What's Our Official Policy?
There are MILLIONS of lives at stake. And there might even be BILLIONS of lives at stake.
“We should be honest and clear and non-evasive about the choice that we’ve made—honesty and clarity and non-evasion will allow us to have a good discussion about whether we’re doing the right thing or not.”
“So we should have this discussion about whether we’ve made the right choice, but we can’t have that discussion until we’re honest and clear and non-evasive about the choice that we’ve made.”
See my previous pieces about the war in Ukraine:
“Is US Policy Killing Ukrainians?” (17 March 2022)
“Where’s the Diplomacy?” (26 March 2022)
“Are We in a Propaganda Bubble?” (31 March 2022)
“What Can WE Affect?” (4 April 2022)
“‘To the Last Ukrainian’?” (11 April 2022)
“Thinking About Atrocities” (17 April 2022)
“Do We Want Peace?” (21 April 2022)
“What’s the Endgame?” (29 April 2022)
Regarding the war in Ukraine, we should be honest about our policy—we’ve made a choice between two options:
(1): seek a negotiated settlement that includes—for Putin—some kind of “escape hatch”
(2): reject (1)
We should be honest and clear and non-evasive about the choice that we’ve made—honesty and clarity and non-evasion will allow us to have a good discussion about whether we’re doing the right thing or not.
(2) is official US policy. And (2) is official NATO policy.
There are sharp criticisms of (2):
(A) it’s a hideous experiment where we don’t know how far Putin will go and we choose to find out
(B) it’s an even more hideous experiment if you think that Putin is deranged, which many Western commentators who support the experiment believe to be the case
(C) the experiment risks escalation
(D) the experiment risks nuclear war
(E) the experiment is having horrific—and maybe terminal—effects when it comes to the efforts to do something about global heating
(F) the experiment is inflicting horrible suffering on people in the Middle East and also on people in Africa
So we should have this discussion about whether we’ve made the right choice, but we can’t have that discussion until we’re honest and clear and non-evasive about the choice that we’ve made.
On (F), make sure to look at the following coverage:
“Russia’s war is threatening the Middle East’s food security—sparking warnings of riots, famine, and mass migration” (28 April 2022)
“Hunger Crisis Looms in Africa as Ukraine War Cuts Off Wheat Imports Amid Climate Crisis & Pandemic” (5 May 2022)
So there’s a lot to criticize about (2)—we need to have this discussion, but we need to understand what our own official policy is before we have this discussion.
Chomsky’s New Interview
Noam Chomsky has a short new interview:
Here are my notes on the interview:
“President Zelenskyy was elected in 2019 with an overwhelming mandate for peace. He immediately moved to carry it out, with great courage. He had to confront violent right-wing militias who threatened to kill him if he tried to reach a peaceful settlement along the lines of the Minsk II formula. Historian of Russia Stephen Cohen points out that if Zelenskyy had been backed by the U.S., he could have persisted, perhaps solving the problem with no horrendous invasion. The U.S. refused, preferring its policy of integrating Ukraine within NATO. Washington continued to dismiss Russia’s red lines and the warnings of a host of top-level U.S. diplomats and government advisers as it has been doing since Clinton’s abrogation of Bush’s firm and unambiguous promise to Gorbachev that in return for German reunification within NATO, NATO would not expand one inch beyond Germany.”
“Zelenskyy also sensibly proposed putting the very different Crimea issue on a back burner, to be addressed later, after the war ends.”
“Minsk II would have meant some kind of federal arrangement, with considerable autonomy for the Donbass region, optimally in a manner to be determined by an internationally supervised referendum. Prospects have of course diminished after the Russian invasion. How much we don’t know. There is only one way to find out: to agree to facilitate diplomacy instead of undermining it, as the U.S. continues to do.”
the West is “undermining instead of facilitating diplomatic solutions that might end the horror”
“Since the Maidan uprising in 2014, NATO (meaning basically the U.S.) has ‘provided significant support with equipment, with training, 10s of 1000s of Ukrainian soldiers have been trained, and then when we saw the intelligence indicating a highly likely invasion Allies stepped up last autumn and this winter,’ before the invasion, according to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg).”
people should know about “Washington’s refusal to back newly elected President Zelenskyy when his courageous effort to implement his mandate to pursue peace was blocked by right-wing militias”—Washington “refused to back him, preferring to continue its policy of integrating Ukraine into NATO, dismissing Russia’s red lines”
“that commitment was stepped up with the official U.S. policy statement of September 2021”
“The policy was given further formal status in the November 10 U.S.-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.”
“The State Department has acknowledged that ‘prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States made no effort to address one of Vladimir Putin’s most often stated top security concerns—the possibility of Ukraine’s membership into NATO.’”
“So matters continued after Putin’s criminal aggression.”
Anatol Lieven has “reviewed accurately” what’s happened since the criminal aggression—according to Lieven, the US has blocked the opportunities for peace
Washington is “dedicated” to a “grotesque experiment”—this is a fair conclusion based on “U.S. actions and formal pronouncements”
Washington’s experiment means avoiding “any way of ending the conflict through diplomacy”
Washington’s experiment means seeing “whether Putin will slink away quietly in defeat or will use the capacity, which of course he has, to destroy Ukraine and set the stage for terminal war”
“We learn a lot about the reigning culture from the fact that the grotesque experiment is considered highly praiseworthy, and that any effort to question it is either relegated to the margins or bitterly castigated with an impressive flow of lies and deceit.”
People should look at Chomsky’s points and look at Anatol Lieven’s points—people should understand what the record shows about whether the US has been blocking the opportunities for peace.
Varoufakis’s Points
Yanis Varoufakis recently gave an excellent interview—the interview goes from the video’s 0:50 mark to the video’s 14:30 mark:
I don’t mean to be lazy in not providing notes on this interview, but I thought that Varoufakis made his points so powerfully that people should really watch the interview for themselves—make sure to watch the interview and make sure to think carefully about Varoufakis’s points.
Breaking Through
There are massive constraints when it comes to the discussion about the war in Ukraine. We need to break through the Western propaganda bubble and reach people—there must be some way to achieve this.
There are millions of lives at stake. And there might—given what the war in Ukraine means regarding nuclear war and regarding global heating—even be billions of lives at stake. So there’s infinite urgency.