Forty eight ceasefires between 1946 and 1997 — while often ignored — offer guidance on how to end the killing. Since history shows it takes a long time to end a war, Ann Wright says the process must start now.
Ukrainian government photo of soldiers during battle in Mariupol, March 2022. (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)
Negotiations, ceasefires, armistices and peace agreements are as old as wars themselves.
Every war ends with some version of one of them.
Wars have been studied endlessly, but lessons learned on how to end the wars have generally been ignored by those conducting the world’s latest wars.
To stop the killing in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, people of conscience must do everything they can to make negotiations for a ceasefire become a reality.
That was the purpose of the International Summit for Peace in Ukraine held in Vienna last weekend.
Over 300 persons from 32 countries attended the conference and participated in the robust program to discuss how to create conditions for a ceasefire and ultimately an agreement to stop the killing. The websites for the International Peace Bureau and the Peace in Ukraine summit were hacked the day after the conference but should be up and running soon.
If history is our guide, negotiations for peace will take weeks, months or perhaps years, to get Ukraine and its allies to agree on a negotiating strategy — and even longer to come to an agreement with Russia after negotiations begin.
Even if all parties, Ukraine, Russia, U.S./NATO, would agree to negotiations tomorrow, and if the talks would ultimately succeed, it could possibly be months or years before the killing would end. That’s why negotiations must begin now.
History gives us an important insight into negotiations during a war and what we might expect to end today’s extremely dangerous international violence.
In the case of the Korean armistice finally signed 70 years ago on July 27, 1953, 575 meetings between North Korea, China, the U.S. and South Korea were required over two years from 1951 to 1953 to finalize the nearly 40 pages of the agreement. During those two years, millions of Koreans, 500,000 Chinese and 35,000 U.S. and tens of thousands of U.N. Command soldiers were killed.
Vietnam Peace Talks
The approximate cease fire lines in South Vietnam as of the date of the signing of the Paris Peace Accords, Jan. 17, 1973. (Smallchief, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)
Fifteen years later, U.S. and North Vietnamese representatives met in Paris on May 10, 1968, to begin peace negotiations, the first time negotiators from both nations met face-to-face. Formal negotiations opened three days later, but immediately came to a standstill.
Five years after the 1968 meeting, on Jan. 27, 1973, the “Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam,” otherwise known as the Paris Peace Accords, was signed by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the Republic of Vietnam, the Provisional Revolutionary Government (Viet Cong) and the United States.
The Paris Peace Accords officially ended U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, although the majority of U.S. troops would not leave until August 1973 and the fighting between North and South Vietnam continued until April 30, 1975, when North Vietnamese Army (NVA) tanks rolled through the gate of the Presidential Palace in Saigon, South Vietnam, effectively ending the war.
Millions of Vietnamese and tens of thousands of U.S. military were killed during the years of negotiations.
We know much about the lead-up to negotiations to end the U.S. war on Vietnam. In a nationally televised speech on March 31, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson announced that he was “taking the first step to de-escalate the conflict” by halting the bombing of North Vietnam (except in the areas near the DMZ) and that the United States was prepared to send representatives to any forum to seek a negotiated end to the war.
U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, center, with General Creighton W. Abrams, U.S. commander in South Vietnam, on right, and other advisers in October 1968 discussing the military situation in Vietnam. (Public domain)
Johnson followed this declaration with surprising news that he did not intend to seek reelection that year.
Three days later Hanoi announced that it was prepared to talk to the Americans. Discussions began in Paris on May 13 but led nowhere. Hanoi insisted that, before serious negotiations could begin, the United States would have to halt its bombing of the rest of Vietnam.
However, fierce fighting continued. The North Vietnamese high command followed the Tet attacks with two more waves in May and August 1968. At the same time, U.S. General William Westmoreland ordered his commanders to “keep maximum pressure” on the communist forces in the South, which he believed had been seriously weakened by their losses at Tet. The result was the fiercest fighting of the war.
In the eight weeks following Johnson’s speech, 3,700 Americans were killed in Vietnam and 18,000 wounded. Westmoreland’s headquarters, which was notorious for inflated body counts, reported 43,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong killed. The South Vietnamese military’s (ARVN) losses were not recorded, but they were usually twice that of the U.S. forces.
After winning the 1968 election, President Richard Nixon, with his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, decided to follow the Tet offensive with a “maximum pressure” campaign with increased U.S. bombing of North Vietnam and Cambodia which ended up with large death counts of North Vietnamese, South Vietnamese and Cambodians, as well as U.S. military.
President Richard Nixon addresses the nation about his bombing of Cambodia, April 30, 1969. (Jack E. Kightlinger, White House, Wikimedia Commons)
“Maximum pressure” is already a part of the U.S./NATO approach to Russia with its extensive sanctions regime and its provision of a massive number of weapons to Ukraine.
48 Ceasefires Between 1946 & 1997
We can look to many more examples of how negotiations ultimately have brought killing to an end in other conflicts .
Using data from 48 conflicts between 1946 and 1997, political scientist Virginia Page Fortna has shown that strong agreements that arrange for demilitarized zones, third-party guarantees, peacekeeping, or joint commissions for dispute resolution and contain specific (versus vague) language produced more lasting cease-fires that provide conditions for dialogue for an armistice or agreement.
Figuring out how to make the cease-fire be effective will be the key task. Despite its less-than-stellar track record, the U.S. as a co-belligerent should work with the Ukrainian government to figure out effective cease-fire measures.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has already described any new negotiations as “Minsk 3,” a reference to the two cease-fire deals that were brokered with Russia in the Belarusian capital in 2014 and 2015, after its annexation of Crimea and fighting in the Donbass region.
The Minsk 1 and 2 agreements included no effective mechanisms for ensuring the parties’ compliance and failed to end the violence. Minsk 1 and 2 were later acknowledged by NATO and the European Union as a ploy for “buying time” for the West’s buildup of Ukrainian forces and equipment.
Feb. 12, 2015: Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko at the Normandy format talks in Minsk, Belarus. (Kremlin)
Ceasefire Do’s & Don’t, for the Record
Having been in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves for 29 years and working as a U.S. diplomat for 16 years, I can testify to the results of endless studies of the consequences of war. One example is the year-long U.S. Department of State Iraq Study Group, being ignored by U.S. politicians and policy makers, and lessons learned on how to end deadly conflicts being ignored by U.S. military and national security experts.
I suspect that few Ukrainian, Russian, U.S. and NATO policy makers know of the United Nations’ 18-page guide to the Do’s and Don’ts of Ceasefire Agreements, based on their experience in conflicts.
Therefore, for the record, I want to mention the main points of the “Do’s and Don’ts of Ceasefire Agreements,” so no one can say, “We Didn’t Know” such work has been done already and the pitfalls of ceasefire agreements well identified.
Each of the following elements has an entire section written about it in the 18-page guide.
PART A Who, When & Where
- No room for “creative” ambiguity;
- The need for precision in regard to the geography of the ceasefire;
- The need for a precise specification of the dates and times on which the obligations imposed by the ceasefire fall due;
- Designating or qualifying permitted activities;
- Application of the provisions of the agreement to all members of all armed forces.
PART B Monitoring and Enforcement
- Provision for monitoring;
- Verification;
- Complaints mechanism;
- Enforcement;
- Providing for the political resolution of disputes by the parties.
2012: A South Korean soldier briefs Army Gen Martin E. Dempsey, US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on points of interest at the demilitarized zone in South Korea. (DoD, D. Myles Cullen)
PART C Organization & Conduct of Armed Forces
- Military Mission and Mandate;
- Codes of Conduct;
- Confidence building measures;
- Long term treatment of combatants and casualties;
- Command & Control;
- Liaison & Information Exchange;
- Integration;
- Disarmament, Demobilization and Downsizing.
PART D Humanitarian Matters
- Demining & Civilian Protection Generally;
- POW’s and other Political Prisoners;
- Free movement of goods, people and aid;
- Dealing with the past.
PART E Implementation
- Funding
- Information to rank-and-file and to civilians
- Verification of size of forces
- Amendment of the agreement
- Anticipating lead times
- Avoiding Media Warfare
- Collateral Agreements/Legislation
- Civil Security
- Buy-in by Regional Powers
What Else Can Be Done?
To show how militarized is the U.S. government’s thinking, while an entire new U.S. military command element, the Security Assistance Group–Ukraine, led by a three-star general with a staff of 300, has been set up by the U.S. government, currently, there is not a single official in the U.S. government whose full-time job is conflict diplomacy to end the killing in the Russia-Ukraine war.
If the U.S. becomes serious about the loss of life in Ukraine, which it currently appears not to be, President Joe Biden should appoint a special presidential envoy who can begin informal discussions with Ukraine and among its allies in the G-7 and NATO about the endgame of negotiations.
Additionally, the United States must establish a regular channel of communication regarding the war that includes Ukraine, U.S. allies and Russia to allow participants to interact continually, instead of in one-off encounters.
This would be similar to the contact group model used during the Balkan wars, when an informal grouping of representatives from key states and international institutions met regularly and privately.
Satisfaction Not Guaranteed
The author, Ann Wright, center, with Tamara Lorenz on left, and Krista Bluesmith.
We must acknowledge that even if negotiations did produce a ceasefire and then an agreement of some sort, neither Ukraine, Russia, the U.S. or NATO would be fully satisfied.
In spite of its recent history in Afghanistan and Iraq, many politicians, especially in the U.S. and now in Ukraine and Russia, want absolute victories, not long wars without a clear resolution.
But if we look to the Korean armistice, which was not viewed as the best U.S. foreign policy at the time it was signed, in the nearly 70 years after, the armistice has held and there has not been another war on the peninsula.
However, converting the armistice to a peace treaty has been one step too far for the U.S. while the North Koreans continue to ask for a peace declaration from the U.S and South Korea before they abandon their nuclear and missile programs.
In the case of the U.S. war on Vietnam, 60 years later, after the 1973 peace agreement, the country has now become a trading partner of the U.S. and the West.
How the negotiations for a ceasefire would work out is anyone’s guess.
But a ceasefire followed by an armistice would give Ukraine the opportunity to end the destruction of more of its infrastructure, to begin recovering economically and most importantly to end the death of more Ukrainians and the return of millions of Ukrainians to their homes.
An armistice would give the Russian Federation an opportunity to possibly come out from some of the sanctions the West has imposed, to work within the international community on common issues and end its military mobilization and the death of more Russians.
For the entire world, a Russian-Ukrainian armistice would reduce the risks of a direct military clash with the U.S./NATO that could include use of nuclear weapons with its terrible global consequences for all of us on this planet.
At the International Summit on Peace in Ukraine, the “Campaign for a Global Ban on Weaponized Drones” was launched. This campaign reflects the opinion of many in the world that the use of this weapons system should be ended by all countries.
We know it is an uphill battle to call for an end of types of military weapons and even if there are treaties enacted by the United Nations, such as on cluster munitions, land mines and nuclear weapons, some countries, led by the United States, will not abide by the treaties. But, as people of conscience, we must continue to act on what our conscience tells us is wrong.
Likewise, people of conscience in this world must continue to work for peace and non-violent resolution of international issues despite politicians’ seeming thirst for continuation of violence in the name of peace.
Ann Wright is a 29-year US Army/Army Reserves veteran who retired as a colonel. She is also a former U.S. diplomat who resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. In December 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the U.S. embassy in Kabul. She is co-author of Dissent: Voices of Conscience.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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What is ‘the west’ even willing to offer for peace in the Ukraine?
And what would convince Russia to believe an agreement would hold water?
The US empire is not “giving” money and weaponry to Ukraine. These are a “loans” incurring a corresponding debt.
If Ukraine does not win, the US empire does not get paid for the funds and equipment which have been “loaned”.
The US cannot accept a peace in which Ukraine has to accept territorial losses, or becomes a failed state, or a state which cannot produce debt repayments on the backs of her people
.
The money spent is already in the stock market. It is already a debt being bought and sold. The debt is already being treated as an asset, before it is paid. The funds are still fictional.
US imperial capitalism, does not care about the well being of any people, it only cares about profits, debts, and payments to the billionaires.
If Ukraine cannot pay, the US empire’s plutocrats must take an unacceptable loss.
That loss will be inflicted on the US people, the EU people, all people under the US model of imperial capitalism.
We will all be made poorer through austerity economics, just so the creditors do not take the loss they willingly risked, in the act of killing humans for profit.
It does not matter what Russians or Ukrainians think… there is only profit and debt. Human lives are not a factor the US empire cares about.
Peace, opposes the interests of the US plutocrats, and so, peace is not allowed.
Scared Person neatly sets out the economic dilemma the West now faces in trying to end this tragic war .
The West has invested $350 billion in weapons for this war, which the West is nonetheless losing inexorably, because the war is existential for Russia. Russia must and will win. Russia will then see to it that Western-purchased debts incurred by Ukraine to Western lenders , and assets of land etc purchased by opportunistic investors like Blackrock,, are annulled . As happened in Russia after the Bolsheviks saw off invading western-supported White armies .
The west will not start nuclear WW3 to try to recoup the lost investments of the Western imperial elite. Those assets will be gone .
As Scared Person notes, the impoverished masses of the West will pay, because the Western elites have the power and the people do not. It was thus after 1917. It will be thus again . It is already starting to happen . We see it in colder homes and higher energy bills and interest rates.
There won’t be any ceasefire in Ukraine that leaves the war unresolved . Russia which is clearly winning won’t accept this . They know how close they came in the years 1991-2022 to the total destruction of their motherland and they won’t accept the risk of this happening again, Ukraine will be neutralised and denazified as a result of this war. There is no other outcome acceptable to Russia ( and China. )
I hope this will be soon. I do not know if it will. The timing depends on when Biden and Banderite Kiev come to terms with reality .
W. M. Hughes, Prime Minister of Australia during the war to end all wars observed: ‘The increasing intensity of competition for economic markets must lead to armed conflict unless an economic settlement is found. This, however, is hardly to be hoped for. Talk about peace in a world armed to the teeth is utterly futile’ (News Chronicle, 25 July 1936). And today: ‘A senior U.S. State Department official said Thursday that a massive Ukraine aid package ? which contains $4 billion in grants for allies to buy American-made military hardware ? is partly aimed at eroding Russia’s share of the global defense market’ (US poised to bite into Russia’s global defense market share, yahoo, 13 May).
We should remember that ‘The way things are organised is neither natural nor inevitable, but created by people. People have a wealth of skill, intelligence. creativity and wisdom. We could be devising ways of using and distributing the earth’s vast resources so that no one starves or lives in abject poverty, making socially useful things that people need — a society which is life-affirming in all its aspects” (Alice Cook and Gwyn Kirk, Greenham Women Everywhere, South End Press, 1983).
I guess the last time that there was honesty between America and Russia, was when Ukraine was still part of Russia and Kruschev and Kennedy worked out their problems. That was way back on the 1960s. But then Kennedy had actually been in a war, and so many presidents after him were not inWW 2, or in any war at all.
It seems so insane for the current leaders of America since 2000 aren’t worth very much at all in terms of knowledge or ability to truly listen and compromise. And worst of all, so many lying politicians who seem to be enamored in wars, but who so easily ignore that climate change is here now! Seeing climate change and rivers and lakes drying up, and even such craziness with people like Biden and Blinken opting for war, war, war!
I truly despair as Earth is our only home, but the military of most nations seems more interested in war than in peace. : (
I am a Veteran of the Vietnam conflict, I do not recall ANY Government of the day, proclaiming a Law PREVENTING any effort of negotiating for peace, which is precisely what the regime in Ukraine has done. Someone needs to explain, how peace negotiations can proceed if such are a criminal offence within Ukraine.
Essential to any lasting agreement is a modicum of trust, and genuine intentions on the parts of all parties. So far, the US, NATO and most of Europe have not shown any.
On the contrary, they have overtly stated how they never intended to honour the Minsk 1 & 2 agreements, and consequently Russia has made it clear it no longer trusts them at all after their admissions.
No agreement is possible until the collective west changes its attitude, and demonstrates its intention to honour a future agreement.
While I respect your efforts and those of the parties which seek to encourage diplomatic solutions toward ending the continuing violence and destruction in Ukraine, in particular with respect to innocent parties unwittingly ensnared in a conflict they want nothing to do with, as I see it, that ship has sailed. The U.S. and its major Western European allies have shown themselves to be incapable negotiating in good faith and/or adhering to agreements agreed upon and ratified by all concerned parties. What remains is for Russia to continue to stick to following through on its stated 2022 objectives until they have been achieved; taking back by force if necessary the stolen elected political leadership of the country and returning back init to the hands of those whiling were by a majority in 2014, democratically elected, followed by new open and internationally monitored democratic elections. But first, defang the incumbent fascist regime, locate, arrest and put the Odessa and Bucha and MH17 mass murderers on trial, tar and feather the local NATO franchise and run it out of town on a rail, and lock the door behind them.
Opinion based in factual data is the embodiment of free speech???
In 2023 institutional religion is blasphemy incarnate
It is NOT “the end of history“ and its admonitory ‘orders’!
When have the catastrophic blunders of history ever been a guide for an irrationally thinking species of ‘doings’ rather than more critically conscious beings???
“Preachers of all shades say, ‘Do as I say, not as I do’.”John Selden’s Table-Talk (c. 1654). How far has ‘mankind’ come in almost 300 years of following this precept of flagrant irresponsibility of the powerful???
How many wars have, and are still being fought, in the name of religion???
When the Church, historically represents the eternal paternal father, who sees itself as infallible, the child either becomes a hypocrite or cognitively dissonant. Are there any other options, other than blindly believing in myths about our origins???
When will this foolhardy species of Homo sapiens sapiens – which has come to see itself, in the formal institutions of diverse religion, as above its own inherent/inculcated nature, and recognize it is trapped in the mire of its own self-entrapment tendencies (self-extinction)???
According to the oral narrators (creative story-tellers) and ‘scribes’ of pre-literary history – preceding the development of a written literature, their stories are not mythological fiction! Are myths factual knowledge???
Negotiations
‘Mindset’ is the key to any Negotiation. How to reshape the obstinacy of the notion of mass exceptionalist intransigence, for example???
Contemporary example: for how many years now have Palestinian Arabs been vainly attempting to negotiate International Law, with their Israeli/Jewish counterparts, in vain??? The pretext for constant Israeli non-compliance is firmly based in supercilious religious mindset, to the detriment of all; Jews, Muslims and Christians.
Cui bono??? The most powerful money changers, by nature, whoever they are who predominate at a particular moment in history!
“During those two years (of armistice negotiations) for the Korean peninsular, millions of Koreans, 500,000 Chinese and 35,000 U.S. and tens of thousands of UN Command soldiers were killed”. Was this not a case of ‘mindset’ intransigence??? With whom does the blame lie for beginning the war???
Notwithstanding the years of fruitless negotiations – for the Republic of Vietnam, did war finally come to an end. “The fighting between North and South Vietnam continued until April 30, 1975, when North Vietnamese Army (NVA) tanks rolled through the gate of the Presidential Palace in Saigon, South Vietnam, effectively ending the war. Another example of the US hegemon unilaterally monitoring the close of hostilities, to its own satisfaction, between intended democratic socialist forces and the forces of American prodded, South Vietnamese anti-democratic capitalist forces!
Out of bluster….
I am very appreciative of the three comments, so far. The A to E plan to follow gives us a way to peace in Ukraine…The most rational response I’ve read and proposed by women.
Minsk III has long been history. It took place in Istanbul in March of last year and was set to end the conflict (and, apparently gain a Nobel Peace Prize for Erdo?an). The Russian withdrawal from north of Kiev was carried out as a gesture of good faith to demonstrate Russia’s commitment to a negotiated settlement.
Boris Johnson personally killed it by traveling to Ukraine to inform Zelenski that if he signed on to the accord, that would be the end of ALL Western support of Ukraine (not to mention Zelenski). Since the country was already on life support from the West and Zelenski was making out like a bandit, the threat was taken seriously.
The decades of Pentagon and think tank documents, reports, white papers etc. declaring that RUSSIA DELENDA EST bode ill for anything other than an end of the conflict on the battlefield, with the terms dictated by Russia, as Riva Enteen rightly states.
Unfortunately fewer than 20% of Americans are aware of the facts you stated. Propaganda in the US is at a very high level and it has been effective. I regularly talk to people with good common sense who have bought into the Russia/Putin are evil, Zelensky is a modern day Winston Churchill, the war was unprovoked, and Ukraine is winning the war narrative. For the time being I’ve given up trying to present the other side of the conflict. Probably like the 2003 war against Iraq, it will take 10 years after this war ends before a majority of Americans accept the truth about how NATO and the United States had been in a two decade long effort to get Russia into a war.
I must agree with the other comments so far. It is all very well to pontificate about stopping the slaughter, but the USA and NATO have been the main causes of so many of these conflicts by interfering with sovereign nations far from their shores. Why was the USA in Vietnam at all? Remember Johnson and the lies about being attacked by North Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin? All the devastation in Cambodia and Laos-dear Henry Kissinger is still alive to tell us.
Consider Victoria Nuland/ VC Joe Biden and the takeover of the Ukrainian government in 2014-the Minsk agreements DID have “our allies” France and Germany allegedly getting the process going, but they did not do it despite unanimous UN resolutions demanding talks and action. 8 years of patience from “the evil Putin” before finally Russia was provoked into pushing gently(!) into battle hoping that Ukrainians would negotiate. Ukraine against all rationality wants to expel all Russians and any hint of history/ art/ culture/ books: relationships from every part of its territory remaining from the USSR. Surely some sort of response to reasonable demands eg Russia’s own security as described in December 2021 when Russia has spent decades NOT attacking anyone but being considered an “enemy” by so many unthinking western leaders, should enter into calculations.
What must focus the minds of the nuclear powers is that all empires in history eventually get the war they are trying to avoid. Everybody says they want to avoid WW III. And it will happen if governments do not accept, and change, the pattern of history.
The US and allies have proved by their deliberate scam in Minsk II, to be tyrants incapable of agreements. So now no armistice can function until Ukraine is defeated, or demilitarized by the UN.
The US/UK providing weapons of 150 mile range left no choice but to make a DMZ of all of Ukraine within 150 miles of the borders with Russia, Donbass, and Crimea, which is everything East of the Dnieper river and 150 miles North of the Black sea coast. As the west now intends to supply an air force, there is no choice but to demilitarize Ukraine completely as a western provocateur. Because that would be a quagmire for Russia, the sick purpose of the US, an armistice requires unlikely UN demilitarization of Ukraine.
At this point the US/UK have given Russia little choice but to destroy all of Ukraine militarily, which they have renounced, or continue to grind up their military, which US politicians hope will generate US MIC profits and MIC bribes to politicians, which would have end to make the US adhere to any armistice.
Both sides of this conflict will find it difficult to settle. But for vastly different reasons. As Russia is winning the war in the field, they know that time is on their side. This has been the central fact since the first day of the war. Russia went into this war because it could no longer tolerate having its’ interests ignored and mocked by NATO, the U.S. and E.U. The West was arrogantly content to fail utterly at diplomacy and now seeks to blame Russia alone for that failure. But there is plenty of blame to spread around. Ukraine is a tragic victim of a puppet regime created by the U.S. with NATO and the E.U. All part of the conspiracy to isolate and marginalize Russia and Russian interests. Ukraine depends entirely on the U.S. and NATO to keep the war going. The Zelensky Regime has made the war a matter of survival for them. The main thing that has kept the war going for over a year now is the desire of the Biden Regime, Olaf Scholz, and the U.K. to save face for their arrogance, ignorance and hubris. All Biden has ever cared about has been running his 2024 re-election. That and trying to stay out of jail for the corrupt foreign dealings of Biden and his family. There has been a leadership void in the world ever since Biden took office. Nearly all European heads of state have failed completely to fill the leadership void created by the U.S. All of which means that the slaughter will continue until Ukraine runs out of bodies to hurl into the Eastern European bonfire of the vain and their vanities.
I see no chance of peace talks until Kharkov and Odessa are in Russian hands.
hxxps://askeptic.substack.com/p/battlefield-update-2023-06-14-1
The war could have been avoided if the US had waited a year or two for the next Presidential election in Ukraine, rather than overthrowing the democratically elected government in the Maidan Coup. However VP Biden would not allow Yanukovych’s (better) deal with Russia to go through, which Putin was very generous with, to keep Ukraine functionally as a buffer state. Biden’s UkroNAZIs have ruled Ukraine (opposition parties and media have been eliminated) since 2014, with a plan of eradicating Russian language, Russian culture and ethnic Russian Ukrainians. The fact that Zelensky was elected with >70% of the vote on a “Peace with Russia” platform, which was immediately scuttled by the Americans just shows that Ukraine is a US colony and Puppet state with no independence nor sovereignty nor REAL democracy. The US has provoked this war, killing over 10,000 in the Donbass before Putin’s “unprovoked” invasion. Boris Johnson, no doubt at Biden’s insistence, stopped the negotiations that could have ended the war when it first started. The diplomacy train has left the tracks since then.
American presidents tend to be mendacious mediocre megalomaniacs, Biden a prime example. He has already “lost” the Afghan War with the Taliban, and he is intent on not losing to Russia (and is priming wars with the 2022 Coup in Peru, and destabilizing seemingly every country in Africa). Biden has made clear that this war is about regime change in Russia. Despite his claim that “white supremacists” are responsible for most domestic violence in the US, Biden does not see a disconnect with supporting UkroNAZIs who call Russians cockroaches and are intent on killing all of them. The Russians remember well their sacrifices when THEY (not the US) defeated NAZIs in 1945. Nukes will fly before Russia accepts another bad deal from the US; they would have forgiven the rape and theft of Russia when the Soviet Union fell by Clinton, drunken puppet Yeltsin and the banksters. Those years just underscore that the US will not honor agreements and cannot be trusted..
Putin would likely accept a partition of Ukraine giving the “independent and sovereign” states in the Donbas freedom from Ukraine (much like Kosovo breaking away from Serbia), along with Crimea (majority Russian since Catherine the Great) and the south coast up to Transnistria (again mostly ethnic Russians). He might even be fine with Odessa becoming a free independent city much like historic Danzig. But Biden and NATO want to fight “to the last Ukrainian” and then steal the richest farm land in Europe along with as much resources as they can. Even if an agreement is reached, we know guerilla warfare will continue, with the CIA at minimum continuing the war.
It is impressive for a CN reader like me, Italian, European, to discover how many columnists and commentators on this site have a past as veterans in the US army. It’s a bit disorienting. People declaring a pacifist intent and dialogue who have served for many years in what has proven to be the most one-sided, terrible and murky war machine in history. I am 65 years old, I was still very young but I remember very well the demonstrations in Milan, my city, against the war in Vietnam. And I remember very well the peace movements in the United States. I ask myself, with great anguish, how is it possible that Ann Wright, who seems to be roughly my age, hasn’t formed in her time a pacifist conscience of refusal of war, of weapons, which has kept her away from that ‘apparatus of death. I doubt that in the United States, to have a credible position from which to criticize the army, it is necessarily to have been part of it. For your absurd, mad patriotic imagination it is not possible to have a healthy and solid individual position, but you must always have previously demonstrated that you are willing to sacrifice in the service of the great nation of the United States of America.
Evidently it’s a very common mental illness there with you, but one from which, as far as I can see, you can also recover and make amends.
Your thoughts align clearly with the 60’s anti-war anthem ‘Universal Soldier’, recorded by Buffy Saint Marie and Donovan: “without them all the killing can’t go on”..
This author is in the same predicament as Tulsi Gabbard; calling for an end to a war while also having served to perpetuate various others..
Their motives and goals are undoubtedly heart-felt, but the current global leadership have no ear for such a message..
“If history is our guide, negotiations for peace will take weeks, months or perhaps years, to get Ukraine and its allies to agree on a negotiating strategy — and even longer to come to an agreement with Russia after negotiations begin.”
I was on a peace delegation to Russia with Ann Wright in 2019, so am surprised at her comment above. I am also surprised she didn’t mention the Nazi factor in the conflict. Russia’s aims, as stated at the beginning of the Special Military Operation, remain “to demilitarize and deNazify Ukraine.” It is ironic that Zelensky promotes a Minsk III, when the first two were sabotaged for Ukraine’s benefit. Why WOULD Russia trust ANYTHING the West says? I, Scott Ritter, and many others, predict the war will end on the battlefield with a surrender of Ukraine. Then there is something to talk about.
It is clear that the US is not interested in agreements with Russia. We only do gunboat diplomacy now. Plus, Russia knows that any “negotiations” will be another stalling tactic by US/NATO to rearm and fortify Ukraine. So neither side has any intention of negotiating at this point in time. That will change as Ukraine’s situation deteriorates, but even then, Russia has no reason to believe that the US/NATO will negotiate in good faith now. That is what happens when you prove that you are untrustworthy.
That is key, John. The U.S. is not agreement-capable and is recognized as such in Russian government. Russia is winning in Ukraine, big time. It has no reason to participate in a cease-fire or a negotiation. This one ends on the battlefield with Ukraine’s surrender.
Amen, brother.
That’s exactly right, and until everyone seeking peace (or simply the truth about the war), comes to understand this, there is zero chance of a cease fire, let alone peace.