When
Will US Join Global Call to End Ukraine
War?
Must our leaders take us to the brink of
World War III, with all our lives on the
line in an all-out nuclear war, before
they will permit a ceasefire and a
negotiated peace?
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S.
Davies
June 01, 2023:
Information Clearing
House --
When Japan
invited the leaders of Brazil, India and
Indonesia to attend the G7 summit in
Hiroshima, there were
glimmers
of hope that it might be a forum for
these rising economic powers from the
Global South to discuss their advocacy
for peace in Ukraine with the wealthy
Western G7 countries that are militarily
allied with Ukraine and have so far
remained deaf to pleas for peace.
But it was not to be. Instead, the
Global South leaders were forced to sit
and listen as their hosts announced
their latest plans to tighten sanctions
against Russia and further escalate the
war by sending U.S.-built F-16 warplanes
to Ukraine.
The G7
summit stands in stark contrast to
efforts of leaders from around the world
who are trying to end the conflict. In
the past, the leaders of Turkey, Israel
and Italy have stepped up to try to
mediate. Their efforts were bearing
fruit back in April 2022, but were
blocked
by the West, particularly the U.S. and
U.K., which did not want Ukraine to make
an independent peace agreement with
Russia.
Are You Tired Of
The Lies And
Non-Stop Propaganda?
Rather than sleepwalking into World War
III or silently watching this senseless
loss of lives, we are building a global
grassroots movement to support
initiatives by leaders from around the
world that will help to quickly end this
war.
Now that
the war has dragged on for over a year
with no end in sight, other leaders have
stepped forward to try to push both
sides to the negotiating table. In an
intriguing new development, Denmark, a
NATO country, has stepped forward to
offer to host peace talks. On May 22,
just days after the G-7 meeting, Danish
Foreign Minister Lokke Rasmussen
said
that his country would be ready to host
a peace summit in July if Russia and
Ukraine agreed to talk.
“We need to put some effort into
creating a global commitment to organize
such a meeting,” said Rasmussen,
mentioning that this would require
getting support from China, Brazil,
India and other nations that have
expressed interest in mediating peace
talks. Having an EU and NATO member
promoting negotiations may well reflect
a shift in how Europeans view the path
forward in Ukraine.
Also
reflecting this shift is a
report
by
Seymour Hersh,
citing U.S. intelligence sources, that
the leaders of Poland, Czechia, Hungary
and the three Baltic states, all NATO
members, are talking to President
Zelenskyy about the need to end the war
and start rebuilding Ukraine so that the
five million refugees now living in
their countries can start to return
home. On May 23, right-wing Hungarian
President Viktor Orban
said,
“Looking at the fact that NATO is not
ready to send troops, it’s obvious that
there is no victory for poor Ukrainians
on the battlefield,” and that the only
way to end the conflict was for
Washington to negotiate with Russia.
Meanwhile,
China’s peace initiative has been
progressing, despite U.S. trepidation.
Li Hui,
China’s special representative for
Eurasian affairs and former ambassador
to Russia, has
met with
Putin, Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s Foreign
Minister Dmytro Kuleba and other
European leaders to move the dialogue
forward. Given its position as both
Russia’s and Ukraine’s top trading
partner, China is in a good position to
engage with both sides.
Another
initiative has come from President Lula
da Silva of Brazil, who is creating a “peace
club”
of countries from around the world to
work together to resolve the conflict in
Ukraine. He appointed renowned diplomat
Celso Amorim as his peace envoy. Amorim
was Brazil’s foreign minister from 2003
to 2010, and was named the “world’s best
foreign minister” in Foreign Affairs
magazine. He also served as Brazil’s
defense minister from 2011 to 2014, and
is now President Lula’s chief foreign
policy advisor. Amorim has already had
meetings
with Putin in Moscow and Zelenskyy in
Kyiv, and was well received by both
parties.
On May 16,
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa
and other African leaders stepped into
the fray, reflecting just how seriously
this war is affecting the global economy
through rising prices for energy and
food. Ramaphosa
announced
a high-level mission by six African
presidents, led by President Macky Sall
of Senegal. He served, until recently,
as Chairman of the African Union and, in
that capacity, spoke out forcefully for
peace in Ukraine at the UN General
Assembly in September 2022.
The other
members of the mission are Presidents
Nguesso of Congo, Al-Sisi of Egypt,
Musevini of Uganda and Hichilema of
Zambia. The African leaders are calling
for a ceasefire in Ukraine, to be
followed by serious negotiations to
arrive at “a framework for lasting
peace.” UN Secretary-General Guterres
has been
briefed
on their plans and has “welcomed the
initiative.”
Pope
Francis and the Vatican are also
seeking
to mediate the conflict. “Let us not get
used to conflict and violence. Let us
not get used to war,” the Pope
preached.
The Vatican has already helped
facilitate successful prisoner exchanges
between Russia and Ukraine, and Ukraine
has asked for the Pope’s help in
reuniting families that have been
separated by the conflict. A sign of the
Pope’s commitment is his appointment of
veteran negotiator Cardinal Matteo Zuppi
as his peace envoy. Zuppi was
instrumental in mediating talks that
ended civil wars in Guatemala and
Mozambique.
Will any of these initiatives bear
fruit? The possibility of getting Russia
and Ukraine to talk depends on many
factors, including their perceptions of
potential gains from continued combat,
their ability to maintain adequate
supplies of weapons, and the growth of
internal opposition. But it also depends
on international pressure, and that is
why these outside efforts are so
critical and why U.S. and NATO
countries’ opposition to talks must
somehow be reversed.
The U.S.
rejection or dismissal of peace
initiatives illustrates the disconnect
between two diametrically opposed
approaches to resolving international
disputes: diplomacy vs. war. It also
illustrates the disconnect between
rising public sentiment
against the war and the determination of
U.S. policymakers to prolong it,
including most Democrats and
Republicans.
A
growing grassroots movement in the U.S.
is working to change that:
-
In May,
foreign policy experts and
grassroots activists put out paid
advertisements in The
New York Times
and
The Hill
to urge the U.S. government to be a
force for peace. The Hill ad was
endorsed by 100 organizations around
the country, and community leaders
organized in
dozens
of congressional districts to
deliver the ad to their
representatives.
-
Faith-based leaders, over 1,000 of
whom
signed
a letter to President Biden in
December calling for a Christmas
Truce, are showing their support for
the Vatican’s peace initiative.
-
The
U.S. Conference of Mayors, an
organization that represents about
1,400 cities throughout the country,
unanimously
adopted
a resolution calling on the
President and Congress to “maximize
diplomatic efforts to end the war as
soon as possible by working with
Ukraine and Russia to reach an
immediate ceasefire and negotiate
with mutual concessions in
conformity with the United Nations
Charter, knowing that the risks of
wider war grow the longer the war
continues.”
-
Key
U.S. environmental leaders have
recognized how disastrous this war
is for the environment, including
the possibility of a catastrophic
nuclear war or an explosion in a
nuclear power plant, and have sent a
letter
to President Biden and Congress
urging a negotiated settlement.
-
On June
10-11, U.S. activists will join
peacemakers from all over the world
in Vienna, Austria, for an
International Summit for Peace in
Ukraine.
-
Some of
the contenders running for
president, on both the Democratic
and Republican tickets, support a
negotiated peace in Ukraine,
including
Robert F. Kennedy
and
Donald Trump.
The initial
decision of the United States and NATO
member countries to try to help Ukraine
resist the Russian invasion had broad
public support.
However,
blocking
promising peace negotiations and
deliberately choosing to prolong the war
as a chance to
“press”
and
“weaken”
Russia changed the nature of the war and
the U.S. role in it, making Western
leaders active parties to a war in which
they will not even put their own forces
on the line.
Must our leaders wait until a murderous
war of attrition has killed an entire
generation of Ukrainians, and left
Ukraine in a weaker negotiating position
than it was in April 2022, before they
respond to the international call for a
return to the negotiating table?
Or must our
leaders take us to the brink of World
War III, with all our lives on the line
in an all-out
nuclear war,
before they will permit a ceasefire and
a negotiated peace?
Rather than
sleepwalking into World War III or
silently watching this senseless loss of
lives, we are building a global
grassroots movement to support
initiatives by leaders from around the
world that will help to quickly end this
war and usher in a stable and lasting
peace.
Join us.