LET US NOT BE SILENT ABOUT UKRAINE OR RUSSIA
I read an article called “The Deafening Silence of Intellectuals in the Face of Growing Global Armed Conflicts” and I realized that we need to speak up more and more loudly in favor of peace. Why do we read only about more weapons for Ukraine and not about peace initiatives? There is a Chinese peace initiative, and I welcome it. There is an African peace initiative, and I welcome that as well (see below). Peace should be the objective … but is it?
We should be denouncing the NATO-led culture of aggression that has become accepted by European nations. Of course years of NATO expansion made Russia feel increasingly nervous. Russia’s borders are surrounded by NATO missiles. Of course the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a scandal, but equally scandalous is the eastward expansion of NATO and the idea frequently expressed in conservative American circles that the USA should seize the opportunity to defeat and crush Russia.
Europe needs to develop a separate foreign and peace policy, distinct from expansionist and warmongering US ambitions.
War is never a win: both sides always lose. Family tragedies and physical destruction affect both sides. We need to denounce war.
Here is an extract from the article challenging intellectuals to speak up:
The Deafening Silence of Intellectuals in the Face of Growing Global Armed Conflicts
Boaventura de Sousa Santos | Globetrotter – TRANSCEND Media Service
“Have they forgotten that post-Soviet Russia sought to join NATO and the EU but was rebuffed, and that, contrary to what had been promised to the former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, NATO expansion on Russia’s borders may constitute a legitimate defense concern on the part of Russia, even if the invasion of Ukraine is indeed illegal, as I myself repeatedly denounced from day one? Don’t they know that it was the U.S. and the United Kingdom who boycotted the first peace negotiations shortly after the war broke out?
“Have the commentators not considered, even for a moment, that a nuclear power that finds itself faced with the possibility of defeat in a conventional conflict might resort to using its nuclear weapons, which in turn could lead to nuclear catastrophe? Don’t they see that two nationalisms, one Ukrainian, and the other Russian, are being exploited in the war in Ukraine to force Europe into total dependence on the U.S. and to stop the expansion of China, the country with which the U.S. is really at war? Don’t the commentators realize that today’s Ukraine is tomorrow’s Taiwan? Curiously enough, no details are ever offered in the midst of all this ventriloquistic propaganda fever regarding what a defeat of Russia will mean; will it lead to the ousting of Russian President Vladimir Putin or to the balkanizing of Russia
The anti-communist ideology that dominated the Western world until the 1990s is being surreptitiously recycled to promote anti-Russian hatred to the point of hysteria. The US foreign policy team is composed of - and led by – people who grew up with the Cold War. They need to get over it.
U.S. Major-General Smedley Butler fought in WWI and realized that he was fighting not for freedom, but for profit.
BUT WHAT ABOUT WAR PROFITEERS? Here is an article that shows how commercial profit-making in USA supports the war industry. After all, everyone knows that “the business of America is business,” which is how Americans become rich.
War for Profit: A Very Short History
In this TRANSCEND article published May 15th, Brad Wolf - Executive Director and co-founder of Peace Action Network of Lancaster, Pennsylvania – describes how bankers, chemical companies and arms manufacturers pushed the United States into war during the 20th century and how their scandals were revealed by the Senate Nye Committee.
“The committee listened daily to men striving to defend acts which found them nothing more than international racketeers, bent upon gaining profit through a game of arming the world to fight itself,” Senator Nye declared in an October 1934 radio address.
Summing up his article, Brad Wolf “Today, the Merchants of Death thrive behind a veil of duplicity and slick media campaigns. They have assimilated mainstream media and academia into their conglomerate. But their crimes are clear, and the evidence is overwhelming. Wherever they go, suffering and death, war crimes and atrocities, profits, and stock buybacks follow.”
https://www.transcend.org/tms/2023/05/war-for-profit-a-very-short-history/
AFRICAN PEACE INITIATIVE for UKRAINE
Associated Press (AP) reported May 17th that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have agreed to separate meetings with a delegation of leaders from six African countries to discuss a possible plan to end the war in Ukraine, South Africa’s president said Tuesday.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was a key negotiator for the Good Friday Agreement that ended armed violence in Ireland. He has a lot of credibility. Ramaphosa says he has spoken with Putin and Zelenskyy by phone over the weekend and they each agreed to host “an African leaders peace mission” in Moscow and Kyiv, respectively.
“Principal to our discussions are efforts to find a peaceful resolution to the devastating conflict in the Ukraine,” Ramaphosa said.
The leaders of Zambia, Senegal, Republic of Congo, Uganda and Egypt would make up the delegation along with Ramaphosa, he said in a statement. Putin and Zelenskyy gave him the go-ahead to “commence the preparations,” the South African leader said.
