Search Results for: ukraine

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, March 7, 2022

Here were Russia’s demands for months starting in early December 2021:

• Article 1: the parties should not strengthen their security at the expense of Russia’s security;
• Article 2: the parties will use  multilateral consultations and the NATO-Russia Council to address points of conflict;
• Article 3: the parties reaffirm that they do not consider each other as adversaries and maintain a dialogue;
• Article 4: the parties shall not deploy military forces and weaponry on the territory of any of the other states in Europe in addition to any forces that were deployed as of May 27, 1997;
• Article 5: the parties shall not deploy land-based intermediate- and short-range missiles adjacent to the other parties;
• Article 6: all member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization commit themselves to refrain from any further enlargement of NATO, including the accession of Ukraine as well as other States;
• Article 7: the parties that are member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization shall not conduct any military activity on the territory of Ukraine as well as other States in the Eastern Europe, in the South Caucasus and in Central Asia; and
• Article 8: the agreement shall not be interpreted as affecting the primary responsibility of the Security Council of the United Nations for maintaining international peace and security.

These were perfectly reasonable, just what the U.S. demanded when Soviet missiles were in Cuba, just what the U.S. would demand now if Russian missiles were in Canada, and ought to have simply been met, or at the very least treated as serious points to be respectfully considered.

If we set aside items 1-3 and 8 above as less concrete and/or hopeless, we’re left with items 4-7 read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, February 27, 2022

War is fairly well known for killing, injuring, traumatizing, destroying, and rendering homeless. It’s somewhat well known for diverting massive resources from urgent needs, preventing global cooperation on pressing emergencies, damaging the environment, eroding civil liberties, justifying government secrecy, corroding culture, fueling bigotry, weakening the rule of law, and risking nuclear apocalypse. In a few corners it’s known read more

A Washington DC-based “peace” group has been spreading around talking points. Let’s see if we can’t help improve them a little.

“We strongly condemn this premeditated act of aggression by Russia. While tensions in and around Ukraine have a long historical origin, there is no justification for read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, February 22, 2022

I’m hearing a lot of talk about U.S. and NATO failures, so I want to call attention to the successes. Feel free to cheer wildly for each one.

Germany has canceled a Russian pipeline and will be destroying the Earth with more U.S. fossil fuels, and oil prices are up!

Poland is buying billions of dollars worth of U.S. tanks.

Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe and other members of NATO are all going to be buying a lot more U.S. weapons or having read more

When I suggest not stealing billions of dollars from Afghanistan, and thereby not causing mass starvation and death, otherwise intelligent and informed people tell me that human rights demands that theft. Starving people to death is a means of protecting their “human rights,” in fact. How else can you (or the U.S. government) stop Taliban executions?

When I respond that you (the U.S. government) could ban capital punishment, stop arming and funding the world’s top executioners read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, February 7, 2022

I’ve added a book to my growing list of key war abolition reading, which is at the bottom of this article. I’ve put the book Boys Will Be Boys at the very bottom of the list, not because it is the least important, but because it is the earliest, having been published a decade before any of the others. It is also probably the book that — perhaps along with many other influences — has had the biggest impact thus far, on the agenda read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, February 4, 2022

Smedley Butler is generally left out of U.S. history. If you bring up a guy who prevented a Wall Street coup against FDR, you do real damage to the tale of peaceful respect for government from the beginning of time up through January 6, 2021. If you mention the scandal that erupted when he recounted how Mussolini had run over a little girl with his car, it’s hard to leave out the U.S. government’s friendly relations with Mussolini.

Interestingly, read more

1. In 2003 it was important to denounce the lying schemers pretending that Iraq had nukes. In 2022, U.S. officials stirring up war with Russia know that Russia has lots of nukes but don’t even care and aren’t even talking about it, so there’s just not much for us to do or worry about. After all this snow, a nuclear winter doesn’t sound so awful.

2. In 2003 we could pretend the Democratic Party might oppose a war, but in 2022 we’re stuck with pretending that the Republican read more

Image Source.

Tolstoy said the Doukhobors belonged to the 25th century. He was talking about a group of people who have traditions of refusing to take part in war, refusing to eat or harm animals or put animals to work, engaging in communal sharing of resources and communal approaches to work, gender equality, and letting deeds speak in place of words — not to mention using nudity as a form of nonviolent protest.

You can see how such people might have run into trouble in a Russian empire or the read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, January 17, 2022

In a new, very U.S., very academic book by Alexander Downes called Catastrophic Success: Why Foreign Imposed Regime Change Goes Wrong, the immorality of overthrowing other people’s governments cannot be found. The illegality of it seemingly does not exist. The fact that attempted overthrows often fail, and that those failures can have catastrophic results, doesn’t enter into it. But successful government overthrows — the focus read more