NEW YORK, Oct 02 (IPS) – The world could have dodged a right away bullet when the US intelligence businesses warned, this week, that by giving in to Ukraine’s pleading for lengthy vary missiles that might assault targets deep into Russia, we’d be poking the Russian bear past its persistence with out even influencing the result of the battle in Ukraine’s favor.
There had been a way of ready with bated breath within the wake of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin current announcement that he would decrease the edge for Russia’s use of nuclear weapons, because the US and its NATO allies broadcasted their plans to disregard a repeated “pink line” articulated by US President Biden to not present arms to Ukraine which could possibly be launched deep inside Russia.
Britain is enjoying its normal provocative position by sending clear messages that it might welcome US approval to let Ukraine use its “Storm Shadow” long-range missiles. We simply received a brief breather, in gentle of this not too long ago issued public US intelligence analysis.
Regardless of repeated requests to the US from Russian President Vladmir Putin to honor US guarantees made to Gorbachev and Yeltsin that the US wouldn’t increase NATO east of a unified Germany, when the wall got here down and Gorbachev ended the Warsaw Pact and Soviet occupation of Japanese Europe with out a shot, the US, pushed by visions of Empire, steadily expanded NATO eastward.
It started with Clinton’s annexation of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999, adopted by Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2004, and Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia between 2009 and 2017. At one level Putin was so dismayed at this enlargement, he requested the Clinton administration if Russia might be a part of NATO, however he was denied membership.
Putin made it very clear to the US and NATO that Russia, which shares a protracted border with Ukraine, wouldn’t tolerate Ukraine turning into a member of NATO. After the US supported a 2014 coup d’état changing the pro-Russian president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, with Petro Poroshenko who instantly introduced that solely the Ukrainian language can be acknowledged in Ukraine, a civil battle broke out within the Japanese a part of the nation the place nearly all of the folks have been Russian and Russian talking. Greater than 14,000 folks have been killed in that battle earlier than Russia invaded Ukraine.
Putin offered a draft settlement in 2021 to the US proposing that Ukraine stay impartial and that the Donbass area, present process the civil battle, stay in Ukraine as a federation and have the best to talk Russian. The US utterly ignored the proposal and Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Putin was negotiating for a ceasefire with Yeltsin six months after the invasion, however Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister got here to Ukraine and advised Zelensky to not make the deal! And the slaughter continues, with greater than 20,000 civilians and 100,000 troopers killed.
Because of the transient respite we simply acquired from imminent nuclear annihilation, because of the smart US intelligence companies who took Putin’s current warnings as a motive for warning in pursuing a headlong and heedless enlargement of army support to Ukraine, it’s time to change the dialog with daring new proposals.
Proposals which might be assured to carry us a respite from the rising terror. Proposals that may carry a shift in planetary consciousness permitting us to reply cooperatively to the approaching cataclysmic local weather catastrophe down the highway! Mom Earth grows impatient with the folly of humankind.
Listed below are a sequence of steps which might be assured to carry us peace on earth if the US is able to mobilize towards the MICIMATT (Navy Industrial, Congressional Intelligence, Media, Educational, Suppose Tank complicated) and work for peace!
– Take up repeated Russian and Chinese language proposals within the UN and in frequent speeches for a treaty to ban weapons in house
– Take up repeated Russian and Chinese language proposals within the UN to barter a cyberwar ban treaty
– Reinstate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia and get US missiles positioned by Obama and Trump out of Poland and Romania
– Take away US nuclear weapons stationed in 5 NATO states: Turkey, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium as a deal for Russia eradicating its not too long ago positioned weapons from Belarus
– Take all nuclear weapons off excessive alert and separate the warheads from their supply system
as China does–the knowledge of the East
– Dismantle NATO and pull it again from Russia’s border instantly
The ball, as they are saying, is within the US court docket. Or as Pogo Possum, a personality in Walt Kelly’s Fifties sketch was identified to say, “We met the enemy and he’s us!”
There isn’t any doubt that Russia and China can be keen companions in these new initiatives. They’ve been proposing them to the USA for greater than ten years!!
Alice Slater serves on the Boards of World BEYOND Struggle and the International Community Towards Weapons and Nuclear Energy in Area, and as an UN NGO consultant for the Nuclear Age Peace Basis.
IPS UN Bureau
Observe @IPSNewsUNBureau
Observe IPS Information UN Bureau on Instagram
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedUnique supply: Inter Press Service
