And while Zelinskyy argued for an agency specifically to protect democracies, one could also argue that non-democratic nations that are not belligerent, like Vietnam and Iraq, have at least the right to territorial integrity and the protection of their own borders.
I don't see any easy answers here, and am not writing this to offer simple solutions to complex problems.
Hopefully, Putin's brutal overreach will signal the end of his reign in Russia and he'll be replaced by more democratic leadership, although history shows he could just as easily be replaced by someone even more bloodthirsty and violent. Or he may become even more violent domestically, crush his internal opposition (as he's already begun), and hang on to power for another decade or more.
But whether it has immediate application or not, it's an important conversation to engage, and the American press, by ignoring Zelenskyy's proposal, does a disservice to the cause of world peace. Clearly what we have isn't working as well as needed, although that does not necessarily mean we need another armed international body.
We are the richest and most powerful nation in the world; that carries an obligation to examine how we ourselves committed the same types of war crimes Putin stands accused of, and how both the US and Russia - and any other aggressor nation - can be held to account in the future.
Perhaps Zelenskyy is right that militarily aggressor nations must be held to account via military force itself.
Perhaps the solution is to expand and enhance the power of the Internal Court of Justice to actually seize, prosecute and punish in real time any nation's leaders who drag their countries into illegal wars. After all, that Court just declared Putin's war illegal and ordered it stopped, although he is simply ignoring them.
Perhaps there's another way altogether that the world hasn't yet seriously considered.
We should be discussing this issue of how to define and maintain peace in the world now. As FDR told us back in that 1940 speech when America was not yet a party to the conflict of WWII:
"We must apply ourselves to our task with the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice, as we would show were we at war."
Because, no matter how much we pretend it's not the case, we are involved in a war now and both Ukraine and the majority of other nations in the world want - and deserve - a safe and reliable peace.
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