eastwestaccord

A negotiated end to the conflict is the right goal –  and one that needs to arrive sooner rather than later.

If people would quit thinking of him as strange and exotic, Ukraine and the world would be better off.

​So far, Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine has been limited, and not only in name.

We should not get too involved in Ukraine, because in the end Russia will expend more political will, take more risks, and suffer more consequences to determine the final outcome there. In short, Ukraine is peripheral to us, and dear to them. So, in the meantime, our politicians and policy-makers should not put their own, and their nation’s, credibility on the line there.

Last week the European Parliament overwhelmingly voted to approve Ukraine’s candidacy for membership in the European Union. Only days before, the EU- and NATO- member state Lithuania enacted a blockade of Russia’s Eastern European enclave, Kaliningrad. Meantime, Russia’s military gains in eastern Ukraine have been met with ever more promises of Western aid for Ukraine. To discuss these and other developments, on Thursday, June 23rd, I spoke with Clare Daly, a courageous and outspoken member of the European Parliament from Ireland, and a stalwart opponent of the trans-Atlantic militarist consensus that has both Washington and the European Parliament in Brussels firmly in its grip. [Read more…] about ACURA Q&A: Clare Daly, Member of the European Parliament from Ireland, Talks With ACURA’s James W. Carden

Forty years ago, 1 million people gathered in Central Park demanding an end to the nuclear arms race. It was not only the largest antinuclear demonstration, but also the largest political demonstration in American history. Today the risk of nuclear war is at its highest level since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Unless the brutal war in Ukraine is ended soon, with a cease-fire and a political and diplomatic resolution providing for Ukraine’s security and sovereignty, escalation may well lead to nuclear conflict – accidental or not.

Early in the Ukraine war, President Biden boasted on twitter that thanks to “unprecedented” sanctions, the “Russian economy is on track to be cut in half” and the ruble had been reduced to “rubble.”  All instruments of economic warfare had been deployed against Ukraine’s invader, from the freezing of central bank reserves to sanctions on Russian cats. Today, the cats may be still at home, but the ruble is at a seven year high, Russian interest and inflation rates are headed downwards, and industrial production is ticking up. Meanwhile Russian forces steadily advance in Ukraine.

Strategically, Zelensky needs a better plan.

 

Professor John J. Mearsheimer discusses the current Russian invasion on Ukraine while exploring the potential causes and consequences of the crisis. In this lecture, Prof. Mearsheimer focuses on both the origins of the war in Ukraine and some of its most important consequences. He argues that the crisis is largely the result of the West’s efforts to turn Ukraine into a Western bulwark on Russia’s border.

…if one takes some distance to assess the conflict and does not immediately side with Ukraine, one is declared a ”Putin-Empathizer.” This is unbelievable. What I think about Putin has nothing to do with the assessment of the situation.

One of the most disturbing features of this US-Russian struggle in Ukraine has been the utter corruption of independent media. Indeed Washington has won the information and propaganda war hands down, orchestrating all Western media to sing from the same hymnbook in characterizing the Ukraine war.  The West has never before witnessed such a blanket imposition by one country’s ideologically-driven geopolitical perspective at home. Nor, of course, is the Russian press to be trusted either. In the midst of  a virulent anti-Russian propaganda barrage whose likes I have never seen during my Cold Warrior days, serious analysts must dig deep these days to gain some objective understanding of what is actually taking place in Ukraine.

Would that this  American media dominance that denies nearly all alternative voices were merely a blip occasioned by Ukraine events…

While realism isn’t blameless, the record of realism isn’t comparable to the democracy crusades of the last thirty years.

The way in which commentators have looked upon the legal issues raised by Russia’s war in Ukraine is inadequate. Western leaders have focused exclusively on Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, both in 2014 and 2022.

In Joe Biden’s Washington, it is the self described national security “expert community” that is at the wheel and driving the administration’s Ukraine policy. 

A little remarked upon open letter which appeared in the Washington tabloid The Hill on June 1 put a public face on what had been until that point a discreet, though highly successful effort on the part of Washington think tanks  – many of which, like the disgraced Brookings Institution, are funded by foreign governments –  to direct the White House policy on Ukraine. [Read more…] about ACURA ViewPoint: James W. Carden: Neocon Think Tanks Are Driving Biden’s Ukraine Policy 

His fury is understandable given the destruction his country has endured, but it can’t become the basis for US strategy.

 

Swords to Ploughshares Ireland invites you to a conversation between Jan Oberg (Director of the TFF-Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, Sweden) Eamon Rafter (World Beyond War, Ireland and SToP) and Niamh Ni Bhriain, Programme Coordinator War and Pacification at the Transnational Institute, The Netherlands.

As public opinion and the European political establishment in France, Germany and Italy slowly converge behind the need to forge a difficult but necessary peace, slowly Western Europe is coming to its senses.

Diogenes, one of the ancient world’s illustrious philosophers, believed that lies were the currency of politics, and those lies were the ones he sought to expose and debase. To make his point, Diogenes occasionally carried a lit lantern through the streets of Athens in the daylight. If asked why, Diogenes would say he was searching for an honest man.

Finding an honest man today in Washington, D.C., is equally challenging. Diogenes would need a Xenon Searchlight in each hand.

What is the Institute for the Study of War? And why do America’s elite media outlets trust it for all of their on-the-ground Ukraine information?