Ukraine: Time to Step Back from the Brink

[polly7]

By Andrew Lichterman

February 24, 2015

Over the past month, the Ukraine conflict has exploded once again. Now the warring parties have agreed to a ceasefire, and to an approach to further negotiations towards a political solution. It is time for the countries that are providing support from outside Ukraine to halt and reverse all actions that contribute to this war, and that also are raising tensions in the region to levels not seen since the Cold War.

For most residents of the United States, the war in Ukraine seems to have emerged out of nowhere, intensifying with a startling pace. There is much debate about its causes, but there can be little about either the devastation it is causing or the greater dangers to which it may lead. Thousands have been killed in the fighting and hundreds of thousands displaced from their homes. The Ukraine’s economy, fragile even before the war began, has been disrupted by war and the country’s division. Much of Ukraine’s population already suffers economic hardship, and their future is bleak unless the war is ended and resources found for rebuilding and recovery.

The Ukraine war began with the overthrow of an elected government—a rebellion in which various factions had received material assistance and public political backing from the United States, and Western European governments as well. In a country that since its inception has been governed by alternating coalitions of oligarchs associated with regional and economic sectors oriented towards Russia on the one hand and Europe on the other, the potential for a broader conflict was present from the outset. This danger was both manifested and intensified by the event that sparked the protests and insurrection, the rejection by the government of an agreement that would have strengthened Ukraine’s economic ties with the European Union, and set the country on a course towards increased integration with European military structures and organizations.

Russia’s government and military see NATO expansion into Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics as a betrayal of commitments made by the U.S. and its allies in the early 1990’s following the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Ukraine was the most populous and economically productive of the former Soviet republics outside Russia, and still provided a key warm water port to the Russian Navy in Crimea under a basing agreement. The possibility that Ukraine might become more tightly tied to NATO and might even someday host NATO forces is seen by Russia’s national security establishment as a critical strategic threat.

........The deep injustices of the global economy will not be addressed until some genuinely different social and economic alternative emerges from the stagnation and decay of the neoliberal order. In the meantime, it is essential that we understand that the wars our ruling elites provoke and seek to enlist us to fight are not our wars. In a crowded, fragile, and globally interconnected society bristling with high-tech armaments and nuclear weapons, war is a disaster for ordinary people, and the potential for a civilizational catastrophe a real risk. If humanity is to survive for long, there can be no more support for the warmakers.

Full article: https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/ukraine-time-to-step-back-from-the-brink/

[KoKo]

1. Well worth the read of the whole article at the link....

This snip is chilling when one considers who are the leading possible Candidates for US President of both parties for 2016:

The leaders of Germany and France in recent weeks seem finally to have woken up to the dangers presented by this cascade of events. Merkel and Hollande have shuttled frantically back and forth between Moscow and Washington in an attempt to buy time with a cease fire while forestalling U.S. moves that might intensify the conflict, such as providing more direct military aid to Ukraine’s government. U.S. national security elites seem to have no strong appetite for a military confrontation with Russia, but appear quite capable of backing into one. They have crafted a propaganda box for themselves in which everything that has gone wrong in Ukraine must be blamed on Russian aggression, a box likely to grow even more rigid as the rising cacophony of the Presidential election season overwhelms nuance and rationality for the duration.

[uhnope]

2. translation: time to let Russia keep its occupation of eastern Ukraine for now & invade more later

what a slog of lies, half-truths and misleading statements

[Blue_Tires]

3. But nobody asks Russia to step back, even as they are advancing?

[Tommy_Carcetti]

4. OP will get back to you on that one in April. nt