. Based on that analysis, the US and its allies must oppose the invasion by force (economic, for now) and by any and all means necessary if sanctions don’t result in the Russians immediately withdrawing their troops from Ukraine. Appeasement (a word that almost nobody is using, but is the basis of their thinking) is not an option.

In response to the unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation, it is absolutely clear that Putin and the Russians who support him, should face international condemnation. But, the problem with simple explanations is that they ignore important factors and limit our understanding of what is really going on and what can and must be done to resolve the crisis. This backstory includes the international context of the crisis and the history that led to it; ignoring these factors almost always leads to disastrous responses including escalation, which can lead down the road to more, and perhaps wider, war. We don’t have to look far in history to find examples. In this case, the one that is most frightening is WW I. I’ll come back to that later.

So, what is the context of the current crisis? Since the end of the Cold War, the dominant military and economic power in the world has been the US, along with its allies in Western Europe and East Asia. That power is assured by the most massive military spending in history (the US spends more than the next 10 countries combined and most of them are our allies in Western Europe) and by an enormous global military presence (the US has bases in more than 80 countries around the world), which protects a system of economic globalization, allowing the continued exploitation of the Global South (formerly the Third World) and extending it to areas in Eastern Europe that were formerly allied with the old Soviet Union.

This system is referred to by the US and its Western European allies as a “rules-based international order”. It has been used to justify US led interventions around the world since the end of WWII, from the wars in Korea and Vietnam and other interventions in dozens of countries to “prevent the spread of Communism”, to the War on Terror (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, North Africa and on and on) and the widespread use of sanctions, a form of economic warfare, to force other nations to abide by “the rules”. (According to the US Department of the Treasury, the US currently has sanctions of various kinds in operation against more than 25 different countries, and many of whom are also subject to military intervention. In at least one case, Cuba, these sanctions have been in place for 60 years.)

The questions we need to ask is “who made these rules and who benefits from them”? If one looks at the last 80 years, the answer should be clear – the US and its allies in Western Europe (with the more recent addition of a junior partner, the East Asian “Tigers”) have made the rules and the very wealthy in these countries benefit handsomely as a result of them. Very handsomely!

How does China fit into this context? Since the beginning of the new millennium, the economic dominance of US has been challenged by China, which has a loose alliance of convenience with Russia (the enemy of my enemy is my friend?). China’s tremendous economic growth (and its potential for much more) and it’s developing ties to the Global South (The Belt and Road Initiative, which currently includes 145 countries) threatens US/Western European dominance in these areas. It should not be surprising that there is noise in the background of the crisis in Ukraine about a possible Chinese move against Taiwan. There are rumblings of a trade war with China. Different players, same game?

If the context here provides a background, the history provides an understanding of the motives of the players – Ukraine, Russia, NATO and the US. Although Russian and Ukrainian relations go back a long way, the Russians still remember that significant numbers of Ukrainian nationalists collaborated with the Nazis in WW II after Germany attacked the Soviet Union. Furthermore, it should be noted that today’s neo–Nazi Ukrainian nationalists, have ties to the Ukrainian military. The Azov Battalion, which functions as an armed wing of the broader Ukrainian white nationalist Azov Movement, began as a volunteer anti-Russia militia before formally joining the Ukrainian National Guard in 2014; the regiment is known for its hardcore right-wing ultranationalism and the neo-Nazi ideology pervasive among its members. 

The current crisis had its origins in the events following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the break up of the Warsaw Pact and the old Soviet Union in the early 1990s. When the US and its NATO allies were pushing for German reunification, the Soviets (and later the Russians) sought guarantees of their security in the post-Cold War era. A huge sticking point was the expansion of NATO.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) had been a Cold War alliance, formed by the US and a few of its postwar allies to stop the spread of communism in the late 1940s. It was specifically directed against the Soviet Union, which had set up pro-Soviet governments in the countries it had liberated from the Nazis. The US claimed the Soviets had intensions of overrunning the rest of Europe, even though the incredible losses (at least 25 million dead, including 9 million soldiers) and destruction that SU had suffered during WWII would have made that impossible, besides which the US had the only nuclear weapons and had shown a willingness to use them in 1945.

In reality, NATO (founded in 1949) was the military arm of a massive US effort (including the Marshall Plan, which was even extended to our former WWII enemies, West Germany and Japan, but not to the Soviet Union or Eastern European countries) in order to prevent the possibility that Communist governments would come to power through elections in Western and Southern Europe (which almost happened on a couple of occasions in the immediate aftermath of the war) and to guarantee American political and economic domination of Western Europe. The Russians responded by forming the Warsaw Pact (founded in 1955, dissolved in 1991) as an alliance against the NATO powers. The lines had been drawn and remained relatively stable until 1990, although NATO expanded well beyond its original members and even came to include West Germany.

So, one might imagine that following the breakup of the Warsaw Pact and then the Soviet Union as the result of an incredibly peaceful revolution, the need for NATO would disappear and a new security system might replace it that would include Russia. But that’s not what happened. Instead, the US and the other NATO powers moved to expand NATO further and further east.

The first expansion came during the reunification of Germany. West Germany had been part of NATO and the US wanted to keep Germany (the largest and most powerful NATO member after the US) in NATO. In order to get Russian acquiescence, the US made it clear that there would be no further expansion of NATO to the east so as not to threaten Russian security. While there is a debate as to whether the US made an explicit pledge, or whether it was implicit, it is clear that as Boris Yeltsin wrote in a letter to Bill Clinton referring to the “Two Plus Four Treaty”, which pertained to the reunification of Germany, “The spirit of the treaty precludes the option of expanding the NATO zone into the East.”

Opposition to NATO expansion was not limited to the democratically elected Russian leader during the 1990s. Jack Matlock, who was US Ambassador to Moscow at the time of German reunification, has stated that “categorical assurances” were given that NATO would not expand eastward. George Kennan, author of the Cold War doctrine of containment, had this to say about the expansion of NATO in the late 1990s:

“I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the founding fathers of this country turn over in their graves.

“Don’t people understand? Our differences in the Cold War were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history. Russia’s democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these countries we’ve just signed up to defend from Russia. Of course, there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are (emphasis is mine) — but this is just wrong.”

 

However, despite the agreement, explicit or tacit, not to expand eastward, more and more nations which had been part of the Warsaw Pact and then those which had been part of the Soviet Union were encouraged to join the alliance as it took on the task of containing, not communism, but Russia, the same Russia that had participated in the dismantling of the old Soviet Union.

It might be worth adding here, that the US “War on Terrorism” also added to, what from the Russian perspective, looked like encirclement. Iraq and Afghanistan (along with NATO member Turkey) would provide a southern tier of countries to what could be described as a tightening noose around Russia. US wars in the Middle East also shored up the West’s access to oil in the economic competition with Russia and China. This was certainly a factor in Russia’s military intervention in Syria.

In a sense, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is an escalation of what it views as the only way it has to respond to the Western expansion and encirclement. Push the bear up against the wall and it should surprise no one that it becomes aggressive. The continuing expansion of NATO has done just that.

Why Ukraine? The issue of NATO expansion has been raised by the Russians again and again, but it is Ukraine that has sparked Russian military intervention, first around Crimea and now. In terms of geopolitical importance, Ukraine is far and above the most significant of the former republics of the Soviet Union. Its population is roughly 1/3 that of Russia and much larger than any of the other former Soviet republics and its location (a long border with Russia and major ports on the Black Sea, make it critical, from the Russian standpoint, that it not become part of an anti-Russian alliance. Russian security, both militarily and economically, depends on a neutral, or non-aligned, Ukraine.

Much of what passes for analysis in the West is a crude attempt to revive the anticommunism of the first Cold War. “Putin in 2022, like Stalin in 1939, is attempting to reconfigure the geopolitical balance of power.”  “Putin, like Stalin, is attempting to enlarge his state and expand its influence with revanchist claims to territories that had once been part of a larger empire.” “Putin, the former KGB foreign intelligence officer…” There is no mention in these reports about the run up to war of US involvement in the 2014 coup in Ukraine or that, since 2014, the U.S. has sent over $2.7 billion in weapons to Ukraine. There is no mention of the fact that the Ukrainian government has ignored the Minsk Agreement for years by attempting to reassert control over Donetsk and Luhansk or that there were over 5,000 violations of the cease fire in Donetsk and Luhansk by both sides in just the 4 days prior to the Russian invasion. All we get is Putin, Putin, Putin.

This analysis and much of the “factual” information coming out of the Ukraine, which is repeated over and over again in the media, even in some sources that consider themselves progressive, needs to be carefully vetted. As the fog of war settles over the crisis in Ukraine, it is important for the left to shed light on what is really happening.

Which brings me back to WWI. While the government and media are trying to convince us that what we are facing is the lead up to WWII and that negotiations on the causes of the conflict are tantamount to appeasement, I think we need to look at WWI as a more accurate forerunner to the current situation. The conflict in WWI resulted from the clash of capitalists of the old imperial system (or world order) dominated by Britain, with capitalists from the rising imperial power, Germany. As a result, both these empires stumbled into what was the most destructive war in history up until that time, a war that was dubbed “The War to End all Wars”. Unfortunately, many of the largest left political parties in Europe, the Social Democrats, rallied around their own capitalists and supported the war, sending millions of workers off to die in the trenches.

Should we make the same mistakes this time, we will have the final war to end all wars.

What is to be done to prevent that? Below are some ideas from a major peace organization in the US, Code Pink, and from the DSA (a descendent of the one Socialist party that chose not to support the war in 1917 and whose leader, Eugene V. Debs, went to jail for his opposition).

 

From Code Pink

“During this perilous time, when further military escalation could trigger a Chernobyl radioactive meltdown or push us to the brink of nuclear annihilation, we urge President Biden and Congress to stop the flow of weapons to Ukraine, offer humanitarian assistance and safe refuge, renew lapsed arms control treaties (Anti-Ballistic Missile, Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, Open Skies) the U.S. abandoned and reject the imposition of massive sanctions that will harm the Russian people who, like us, want peace and security.”

From the Democratic Socialists of America

“The Democratic Socialists of America condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and demands immediate diplomacy and de-escalation to resolve this crisis. We stand in solidarity with the working classes of Ukraine and Russia who will undoubtedly bear the brunt of this war, and with antiwar protestors in both countries and around the world who are calling for a diplomatic resolution.

“This extreme and asymmetrical escalation is an illegal act under the United Nations Charter and severely threatens the livelihoods and well-being of working-class peoples in Ukraine, Russia, and across the region. We urge an immediate ceasefire and the total withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine. 

There is no solution through war or further intervention. This crisis requires an immediate international antiwar response demanding de-escalation, international cooperation, and opposition to unilateral coercive measures, militarization, and other forms of economic and military brinkmanship that will only exacerbate the human toll of this conflict.

“DSA reaffirms our call for the US to withdraw from NATO and to end the imperialist expansionism that set the stage for this conflict. We call on antiwar activists in the US and across the world to oppose violent escalations, demand a lasting diplomatic solution, and stress the crucial need to accept any and all refugees resulting from this crisis. Much of the next ten years are coming into view through this attack. While the failures of neoliberal order are clear to everyone, the ruling class is trying to build a new world, through a dystopic transition grounded in militarism, imperialism, and war. Socialists have a duty to build an alternative.” 

  

George Vlasits

Vietnam War draft resister

Postscript – 3/2/22

Things could get a lot worse for the Ukrainians. Russia’s invasion has not followed the typical pattern of the Russian military, which depends on the heavy use of artillery (much like the US’s use of air power, witness Iraq and Vietnam.)

Recent reading of a posting from Chartbook #90 by a military historian, Adam Tooze, places this war in the context of a number of conflicts since the “end” of the Cold War. At this point it is neither the largest nor anywhere near the most devastating of the ‘medium size” wars since 1990, which “is not one characterized only by small-scale irregular conflict, fundamentalist insurgencies and the like. It has been punctuated by the explosion of wars involving substantial contingents of regular troops numbering between 50 and 200,000 strong” and resulting in deaths of hundreds of thousands (in the case of Central African conflicts, millions) of civilians as well as combatants.

To put it bluntly, the US and its NATO allies have failed miserably to keep the peace and provide security in Europe and around the world. That objective cannot be accomplished by wasting the resources of our country on a bloated military and providing governments more and more military aid. It cannot be done by waging war. The Warfare State of the Union address delivered by President Biden does not give me any hope that the Democratic Party leadership represents the needs of ordinary Americans, much less what has to change to begin to provide real security and peace in the international arena. Increasingly, I get the feeling that it is 1968 all over again.