Is Peace Possible?

Pro-diplomacy people should keep trying to reach the public and keep trying to change Washington's policy.

Regarding the war in Ukraine, I didn’t yet book an interview with Anatol Lieven or any scholar like that, but I’ll make that happen and hopefully get some clear answers to the key questions that I raised previously—I think that answering those key questions will really clarify things for the public and really make the public see that diplomacy makes sense.

Someone wrote to me that I should suggest “concrete steps people can take to try to help remedy the situation”—I’ll do that, but first I want to clarify for people the answers to those key questions so that everyone sees the path to peace and recognizes that there’s nothing spooky or scary or bad about pursuing diplomacy.

And someone wrote to me that “the pro-diplomacy commentators have painted a very clear picture, but it can’t reach the public in our increasingly totalitarian doctrinal system”—it’s definitely true that the constraints on our thinking and information have been unbelievably sharp during this war, but the dovish friends I asked those key questions to didn’t have any answers, so I’m skeptical as to how clear a picture doves have actually managed to paint.

The NYT did run one of the most dovish and critical pieces that they’ve yet run regarding war in Ukraine, so that’s an interesting exception to what our “increasingly totalitarian doctrinal system” inundates us with—in fact, it might even be the single most dovish and critical piece that they’ve run regarding the war in Ukraine. Everyone should check out the piece:

• “The War in Ukraine May Be Impossible to Stop. And the U.S. Deserves Much of the Blame.” (31 May 2022)

One of my friends told me this about the piece, and it’s definitely true that the left has been hawkish during the war in Ukraine:

He seems to be a principled conservative. About the only sector where one hears a rational voice these days.

The NYT piece says that the US is prolonging the war—here are my notes:

• “It was Russia that massed its troops on the frontier last fall and winter and—having demanded from NATO a number of Ukraine-related security guarantees that NATO rejected—began the shelling and killing on Feb. 24.”

• “the United States has helped turn this tragic, local and ambiguous conflict into a potential world conflagration”

• “the West, led by the Biden administration, is giving the conflict a momentum that may be impossible to stop”

• “Russia is not being stymied by a plucky agricultural country a third its size; it is holding its own, at least for now, against NATO’s advanced economic, cyber and battlefield weapons.”

• “The United States is trying to maintain the fiction that arming one’s allies is not the same thing as participating in combat.”

• “Our role in this is not passive or incidental. We have given Ukrainians cause to believe they can prevail in a war of escalation.”

• US policymakers might feel a “sense of moral and political obligation” to “stay the course” and “escalate the conflict” and “match any excess”, given that these policymakers know that thousands of “Ukrainians have died who likely would not have if the United States had stood aside”

• “The United States has shown itself not just liable to escalate but also inclined to.”

• “Noam Chomsky warned against the paradoxical incentives of such ‘heroic pronouncements’ in an April interview. ‘It may feel like Winston Churchill impersonations, very exciting,’ he said. ‘But what they translate into is: Destroy Ukraine.’”

• “Mr. Biden’s suggestion that Mr. Putin be tried for war crimes is an act of consummate irresponsibility.”

• “The charge is so serious that, once leveled, it discourages restraint; after all, a leader who commits one atrocity is no less a war criminal than one who commits a thousand.”

• “The effect, intended or not, is to foreclose any recourse to peace negotiations.”

• “Ukraine, after a robust defense of its cities, can expect further NATO support, know-how and weaponry—a powerful incentive not to end the war anytime soon.”

• “if the war does not end soon, its dangers will increase”

• “The United States is making no concessions.”

• the Biden “administration is closing off avenues of negotiation and working to intensify the war”

• “We’re in it to win it.”

• “With time, the huge import of deadly weaponry, including that from the newly authorized $40 billion allocation, could take the war to a different level.”

• “President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine warned in an address to students this month that the bloodiest days of the war were coming.”

I should clarify that sending weapons to people who are under attack is 100% fine as long as it’s in the context of pursuing diplomacy—it’s not like sending weapons to Ukraine is inherently bad or inherently evil or anything like that, even though Washington’s current policy is hideous and dangerous and immoral.

It’s a race against time to end this war before the world becomes an inferno and the world starves—that might sound apocalyptic, but anyone who follows the apocalyptic coverage of global heating and of global starvation knows that the stakes are literally that high when it comes to the efforts to end this horrifying war.

And regarding diplomacy, it’s not just the millions or billions of innocent lives that are at stake due to global heating and global starvation—it’s also the people in Ukraine whose country is being destroyed and who might even lose everything if Russia goes berserk.

The public needs to have a clear picture of how all this works, though—pro-diplomacy people like myself must paint that picture for the public so that the public can see that peace can actually happen without somehow violating Ukrainians’ freedom or somehow imposing anything on Ukrainians or somehow surrendering to the Russians.

I should spotlight too the fact that this war is driving inflation and that inflation will help the proto-fascist GOP take power in the US—this war’s horrific consequences go on and on, so this really is a race against time.