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At some level, it seems so obvious. At the very least, there should be a steep price to pay for invading another country and fighting a war of aggression there. The question that Alfred McCoy, TomDispatch regular and most recently author of To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change, focuses on today is how to make sure that actually happens. He has a clever idea for how to make Vladimir Putin pay (in the most literal sense possible) for the nightmare he's perpetrating on Ukrainians. See if you don't agree.
Sadly, the United States in this century isn't exactly a good example when it comes to paying for wars of aggression. The Vlad has, of course, given officials at the Pentagon and elsewhere in Washington the perfect opportunity to be all too righteous about the horrors and they are indeed horrors another power is committing. Unfortunately, Washington has nothing to brag about on that score. Its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the second of them based on a set of concocted lies about that country's supposed weapons of mass destruction, were disasters for which this country paid all too little. Only recently, in fact, Joe Biden literally stole billions of dollars that should have been spent on desperate Afghans in the name of paying back the families of the victims of 9/11. After all, after 20 years of disastrous war-making there, the U.S. military departed all-too-chaotically, leaving that country in the hands of the Taliban and in a state of utter disaster. The brutal aftermath of our war there is ongoing in a country lacking jobs, suffering the worst drought in decades, and too many of whose children are now dying of starvation. Under the circumstances, the money Joe Biden didn't deliver to them should be considered a first-class horror all its own.
Or, as we watch Vladimir Putin's forces leveling Ukrainian cities, just think for a moment of what U.S. air power and artillery did to Iraq's historic Old City of Mosul it was our Mariupol or the Syrian provincial city of Raqqa in the battle against ISIS (itself a creation of the American invasion of Iraq). No, we were never up there with the Vlad when it comes to urban destruction, but we did commit our own crimes, no payment needed. Sadly, as the Ukrainians face the next round of horror, unless something like McCoy's suggestion is taken up, the ruins we now see in Ukrainian cities could be not just a present reality, but that country's future for untold years to come. Tom
How to End the War in Ukraine
A Solution Beyond Sanctions
By Alfred McCoy
As the war in Ukraine heads for its third month amid a rising toll of death and destruction, Washington and its European allies are scrambling, so far unsuccessfully, to end that devastating, globally disruptive conflict. Spurred by troubling images of executed Ukrainian civilians scattered in the streets of Bucha and ruined cities like Mariupol, they are already trying to use many tools in their diplomatic pouches to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin to desist. These range from economic sanctions and trade embargoes to the confiscation of the assets of some of his oligarch cronies and the increasingly massive shipment of arms to Ukraine. Yet none of it seems to be working.
Even after Ukraine's surprisingly strong defense forced a Russian retreat from the northern suburbs of the capital, Kyiv, Putin only appears to be doubling down with plans for new offensives in Ukraine's south and east. Instead of engaging in serious negotiations, he's been redeploying his battered troops for a second round of massive attacks led by General Alexander Dvonikov, "the butcher of Syria," whose merciless air campaigns in that country flattened cities like Aleppo and Homs.
So while the world waits for the other combat boot to drop hard, it's already worth considering where the West went wrong in its efforts to end this war, while exploring whether anything potentially effective is still available to slow the carnage.
Playing the China Card
In January 2021, only weeks after President Joe Biden's inauguration, Moscow began threatening to attack Ukraine unless Washington and its European allies agreed that Kyiv could never join NATO. That April, Putin only added force to his demand by dispatching 120,000 troops to Ukraine's border to stage military maneuvers that Washington even then branded a "war threat." In response, taking a leaf from former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's tattered Cold War playbook, the Biden administration initially tried to play Beijing off against Moscow.
After a face-to-face summit with Putin in Geneva that June, President Biden affirmed Washington's "unwavering commitment to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine." In a pointed warning to the Russian president, he said,
"You got a multi-thousand-mile border with China" China is" seeking to be the most powerful economy in the world and the largest and the most powerful military in the world. You're in a situation where your economy is struggling" I don't think [you should be] looking for a Cold War with the United States."
As Russian armored units began massing for war near the Ukrainian border that November, U.S. intelligence officials all-too-accurately leaked warnings that "the Kremlin is planning a multi-front offensive" involving up to 175,000 troops." In response, over the next three months, administration officials scrambled to avert war by meeting a half-dozen times with Beijing's top diplomats and beseeching "the Chinese to tell Russia not to invade."
In a video conference on December 7th, Biden told Putin of his "deep concerns" about Russia's escalation of forces surrounding Ukraine," warning that "the U.S. and our Allies would respond with strong economic and other measures in the event of military escalation."
In a more amicable video conference just a week later, however, Putin assured China's President Xi Jinping that he would defy any human-rights boycott by Western leaders and come to Beijing for the Winter Olympics. Calling him his "old friend," Xi replied that he appreciated this unwavering support and "firmly opposed attempts to drive a wedge into our two countries." Indeed, during the February Olympics opening ceremony, the two of them publicly proclaimed a de facto alliance that had "no limits," even as Beijing evidently made it clear that Russia should not spoil China's glittering Olympic moment on the international stage with an invasion right then.
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