The United States Aggressive Expansion of NATO Created This Horror; The United States Can and Should End It by Dave LIndorff!
(2022-02-28 at 00:17:43 )

The United States Aggressive Expansion of NATO Created This Horror; The United States Can and Should End It by Dave LIndorff!

Time for the United States to take the lead for peace in Ukraine:

Trucker "Freedom Convoy" heads for DC as war rages in Ukraine

The sad state of what used to be the peace movement in the United States is on display today in the nations capital and on highways leading to DC.

As a bloody and dangerous war is raging in Ukraine between the armies of Russia and Ukraine, the latter backed by arms being supplied by the United States and its NATO allies, instead of masses of protesters converging on Washington,D.C. to demand that the United States end the conflict in Ukraine by announcing that it would never again permit the expansion of NATO membership to Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova or any other former Warsaw Pact country or former Soviet state of the former Soviet Union, the only demonstration in the nations capital is truckers protesting Covid vaccine and mask mandates .

For decades since the Korean War (the last time the United States sought Security Council approval before going to war), the United States has been repeatedly committing the illegal war crime of attacking other countries that do not present any imminent threat of attack on it as required under the United Nations Charter.

Yet not since the Biden administration took office, and only rarely under prior Democratic presidential administrations from Carter through Obama, has a United States peace movement risen up to seriously protest United States militarism. Against Republican administrations, yet, but not Democratic ones since Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam.

Now we are seeing self-styled peace activists organizing protests against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, joining the United States government in denouncing Russian presidential "thug" Vladimir Putin. But that is not a big deal. No risk in doing that. What these protesters should be having the courage and integrity to do is demand that the United States take the lead in halting the war on Ukraine.

Washington,D.C. could do this, not by sending more lethal arms to Ukraine as the United States Congress is pressing President Biden to do, and as Biden has successfully pressed most of the supine NATO counties to do - even Germany - but by promising to reverse its now decades old aggressive and threatening policy of admitting to NATO countries closer and closer to Russias western border.

Ukraine is only the latest and most threatening of these cases. It was the United States, after all, which helped foment and orchestrate the 2014 Maidan Coup in Kiev that ousted the elected leader of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych because, while popularly elected, he was steering the country towards an economic pact with Russia instead of with the European Union.

Here is noted international law expert Francis Boyles explanation of the real situation and of United States responsibility for the current crisis, as laid out over the weekend in an interview with Dennis Bernstein, host and producer of "Flashpoints" on Pacific Radio in San Francisco:

-"This war must be immediately terminated before it expands and sucks in the European NATO States and the United States. Towards that end President Biden must publicly announce that NATO Expansion is over for good and that Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova will not be joining NATO as member States.

President Biden must also call for an international peace conference for the conclusion of a treaty that will establish the permanent neutrality of Ukraine which will be guaranteed by the United Nations Security Council under Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter.

Then negotiations can take place between the United States and Russia over the denuclearization of Europe including the removal of United States tactical nuclear weapons from NATO States that are there in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a restoration of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty that was so foolishly and recklessly terminated by the Donald Trump administration.

Then a new round of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty Negotiations should be conducted in order to substantially lessen the tensions on land, sea and air between Russia and the United States-NATO States including over the emplacement of alleged United States ABM sites in Europe that threaten Russia.

"Make no mistake about it: The origins of both the First World War and the Second World War hover like twin Swords of Damocles over the heads of all humanity!"

I asked Mr. Boyle, a law professor at the University of Illinois, in an email interview today, why in his view is that it is the United States, not Russia, that bears the responsibility of making the first move in trying to end the war in Ukraine, and he replied, "It was our gross and consistent violation of our international law obligations for all these years that was ultimately responsible for this war. So now we have an obligation to honor our international law obligations in order to end it."

I notice that all too many of my supposedly peace-loving and liberal or even leftist friends are quick to echo President Biden, and most United States media pundits, in immediately referring to Russias president as "Thug" Putin, not just Putin. That, I suppose, is to insulate them from any criticism if they should happen to lay any blame at all for the present conflict on the United States or on Ukraine itself, though there is plenty of blame to lay against both those latter countries.

But come on! It takes no moral, much less physical courage for United States of Americans to criticize "Thug Putin" or Russia. That courage is being shown by thousands of Russians who have dared to go into the streets or to sign letters protesting Russias invasion of Ukraine. Courage in the United States would be required of anti-war, pro-peace activists in the United States to go into the streets and demand that the United States stop feeding the conflict by providing lethal aid to Ukraine, and to demand, as Prof. Boyle correctly demands, that the United States immediately offer to end all talk of Ukraines "right" to join NATO, and to promise not to allow any states bordering Russia to join was is specifically an international organization designed to challenge and Russia by encircling it with United States of American missiles and military bases.

In this era of nuclear weapons it is time to stop the big power confrontations with weapons of war, time for the United States to stop falsely labeling things like Russias Nord Stream natural gas pipeline from Siberian gas fields to Germany, or Chinas massive "Belt and Road" project to link Asia to Europe with modern highways and high-speed rail links as "aggressive" acts.

It is one thing to have economic competition; it is another to have military competition, the latter of which is simply driven by the insatiable profit appetite of the international arms industry, which in the United States receives more than half of the Pentagons now close to $800-billion annual budget. That is a some of money which, by the way, is about 20 times that of Russias military and four times Chinas.

I would add that it is disturbing to see all the public displays of anguish over the suffering of the people of Ukraine in the United States media and in public protests - not because that suffering is, as in all wars, and especially modern ones very real - but because we do not see similar anguish in the United States over wars and slaughter of our own making.

Look at Afghanistan, where most of the concern and anguish was over the fate, after the United States had left, of Afghans who had sided with the United States invaders and occupiers of their country, not over the people who had lost loved ones during 20 years of extreme and indiscriminate United States violence there.

Look at Yemen, where a nation is being genocidally bombed and starved by United States ally Saudi Arabia, using weapons, including such monstrous weapons as anti-personnel bombs, and planes provided by the United States.

Look at Syria, where even the New York Times, a supporter of the illegal United States war effort in Syria, has shown an obscene lack of concern about massive civilian deaths in United States air and drone attacks over almost a decade and a half of United States military involvement in that countrys civil war - deaths that its own investigative journalists exposed.

I hate to have to ask this, but it must be asked: Is United States public and media concern about the war in Ukraine because the victims of Russias attack in this case are white people (often blond white people) and not dark-skinned ones???

It is encouraging that Ukraine is willing to meet without conditions and negotiate with Russia to stop the war. I desperately hope Russia agrees to this.

But for negotiations to work, we United States of Americans need to demand that the United States not interfere by pressuring Ukraine not to agree to no future NATO membership or to some promise of neutrality in Europe.

Instead this is the moment for the United States to push for peace by itself agreeing to put in writing that no states bordering Russia will ever be invited to join NATO.

If we had 100,000 American "peaceniks" gathering in Washington,D.C. or in cities around the country demanding such a position by the United States government, it might actually happen.

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