Pre-emptive self-defense is an iffy concept in international law, but the USA invoked it in 1962 when it felt threatened by the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. JFK vowed to start shooting if the USSR didn’t remove the missiles. He didn’t consult with or defer to the wishes of the government of sovereign Cuba.
Russia reasonably perceives a danger from NATO, which is a military alliance whose constituent governments, even more so than Russia’s, are captured by for-profit interests whose mandate is the acquisition of resources and markets. NATO has expanded eastward for 25 years, with armed interventions in places way east of the North Atlantic.
Russia and China have given notice that a unipolar security arrangement is no longer acceptable to them, but up to now the West has dismissed their concerns as absurd. US hegemony has given us a planet of slums. It isn’t worth fighting for, particularly if Ukrainians are the only people who must do the fighting.
The off-ramp in Ukraine is to acknowledge that Russia has legitimate security concerns just like Uncle Sam did in 1962. The West should agree, à la the Monroe Doctrine, to roll back NATO and set up some sort of DMZ along Russia’s western border.
The carnage in Ukraine should persuade us of the need for a mandatory procedure for non-violent dispute resolution. And then we can move from the charade of ‘arms control’ and ‘non-proliferation’ to actual disarmament.
Pre-emptive self-defense is an iffy concept in international law, but the USA invoked it in 1962 when it felt threatened by the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. JFK vowed to start shooting if the USSR didn’t remove the missiles. He didn’t consult with or defer to the wishes of the government of sovereign Cuba.
Russia reasonably perceives a danger from NATO, which is a military alliance whose constituent governments, even more so than Russia’s, are captured by for-profit interests whose mandate is the acquisition of resources and markets. NATO has expanded eastward for 25 years, with armed interventions in places way east of the North Atlantic.
Russia and China have given notice that a unipolar security arrangement is no longer acceptable to them, but up to now the West has dismissed their concerns as absurd. US hegemony has given us a planet of slums. It isn’t worth fighting for, particularly if Ukrainians are the only people who must do the fighting.
The off-ramp in Ukraine is to acknowledge that Russia has legitimate security concerns just like Uncle Sam did in 1962. The West should agree, à la the Monroe Doctrine, to roll back NATO and set up some sort of DMZ along Russia’s western border.
The carnage in Ukraine should persuade us of the need for a mandatory procedure for non-violent dispute resolution. And then we can move from the charade of ‘arms control’ and ‘non-proliferation’ to actual disarmament.