"But there is no military solution short of economic ruin, global famine, climate catastrophe " or worse, nuclear Armageddon," responded this activist, who pointed out, to nods from the Ukrainian, that since the start of the war Ukraine and Russia had negotiated grain exports and nuclear reactor inspections.
Why couldn't they negotiate an end to the war, if only the U.S. and NATO would stop sending weapons to prolong the crisis?
Veterans for Peace members in the Bay Area wrote to Democratic reps Mark Desaulinier (CA-11) and Barbara Lee (CA-13), the lone vote against the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and sponsor of legislation to cut the Pentagon budget by $350 billion.
"We urge you to forcefully call for negotiations and speak out against Secretary of Defense Austin's call for continuing the war to 'weaken Russia.' That is a recipe for a world war if ever there was one," read the letters.
In Rockville, Maryland, another Veterans for Peace member Jim Driscoll, who volunteered for the Marines in Vietnam, published an OpEd in the local press, "Why I was arrested to 'Stop the War Save the Climate.'" Driscoll was arrested in August during an anti-war protest outside Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen's office. His message to Van Hollen, as well as the media?: Stop fueling the war in Ukraine that exacerbates the climate crisis.
Driscoll writes,
"As with Vietnam and Iraq, the U.S. government and a subservient media have painted an a historical, one-sided, distorted narrative, to justify the damage we have foisted upon the people of Ukraine "
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, is slated this week to virtually address an Austin, Texas, summit of military contractors - Raytheon, Northrop Grumman - to appeal directly to the war profiteers for more weapons.
The White House, concerned that Ukrainian battlefield victories will trigger Russian retaliation, opposes Zelensky's latest request - missiles with a range of 190 miles that Zelensky could use to strike Russian-annexed Crimea.
As a plan B, Zelensky's government has launched an "Advantage Ukraine" initiative of low taxation and deregulation to attract foreign investors to build made-to-order weapons systems in Ukraine. That country, however, may have serious competition as a forward-deployed threat to Russia, for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently announced he wants to make his country "the cornerstone of conventional defense of Europe."
Not everyone in high places, campaigns, however, for escalation and further militarization. Mexican President Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) will call on the United Nations during the General Assembly's general debate this week to create an international committee to promote dialogue between Biden, Putin, and Zelensky, with invitations to Pope Francis, the prime minister of India, and the U.N. secretary general, to act as mediators to end the war in Ukraine. AMLO would like to put everything on the negotiating table, including nuclear missile tests.
Excited by AMLO's initiative, members of the Peace in Ukraine Coalition hope to amplify his message in the coming weeks as an existential question haunts coalition members.
How does the war in Ukraine end? With nuclear annihilation of 60 percent of the human race or a decades-long war of attrition or a backdoor deal for semi-autonomy of the Donbass and partial denuclearization of Europe?
As the United States approaches the 60th anniversary of the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, one is reminded that former President John F. Kennedy persuaded Soviet Leader Nikita Krushchev to remove nuclear missiles pointed at Florida from a base in Cuba, not by fast-tracking weapons to escalate a hot war but by quietly making a deal to remove U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey.
As time passed, U.S. nuclear warheads were reinstalled in Turkey, though the quiet negotiations between JFK and Kruschev serve as an example of how diplomacy can avert catastrophe.
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