NEW YORK, Oct 2 (IPS) – The world may have dodged an instant bullet when US intelligence agencies warned this week that if we gave in to Ukraine’s plea for long-range missiles that could strike targets deep inside Russia, we would be putting up with the Russians their patience, without even influencing the outcome of the war in favor of Ukraine.
There was a sense of waiting with bated breath after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent announcement that he would lower the threshold for Russia’s use of nuclear weapons, while the US and its NATO allies broadcast their plans to launch a repeat ‘red line’ to be ignored. ‘, expressed by US President Biden, not to supply Ukraine with weapons that could be launched deep into Russia.
Britain is playing its usual provocative role by sending clear messages that it would welcome US approval to let Ukraine use its ‘Storm Shadow’ long-range missiles. We’ve just been given a brief respite, in light of this recently released public assessment of the US intelligence community.
Despite repeated requests for the US from Russian President Vladimir Putin to keep US promises to Gorbachev and Yeltsin that the US would not expand NATO east of a united Germany, when the wall fell and Gorbachev ended the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe Without a shot, the US, driven by visions of Empire, steadily expanded NATO eastwards.
It started with Clinton’s annexation of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999, followed by Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2004, and Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia between 2009 and 2017. Putin was like that Dismayed by this expansion, he asked the Clinton administration if Russia could join NATO, but was denied membership.
Putin made it very clear to the US and NATO that Russia, which shares a long border with Ukraine, would not tolerate Ukraine joining NATO. After the US supported a coup in 2014 to replace Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, with Petro Poroshenko, who immediately announced that only the Ukrainian language would be recognized in Ukraine, a civil war broke out in the eastern part of Ukraine. country where the majority of the people were Russian and Russian-speaking. More than 14,000 people were killed in that war before Russia invaded Ukraine.
Putin submitted a draft agreement to the US in 2021 proposing that Ukraine remain neutral and that the Donbass region, which is undergoing civil war, would remain in Ukraine as a federation and have the right to speak Russian. The US completely ignored the proposal and Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Putin negotiated a ceasefire with Yeltsin six months after the invasion, but Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister, came to Ukraine and told Zelensky not to do the deal! And the slaughter continues, killing more than 20,000 civilians and 100,000 soldiers.
Thanks to the brief reprieve we have just received from the impending nuclear annihilation, thanks to the wise American intelligence agencies who have interpreted Putin’s recent warnings as a reason for caution in pursuing a headlong and heedless expansion of military aid to Ukraine, it’s time to change the conversation. with bold new proposals.
Proposals that are guaranteed to give us a respite from the growing terror. Proposals that will create a shift in planetary consciousness, allowing us to collectively respond to the impending catastrophic climate disaster! Mother Earth is growing impatient with humanity’s folly.
Here is a series of steps that are guaranteed to bring us peace on earth if the US is willing to mobilize against the MICIMATT (Military Industrial, Congressional Intelligence, Media, Academic, Think Tank complex) and work for peace!
– Repeatedly discuss Russian and Chinese proposals at the UN and in frequent speeches for a treaty to ban weapons in space
– Include repeated Russian and Chinese proposals in the UN to negotiate a cyberwar ban treaty
– Restore the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia and ensure that Obama and Trump move US missiles out of Poland and Romania
– Remove US nuclear weapons stationed in five NATO states: Turkey, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Belgium as a deal for Russia by removing its recently deployed weapons from Belarus
– Take all nuclear weapons off high alert and separate the warheads from their delivery systems, as China is doing – the wisdom of the East
– Dismantle NATO and withdraw it from the Russian border immediately
The ball, as they say, is in the American court. Or as Pogo Possum, a character from Walt Kelly’s 1950s comic strip, said: “We’ve met the enemy and he’s us!”
There is no doubt that Russia and China would be willing partners in these new initiatives. They have been introducing them to the United States for over ten years!!
Alice Slater serves on the boards of World BEYOND War and the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, and as a UN NGO representative for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
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© Inter Press Service (2024) — All rights reservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
