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2:10 pm, July 7th, 2024 - 53 comments
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By Medea Benjamin and Nicholas Davies. Cross-posted from Common Dreams
After NATO’s catastrophic, illegal invasions of Yugoslavia, Libya and Afghanistan, on July 9th NATO plans to invade Washington DC. The good news is that it only plans to occupy Washington for three days. The British will not burn down the U.S. Capitol as they did in 1814, and the Germans are still meekly pretending that they don’t know who blew up their Nord Stream gas pipelines. So expect smiling photo-ops and an overblown orgy of mutual congratulation.
The details of NATO’s agenda for the Washington summit were revealed at a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Prague at the end of May. NATO will drag its members into the U.S. Cold War with China by accusing it of supplying dual-use weapons technology to Russia, and it will unveil new NATO initiatives to spend our tax dollars on a mysterious “drone wall” in the Baltics and an expensive-sounding “integrated air defense system” across Europe.
But the main feature of the summit will be a superficial show of unity to try to convince the public that NATO and Ukraine can defeat Russia and that negotiating with Russia would be tantamount to surrender.
On the face of it, that should be a hard sell. The one thing that most Americans agree on about the war in Ukraine is that they support a negotiated peace. When asked in a November 2023 Economist/YouGov poll “Would you support or oppose Ukraine and Russia agreeing to a ceasefire now?,” 68% said “support,” and only 8% said “oppose,” while 24% said they were not sure.
However, while President Biden and NATO leaders hold endless debates over different ways to escalate the war, they have repeatedly rejected peace negotiations, notably in April 2022, November 2022 and January 2024, even as their failed war plans leave Ukraine in an ever worsening negotiating position.
The endgame of this non-strategy is that Ukraine will only be allowed to negotiate with Russia once it is facing total defeat and has nothing left to negotiate with – exactly the surrender NATO says it wants to avoid.
As other countries have pointed out at the UN General Assembly, the U.S. and NATO’s rejection of negotiation and diplomacy in favor of a long war they hope will eventually “weaken” Russia is a flagrant violation of the “Pacific Settlement of Disputes” that all UN members are legally committed to under Chapter VI of the UN Charter. As it says in Article 33(1),
“The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice.”
But NATO’s leaders are not coming to Washington to work out how they can comply with their international obligations and negotiate peace in Ukraine. On the contrary. At a June meeting in preparation for the Summit, NATO defense ministers approved a plan to put NATO’s military support to Ukraine “on a firmer footing for years to come.”
The effort will be headquartered at a U.S. military base in Wiesbaden, Germany, and involve almost 700 staff. It has been described as a way to “Trump proof” NATO backing for Ukraine, in case Trump wins the election and tries to draw down U.S. support.
At the Summit, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg wants NATO leaders to commit to providing Ukraine with $43 billion worth of equipment each year, indefinitely. Echoing George Orwell’s doublethink that “war is peace”, Stoltenberg said, “The paradox is that the longer we plan, and the longer we commit [to war], the sooner Ukraine can have peace.”
The Summit will also discuss how to bring Ukraine closer to NATO membership, a move that guarantees the war will continue, since Ukrainian neutrality is Russia’s principal war aim.
As Ian Davis of NATO Watch reported, NATO’s rhetoric echoes the same lines he heard throughout twenty years of war in Afghanistan: “The Taliban (now Russia) can’t wait us out.” But this vague hope that the other side will eventually give up is not a strategy.
There is no evidence that Ukraine will be different from Afghanistan. The U.S. and NATO are making the same assumptions, which will lead to the same result. The underlying assumption is that NATO’s greater GDP, extravagant and corrupt military budgets and fetish for expensive weapons technology must somehow, magically, lead Ukraine to victory over Russia.
When the U.S. and NATO finally admitted defeat in Afghanistan, it was the Afghans who had paid in blood for the West’s folly, while the US-NATO war machine simply moved on to its next “challenge,” learning nothing and making political hay out of abject denial.
Less than three years after the rout in Afghanistan, US Defense Secretary Austin recently called NATO “the most powerful and successful alliance in history.” It is a promising sign for the future of Ukraine that most Ukrainians are reluctant to throw away their lives in NATO’s dumpster-fire.
In an article titled “The New Theory of Ukrainian Victory Is the Same as the Old,” the Quincy Institute’s Mark Episkopos wrote, “Western planning continues to be strategically backwards. Aiding Kyiv has become an end in itself, divorced from a coherent strategy for bringing the war to a close”.
Episkopos concluded that “the key to wielding [the West’s] influence effectively is to finally abandon a zero-sum framing of victory…”
We would add that this was a trap set by the United States and the United Kingdom, not just for Ukraine, but for their NATO allies too. By refusing to support Ukraine at the negotiating table in April 2022, and instead demanding this “zero-sum framing of victory” as the condition for NATO’s support, the U.S. and U.K. escalated what could have been a very short war into a protracted, potentially nuclear, war between NATO and Russia.
Turkish leaders and diplomats complained at how their American and British allies undermined their peacemaking, while France, Italy and Germany squirmed for a month or two but soon surrendered to the war camp.
When NATO leaders meet in Washington, what they should be doing, apart from figuring out how to comply with Article 33(1) of the UN Charter, is conducting a clear-eyed review of how this organization that claims to be a force for peace keeps escalating unwinnable wars and leaving countries in ruins.
The fundamental question is whether NATO can ever be a force for peace or whether it can never be anything but a dangerous, subservient extension of the U.S. war machine.
We believe that NATO is an anachronism in today’s multipolar world: an aggressive, expansionist military alliance whose inherent institutional myopia and blinkered, self-serving threat assessments condemn us all to endless war and potential nuclear annihilation.
We suggest that the only way NATO could be a real force for peace would be to declare that, by this time next year, it will take the same steps that its counterpart, the Warsaw Pact, took in 1991, and finally dissolve what Secretary Austin would have been wiser to call “the most dangerous military alliance in history.”
However, the world’s population that is suffering under the yoke of militarism cannot afford to wait for NATO to give up and go away of its own accord. Our fellow citizens and political leaders need to hear from us all about the dangers posed by this unaccountable, nuclear-armed war machine, and we hope you will join us—in person or online—in using the occasion of this NATO summit to sound the alarm loudly.
Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace. Nicolas Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq
Medea Benjamin is a privileged westerner who's never had to live in fear of being murdered in her bed by Russian thugs bombarding residential neighbourhoods.
Medea Benjamin is a privileged westerner who's never had to live in a theocracy. Medea Benjamin went to Iran to play footsie with the Mullahs in the name of anti imperialism while ordinary Iranian women were being beaten and raped in the streets for daring to exist as women and Reyhaneh Jabbari was necked in a Tehran prison.
Fuck Medea Benjamin.
/
I love how the response to a peace activist is to threaten them with violence and rape, classy joe90 very classy.
Once again, attack the messenger.
Must mean the message is accurate.
It would be interesting to see who the useful idiots were during discussions here on TS, when the Nord Stream pipeline was blown up by the US.
Medea Benjamin is an apologist for Putin and Russian imperialism who parrots Russian propaganda about the Ukrainian people.
Her message is cut US aid to Ukraine to force Ukrainians to make concessions in land, their internal politics, and society to the imperialist thugs who murder them in their beds.
So fuck her message, too.
“There is no evidence that Ukraine will be different from Afghanistan.”
Yes, I agree. Putin is in an unwinnable war, so might as well go home ala Vietnam and Afghanistan before more of his population is sacrificed in his vanity invasion.
A negotiation for peace that restores the territorial integrity of Ukraine is where Zelinsky has started.
The Ukrainian people deserve rhe country they started with.
Is there news of a negotiation somewhere? Do you have a link for this?
"According to a January 2022 report by New Lines Magazine of the Newlines Institute, a think tank led by Hassan Hassan at the Fairfax University of America, Singham has donated almost $65 million to non-profit organizations, including Code Pink.[6]
In August 2023, The New York Times reported that Singham works closely with the Chinese government and state media, and donates to various groups, news organizations and entities through non-profit groups and shell companies which spread pro-Chinese government messages.[3]
Singham lives in Shanghai, China.[13][6] He is married to Code Pink's Jodie Evans."
please provide a link everytime you quote (including now). We also expect people to use their own words to comment and explain their thinking, quotes as back up are fine.
Sure, here's the link: Neville Roy Singham – Wikipedia. My own words are that Code Pink is a Chinese government propaganda organisation.
thanks.
After visiting Kiev and Moscow last week he's now in Beijing 'to continue negotiating a peace deal for the Ukraine war'
Not criticizing his peace initiative: Kiev and Moscow
Criticizing it: the EU, NATO and the US
He has the merit of trying. If you listen to the rest of the West the only perspective is more war.
Hungary PM Orban arrives in Beijing for talks with Chinese President Xi
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/hungary-pm-orban-arrives-beijing-talks-with-chinese-president-xi-2024-07-07/
Not sure you know – using the russian "kiev" is equivalent to referring to Gdańsk by the German "Danzig" during the WWII German attack on Poland.
Why translate a local placename into the language of an invader, when writing in a third language?
NATO, formed in 1949 in the wake of WWII and the new Cold War by US & UK, and the precursors of 5 Eyes, against the USSR should now be dissolved and retired.
A shooting war of the Ukraine type is obviously not needed by anyone in 2024, but…the last gasp of US Imperialism prompted the Russians to move. The USA has at least 800 off shore publicly discoverable bases, military and intel facilities. Many butt up against their declared enemies in Mid East, Asia and of course Russia.
I don’t support the authoritarian Russian state and methods, but understand why they are fighting back against the yanks in what is patently a proxy war.
Newsweek 5-7-2024
Orbán: The Point of NATO Is Peace, Not Endless War
https://www.newsweek.com/orban-point-nato-peace-not-endless-war-opinion-1915287
It is not just the number of overseas military bases that a country has determine that a country is imperialist. Just its success.
The number of foreign bases and territories is a measure of US imperialism's success, sure. Russia has less overseas bases than the US but it still has them
Before they launched WWII Nazi Germany had no overseas bases. But everyone then and now understood that Germany wanted a global empire, to rival or even surpass that of the British, the French or the US.
Russia waged war on Ukraine, not the other way round. . The crime of 'Aggression' is codified as a ware crime by the UN as a crime against peace.
Thrre was a time when millions of German socialists and liberals, so disgusted with the crimes of British imperialism, the global hegemon of the day, that they supported the National Socialist Workers Party, which posed as anti=imperialist and for peace. Even educated German intellectuals who should have known better fell into this trap.
There are lots of Leftists like this today. Their hatred of US imperialism, though justified, is so intense that they support Russian imperialism. George Galloway is one example, Jeremy Corbyn to a lesser extent fell into the same trap. So did Julien Assange, and Noam Chomsky. In Noam Chomsky's case for the second and third time. Chomsky so disgusted with the US in Vietnam ended up supporting the Pol Pot. genocide in Cambodia, and the Assad Genocide in Syria.
We live in screwed up confusing time.
A good friend of mine is a Russian emigrant to this country, who opposes the Russian invasion of Ukraine bitterly. And fully supports the Ukrainian people's resistance to it, even if it means seeking military assistance from the West.
The last time we spoke, she was bitterly disappointed with the Ukrainian people's general support for the US and Israel genocide in Gaza,
How can people get it so wrong?
Imperialist aggression, genocide, war crimes are wrong no matter who does it.
The US supported genocide in Gaza
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide
The destruction of Mariupol by Russian aggressors.
https://20daysinmariupol.com/
The Russian supported genocide in Syria
https://www.hrw.org/video-photos/video/2015/12/15/if-dead-could-speak
History has a bad habit of repeating.
Code Pink, more of Putin's useful idiots.
"Peace Activists" that are cool with Putin murdering civilians in Ukraine and Syria, but don't like Israeli attacks or NATO.
Russia alone started the Ukrainian war by ordering its military to invade and attack. Russia can stop it tomorrow by withdrawing its forces. Instead they choose to continue attacking and commit unending war crimes.
The only solution that will give a lasting peace is to give Ukraine everything it needs to defeat Russia militarily, and do everything else possible to defeat Russia economically. Appeasement has never worked with imperialists and fascists.
The real American crime was supporting Mujahadeen against the secular left regime in Kabul, simply because it had Russian backing. This led to oppression of the woman of that nation. Then walking away from (defending their safety not part of the American forever war) them more recently and allowing the return of the Taleban and the same old oppression (what is it about religion and the practice of misogyny). This after saying they were to remain out of power (making the Americans seem both weak and unreliable – what enduring freedom).
The real crime of Code Pink, is that they support the right of the non western actor to oppress all they like, and they oppose any resistance to that as western warmongering. Appeasement is ugly, it is amorality.
I don't think the Mujahadeen made it to trusted ally.
Vladimir Putin has described Afghanistan’s Taliban as Russia’s trusted ally in its fight against terrorism.
The Russian president told journalists after meeting regional leaders in Kazakhstan that the ruling regime in Kabul could help the Kremlin fight ISIS-K amid a rise in terrorist attacks in Russia.
“The Taliban movement controls power in the country and in this sense, the Taliban are certainly allies for us in the fight against terrorism,” he said.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/07/04/taliban-trusted-ally-against-terrorists-putin/
Go Joe.
Your language may be a bit intemperate, your heart is in the right place.
Jenny, how are you dealing with the failure of the U.S.-backed Al Nusra terrorists in Syria? Russia's crucial hand in the defeat of ISIS there is surely to be applauded.
Cite evidence that the US supported Al Nusra – al Qaeda in Syria. They were designated terrorists
The Russians did not fight Islamic State in Syria, they fought on the side of Syria against rebels such as Al Nusra.
Islamic State (al Qaeda in Iraq), but with a base in NE Syria, was fought by Kurds in Syria and Iraq, the Americans/NATO, Shia militias of Iraq and Iraq.
Do you even know what Al-Nusra was?
So no evidence.
I thought you didn't. Thanks for confirming it.
Jake Sullivan to Hillary Clinton
"Al Queda is on our side in Syria"
https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/23225
https://www.twn.my/title2/resurgence/2016/314-315/world2.htm
Sure American supported a group, FSA, that fought with them against the Syrian government.
But the Americans did not directly support al Nusra, and legally could not, as they were a designated terrorist group (the Nusra front emerged from al Qaeda and other Islamist groups there).
They knew full well that the weapons they gave to the "moderates" was being shared with al Nusra.It takes a fair amount of cognitive gymnastics to deny that this made the US a de facto ally of al Nusra
No more than to pretend that the Americans were actually supporting a group they deemed a terrorist entity – they would have removed them from power in Damascus, if they had won. Just as they did Islamic State from North Iraq and NE Syria.
You have such a touching belief in American lawfulness, ignoring their covert CIA operations and their revolving door attitudes to terrorism
https://www.syriahr.com/en/213255/
You really have no idea to whom you say that.
And that is only a report of an interview on PBS and reprise of old news that some aid to FSA ended up with al Nusra. That the Americans were not fans of the Damascus regime is a known. Do you doubt that they would have eliminated al Nusra (as they did Islamic State) if they won?
Yesterday, NATO made russia bomb the Children's Hospital in Kyiv. Poor russia.
NATO is silent on the murder of 15,000 Palestinian children.
NATO Secretary General: “Israel does not stand alone”
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_219309.htm
So what russia did was right! Sounds logical.
Both sides wrong. But if you don't judge both actions to be equally lacking in basic humanity, that's your problem.
Genocide Joe.
A most relevant comment in the thread below that tweet:
From someone who has never mentioned the number of children killed in Gaza by weapons supplied by the U.S. Not once.
Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext
Isn't that enough to make you want to force the Russians to the table?
Opps sorry forgot your a delusional war monger. You that think violence is the only answer. That Ukraine can win the war, we just need to arm them. Or better yet, why don't you go do the fighting.
This war is a massive mistake of demographic proportions for both sides, and the longer it goes on – the reality is that Ukraine population is totally screwed going into the future. We are fast looking at no Ukraine in the years to come, and numb nuts like you want them to wipe themselves out.
"Isn't that enough to make you want to force the Russians to the table? "
So when the Christchurch terrorist murdered a bunch of people, we should have immediately opened negotiations with him and considered making concessions.
You will "force" russia to the table, only with force. They have already shown what they do when presented with weakness and vulnerability.
Classic example of what false equivalence is. Can I suggest you read "On War by Carl Von Clausewitz", it will help.
Please stop being such a vulgar russophobe, Yeah putin is a wanker, but the reality is – russia is in the shit too. And they will come to the table if poms and dumb asses yanks toned it down a notch. Rather than keep pushing hard line propaganda, like that you seemed to have drunk the cool-aid from.
Some criticisms of NATO are valid. However the article falls flat with its failure to outrightly condem the Facist and thug Putin for his invasion of Ukraine and Russian war crimes. He would be cheering from the rafters after reading this article.
…its failure to outrightly condem [sic] the Facist [sic] and thug Putin for his invasion of Ukraine and Russian war crimes.
In fact, these peace activists get it just right: they condemn the people responsible for the ceaseless goading and provocation of Russia—NATO, i.e. the United States war machine,
Next you will be arguing
1.Poland existing on land formerly held by the Prussians, Austro-Hungarian and Tsarist empires was reason for 1939.
2.US sanctions on Japan (invasion of China) provoked the attack on Pearl Harbour 1941.
Your first point is absurd. Your second point has merit.
Just observing, while other nations are invaded, is amoral.
At this point it's to late, Ukraine is in total demographic melt down. A couple of generations and they will be a totally irrelevant people. This is a war crime, one, as old as time.
That said, Russia has slit its own neck as well. Putin gets to be remembered as the last Russian ruler. He has taken the demographic decline within Russia, and pushed it into a utter disaster for the Russian people with this stupid war.
There are so many useful idiots on all sides, its bloody sickening.
Funny.
I don't remember all this keyboard warrior wars in 2003…
…oh that's right..I do! In the form of over 1 million taking to the streets of London marching against Bush's invasion.
But I don't remember placards saying:
If U.s invades sanction them to he'll.
If u.s invades..we must give billions in weapons to saddam.
If u.s invades..we must encourage mercenariesbto kill the American invaders.
If the u.s invades..we must fight until Iraq gains all its territory back.
FUNNY THAT
Iraqi was under weapons and oil export sanctions because of the invasion of Kuwait …and Moslems did migrate to the region – some to fight against the Syrian regime and the others to join Islamic State (fight the American backed regime in Iraq).
You know it's FUNNY that posters like SPC have to revert to bs barbs like internal Chinese policies or name calling of medea Benjamin than actually look in the MIRROR.
Of course..any bs narrative will do to continue the pro Nato existence propaganda.
The real question is
Why does NATO exist post 91?
The reason is US military industrial complex and $$$$$.
Anyone reading the thread can note you have just told two outright lies.
The personal attacks on those who disagree is your own trait, and it is there for all to see.
The reasons why NATO continued after 1991
1.the EU had yet to form a common defence force and security policy sans the Cold War.
2.the use of NATO in the liberation of Kuwait, thus a purpose in fulfillment in the collective security of nations. 3 of the UNSC 5, were in NATO.
It appears NATO chose otherwise.
It seems committed not just to supporting Ukraine (to its internationally recognised borders), but also to bringing the nation to NATO membership.
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_227678.htm
SPC…your being deliberately obtuse
Throughout this ukraine debate.
The end of the cold war saw the end of the threat..thus there is NO need for nato to exist anymore. Of course nato will give a reason for its existence when it's in its own interest to give some bs reason…lol..try harder SPC.
I am not lying at all about anything.
IM making a simple clear argument that the U.S.A cannot handle copycat behaviour..it's kindergarten ego stuff..the Cuban Missile crises is a good example.
Kennedy: I'm sending a blockade out of Cuban ports to send a message.
Us own logic 2022(lol): How dare he! Cuba is a sovereign nation that can do whatever it wants!
Sweden and Finland joined NATO because there is an aggressor nation on the continent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abkhazia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Ossetia
Then the Donbass and Crimea 2014 and 2022 attacks on Kharkiv and Kyiv and the south to realise the surrender of Ukraine and cession of the 2014 territories (or risk the annexation of nova Russia).
In the defence of Ukraine – NATO is doing the work the UNSC would have authorised if there was no Russian veto.
The decision of European nations to work towards their own cruise missile capability (and spend a minimum of 2% of GDP on defence) is part of developing the capacity of the EU to defend itself from a nation deemed a threat to it. That Russia is seen that way is based on its actions.