Tag: Peace

Pope suggests NATO facilitated war by ‘barking at Russia’s door’ / by John Wojcik

Pope Francis waves to the crowds that gathered in St.Peter’s Square at the Vatican as he recites the Regina Coeli noon prayer from the window of his studio, April 24, 2022. Andrew Medichini | AP

Pope Francis appears to be at least partially blaming the West for the war in Ukraine. In an interview published this week, he suggested that Russia’s invasion may have been encouraged by the “barking of NATO at Russia’s door.”

The Pontiff held back from accusing NATO or the U.S. of directly provoking the invasion itself, however, when he talked about Russian anger about the role of the West in the buildup to the conflict. He described that anger as “an anger that I don’t know if you can say it was provoked but maybe facilitated,” in an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

He was unequivocal, however, in his condemnation of the invasion itself and of the arms industry in the West, describing the pumping of weapons into Ukraine and the subsequent profiteering by armaments makers as a “scandal” that he has heard “too few oppose.”

Francis has used his papacy to advocate for disarmament. He has traveled to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to pray for peace, and he has called out the U.S. and Saudi Arabia for what they have done in Yemen.

He castigated the weapons manufacturers for using the war in Ukraine to test ever more dangerous and deadly weapons.

“What is clear is that in that land, weapons are being tested,” he said. “That is why you make wars: to test weapons we have created.”

In Rome on April 15, Francis said he was concerned that World War III is already being fought, although piecemeal, in “every corner of the world—in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Africa, one war after another.”

The Pope told his interviewer that he could not answer the question of whether it is right to send weapons to Ukraine.

“I can’t answer, I’m too far away, to the question of whether it is right to supply the Ukrainians,” Francis said. “There are international interests in every bit. One cannot think that a free state can wage war on another free state. In Ukraine, it was the others [the Russians] who created the conflict.”

The Pope has avoided condemning Putin directly, however, in the hope he can serve as a peacemaker and said this week that he wants to go to Moscow.

A June meeting between Francis and Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill in Jerusalem was called off recently over Vatican concerns that it would send what the Vatican called an “ambiguous” signal, but the two did talk for 40 minutes over videoconference in March. Kirill has strongly supported Russia’s position on the war.

Francis said in the interview that Kirill spent half of that March meeting reading off “all the justifications for the war” and said that Kirill must not “transform himself into Putin’s altar boy.”

For years, the Pope has tried to improve relations between the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church, but those efforts are endangered now because of the war. Increased sanctions that were discussed Wednesday by the European Union have reportedly infuriated Kirill.

Russian Orthodox Church spokesman Vladimir Legoyda suggested that sanctions would only delay peace.

“You have to be completely unaware of the history of our church to think that it’s possible to scare its clergy and believers by putting them on some kind of lists,” Legoyda said Wednesday.

The Pope’s suggestion that the West and NATO bear some of the responsibility for the war in Ukraine was not received positively in government circles in strongly Catholic Poland. Zbigniew Rau, the Polish foreign minister, said he was holding his face in his hands when he heard the Pope’s criticisms.

Poland, a country led now by the extreme right-wing Law and Justice Party, has allowed NATO to place nuclear-capable missiles on its eastern borders, close to Russia. Other countries doing the same include Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

This story features material from the Associated Press and other sources

John Wojcik is Editor-in-Chief of People’s World. John Wojcik es editor en jefe de People’s World. He joined the staff as Labor Editor in May 2007 after working as a union meat cutter in northern New Jersey. There, he served as a shop steward and a member of a UFCW contract negotiating committee. In the 1970s and ’80s, he was a political action reporter for the Daily World, this newspaper’s predecessor, and was active in electoral politics in Brooklyn, New York.

People’s World, May 5, 2022, https://www.peoplesworld.org/

Good Friday vigil: No nuclear weapons, diplomacy, not war, in Ukraine / by Marilyn Bechtel

The urgency of organizing against nuclear weaponry, much of it produced at the Livermore Labs in California, was one of the demands for peace at the annual Good Friday event, a virtual one this year. Above, Nagasaki, Japan, the last city to be destroyed by a nuclear bomb. The bomb was dropped by the U.S., the only country ever to drop a nuclear bomb on another country. | Yosuke Yamahata/UN

LIVERMORE, Calif. – As nuclear disarmament, peace and justice advocates gathered virtually April 15 for the annual Good Friday Worship and Witness focusing on Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, they posed a question: “This Tax Day – What Does the Lord Require of Us?”

Participants in the event organized by the Ecumenical Peace Institute/Clergy & Laity Concerned and Livermore Conversion Project linked the struggles to eliminate nuclear weapons and to win peace in the Ukraine and worldwide with the observance of Easter, Ramadan and Passover, and the significance of Tax Day.

Addressing the gathering from just outside the Lab’s West Gate, Marylia Kelley, executive director of the Livermore-based Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, warned that work to increase and expand nuclear weapons capabilities is “at an inflection point. We need to change course.”

Reminding the gathering that Livermore Lab is one of two U.S. national laboratories that design every nuclear warhead and bomb in the U.S. arsenal, she told the gathering, “On this Good Friday, we must confront that the Biden administration’s request for Fiscal 2023 is the largest military request in U.S. history.”

Of the $813 billion the administration is requesting, Kelley said, some $30 billion would go to the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons and related programs. Livermore Lab would receive about $2 billion, with some 80 percent going to fund nuclear weapons activities.

Heading the list are two new warheads, the W80-4 and the W87-1.

The lab is developing the W80-4 for what’s being called the Long Range Stand Off Weapon, which Kelley said is meant to enable pilots to stand off a target a thousand miles away and launch a precisely-guided, radar-evading nuclear weapon. “By any measure,” she said, “Livermore Lab’s new warhead for the Long Range Stand Off capability is an offensive, first-use weapon – and I mean both meanings of that word, offensive – it’s immoral!”

When development of the W80-4 is completed, Livermore Lab plans to modify it for use on a new sea-launched missile to arm small attack submarines that at present don’t carry nuclear weapons. Kelley warned that the resulting inability of a potential target to know whether an incoming missile is conventional or nuclear “might trigger nuclear annihilation for all of us.”

The other warhead, the W87-1, is the first completely new nuclear warhead the U.S. has developed since the end of the Cold War. Kelley said among a long list of new technologies being developed for the W87-1 are its new plutonium bomb cores, slated to cost billions of dollars.

Besides its work to halt development of nuclear weapons and abolish them completely, Tri-Valley CAREs also addresses the great environmental and health harms their development has caused in Livermore and surrounding areas.

Kelley said the lab has dribbled over a million curies of radiation into the air during its decades of operation, and the related Experimental Test Site 300 near the city of Tracy has also been polluted by the lab’s activities, and both are now on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund list of the country’s most polluted sites. Lab employees have experienced high levels of cancers and other illnesses from exposure to radiation on the job, and children in Livermore have experienced more cancers than similar children living elsewhere.

Kelley urged vigil participants to press the U.S. government to change its nuclear weapons policy, including joining the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, often called the Ban Treaty, “in whatever creative nonviolent ways you feel moved to do.”

In her homily, the Rev. Allison Tanner of Oakland’s Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church called the war in Ukraine “another manifestation of expanding empire that is seeking to destroy yet another people, community and culture and land.”

But, she said, “Glorification of war to keep our enemies at bay is not the answer. If we are committed to peace and justice, we must find humane ways to hold tyrants accountable, to hold warmongers accountable – ways to hold people accountable without destroying our own humanity, our environment, our world, in the process.”

Turning to April 15’s significance as Tax Day, Tanner said the day “calls on us to answer the question, where are we putting our money, our resources and our attention?” In 2018, she said, “nearly $20 billion of our tax dollars were used to fund nuclear weapons … We gather to say we cannot fully control what happens to our tax dollars but we can insist that it’s wrong. We can insist that we will give to God the deepest treasures that we have and we will follow the ways of peace and justice and love as best we are able.”

Tanner cited Roman Catholic Archbishop John Wester’s Pastoral Letter, in which he declares, “We can no longer deny or ignore the dangerous predicament that we have created for ourselves. We need to start talking about it with one another – all of us – and figure out concrete steps toward abolishing nuclear weapons and ending nuclear threats if we care about humanity.” She urged participants in the Worship and Witness to discuss the issue with family and friends, read and share the Pastoral Letter, express their support for the Ban Treaty, and divest from nuclear weapons activities.

Among the many who helped to lead the observance were Farha Andrabi Navaid, Mountain View/Palo Alto Musalla; musicians Betsy Rose and the Rev. Silvia Brandon-Perez; liturgical dancers Carla de Sola and Zara Anwar; Carl Anderson, Livermore Conversion Project; Janet Cordes Gibson, Ecumenical Peace Institute; Isabella Zizi of the Northern Cheyenne, Arikara and Muskogee Creek Nations and Mark Coplan, St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Berkeley.

Marilyn Bechtel writes for People’s World from the San Francisco Bay Area. She joined the PW staff in 1986 and currently participates as a volunteer.

People’s World, April 20, 2022, https://www.peoplesworld.org/

Now is the time for nonalignment and peace / by Roger McKenzie, Vijay Prashad

Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Sukarno of Indonesia and Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia at the Bandung Conference in 1955.

As countries in the Global North push to escalate the war in Ukraine, the Global South has overwhelmingly pushed for a perspective of dialogue and peace. Roger McKenzie and Vijay Prashad reflect on the need to create a fresh Non-Aligned Movement.

War is an ugly part of the human experience. Everything about it is hideous. War is most obviously the act of invasion and the brutality that goes along with its operations. No war is precise; every war hurts civilians. Each act of bombardment sends a neurological shudder through a society.

World War II demonstrated this ugliness in the Holocaust and in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From Hiroshima and the Holocaust rose two mighty movements, one for peace and against the perils of further nuclear attacks, and the other for an end to the divisions of humanity and for a nonalignment from these divisions. The Stockholm Appeal of 1950, signed by 300 million people, called for an absolute ban on nuclear weapons. Five years later, 29 countries from Africa and Asia, representing 54 percent of the world’s population, gathered in Bandung, Indonesia, to sign a 10-point pledge against war and for the “promotion of mutual interests and cooperation.” The Bandung Spirit was for peace and for nonalignment, for the peoples of the world to put their efforts into building a process to eradicate history’s burdens (illiteracy, ill health, hunger) by using their social wealth. Why spend money on nuclear weapons when money should be spent on classrooms and hospitals?

Despite the major gains of many of the new nations that had emerged out of colonialism, the overwhelming force of the older colonial powers prevented the Bandung Spirit from defining human history. Instead, the civilization of war prevailed. This civilization of war is revealed in the massive waste of human wealth in the production of armed forces—sufficient to destroy hundreds of planets—and the use of these armed forces as the first instinct to settle disputes. Since the 1950s, the battlefield of these ambitions has not been in Europe or in North America, but rather it has been in Africa, Asia, and Latin America—areas of the world where old colonial sensibilities believe that human life is less important. This international division of humanity—which says that a war in Yemen is normal, whereas a war in Ukraine is horrific—defines our time. There are 40 wars taking place across the globe; there needs to be political will to fight to end each of these, not just those that are taking place within Europe. The Ukrainian flag is ubiquitous in the West; what are the colors of the Yemeni flag, of the Saharawi flag, and of the Somali flag?

Return to peace, return to nonalignment

We are overwhelmed these days with certainties that seem less and less real. As Russia’s war in Ukraine continues, there is a baffling view that negotiations are futile. This view circulates even when reasonable people agree that all wars must end in negotiations. If that is the case, then why not call for an immediate ceasefire and build the trust necessary for negotiations? Negotiations are only feasible if there is respect on all sides, and if there is an attempt to understand that all sides in a military conflict have reasonable demands. To wit, to paint this war as the whims of Russian President Vladimir Putin is part of the exercise of permanent war. Security guarantees for Ukraine are necessary; but so are security guarantees for Russia, which would include a return to a serious international arms control regime.

Peace does not come merely because we wish for it. It requires a fight in the trenches of ideas and institutions. The political forces in power profit from war, and so they clothe themselves in machismo to better represent the arms dealers who want more war, not less. These people in the blue suits of bureaucracy are not to be trusted with the world’s future. They fail us when it comes to the climate catastrophe; they fail us when it comes to the pandemic; they fail us when it comes to peacemaking. We need to summon up the old spirits of peace and nonalignment and bring these to life inside mass movements that are the only hope of this planet.

It is not merely sentimental to reach back to the past to breathe life into the Non-Aligned Movement of today. Already the contradictions of the present have raised the specter of nonalignment in parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Most of these countries voted against the condemnation of Russia not because they support Russia’s war in Ukraine, but rather because they recognize that polarization is a fatal error. What is needed is an alternative to the two-camp world of the Cold War. That is the reason why many of the leaders of these countries—from China’s Xi Jinping to India’s Narendra Modi to South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa—have called, despite their very different political orientations, for a departure from the “Cold War mentality.” They are already walking toward a new nonaligned platform. It is this actual movement of history that provokes us to reflect on a return to the concepts of nonalignment and peace.

Nobody wants to imagine the full implications of the encirclement of China and Russia by the United States and its allies. Even countries that are closely allied with the United States—such as Germany and Japan—recognize that if a new iron curtain descends around China and Russia, it would be fatal for their own countries. Already, the war and sanctions have created serious political crises in Honduras, Pakistan, Peru, and Sri Lanka, with others to follow as food and fuel prices rise astronomically. War is too expensive for the poorer nations. Spending for war is eating into the human spirit, and warfare itself increases people’s general sense of despair.

The warmakers are idealists. Their wars do not settle the major dilemmas of humanity. The ideas of nonalignment and peace, on the other hand, are realistic; their framework has answers to the children who want to eat and to learn, to play and to dream.

Roger McKenzie is a reporter for the Morning Star. He is the general secretary of Liberation, one of the oldest UK human rights organizations.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest book is Washington Bullets, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.

This article was produced by the Morning Star and Globetrotter.

People’s Dispatch, April 18, 2022, https://peoplesdispatch.org/

Putin regime emerges as the main danger to global peace and security / John Bachtell

Baba Vanga and Vladimir Putin superimposed on destruction in Ukraine. The blind clairvoyant Bulgarian mystic, Baba Vanga, died in 1996.Called the Nostradamus of the Balkans, she made various predictions of events that supposedly would happen up until and including the year 5000. Right wing Russian national chauvinists, including Vladimir Putin himself, must like one of the prophecies she made before her death: “Russia will become the lord of the world whereas Europe will become a wasteland. All will thaw, as if ice, only one will remain untouched – Vladimir’s glory, the glory of Russia.” She made the prophecy shortly after the demise of the Soviet Union and the socialist countries in Europe which did usher in warfare and conflicts after a period of 50 years of peace in Europe following World War II. It did not take much clairvoyance to see that inter capitalist rivalries and nationalism would lead to the big trouble we see unfolding today in Europe. AP

Russia continues its unrelenting, brutal, and immoral invasion of Ukraine while ignoring the growing global outcry to stop. Russian military forces have widened their lethal destruction to break the will of the Ukrainian population and their unexpected fierce resistance.

It is hard to grasp the breadth of destruction in Ukraine and the danger the world faces. Once unleashed, the dogs of war pursue a path with unpredictable and unknown consequences.

The attack has created deep hostilities against Russia by Ukrainians in the first place, which will take years to repair, and inflamed Ukrainian and Russian nationalism. Europe faces a humanitarian disaster not seen since WWII, with over 5 million Ukrainian refugees and another 2 million people internally displaced.

The most urgent issue facing the world is bringing the invasion, death, and destruction to an end as quickly as possible. The global community must prevent the conflict from spreading to neighboring countries and escalating to a nuclear standoff between Russia and the U.S. which possess 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons.

Gross violations of law committed

Russian military forces have committed gross violations of international law and war crimes. These include the invasion of Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders, leveling of cities, using cluster munitions, deliberately targeting civilians, including children, forced displacement, attacking refugee evacuation corridors, destroying hospitals, schools, and government buildings, and reports of rapes and executions.

The worst may be yet to come. On Feb. 27, President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s “deterrence forces,” including its nuclear forces, on combat readiness. Putin threatened to use nuclear weapons against any country interfering with the invasion. His Feb. 24 speech invokes the language of Russia’s updated nuclear policy adopted in June 2020 to justify their possible use. Biden’s refusal to impose a no-fly zone, which risks escalation to a nuclear confrontation between the U.S. and Russia, and global annihilation, has been validated.

Meanwhile, Putin and Russia’s ruling kleptocracy has unleashed its repressive state apparatus upon the growing and courageous Russian opposition to the invasion. The regime has jailed thousands, suppressed the independent media as “foreign agents,” and outlawed any criticism of the invasion or challenge to state-sponsored disinformation justifying it. In a chilling speech on Mar. 16, Putin likened the anti-war movement to “traitors” and a “fifth column” and that Russia must self-purify by getting rid of them.

Settlement requires withdrawal

A peace settlement likely requires a Russian withdrawal, recognition of Ukraine’s (and other countries in the region) national sovereignty, right to self-determination, non-interference in its internal affairs, and security guarantees for its territorial integrity. Ukraine likely accepts neutrality concerning NATO, already twice offered by President Volodymyr Zelensky, barring foreign military bases on its soil, recognition of Russian language rights, and may face some painful concessions, including loss of territory.

However, Putin’s response to Zelensky’s offer was to bomb a theater in Mariupol where hundreds of civilians and children were taking shelter. The action suggests Putin’s real goal may be to take over Ukraine, or at the very least its partition or ruination of its economy and infrastructure, the liquidation of the Ukrainian state, and installation of a puppet regime. Putin has already declared his intention to establish tribunals to try Ukrainian opposition and extinguish all “Western” influence, similar to “purifying” Russia of internal “traitors” and resistance.

It is hard to know all that the Biden administration has done behind the scenes to prevent the war and end it. But the administration’s outreach to China, which has a significant influence on Russia, is encouraging.

The Biden Administration knew about Putin’s plans and thought exposing them would give Putin pause. Perhaps at that moment, more could have been done to forge a compromise to stop the invasion, including emphatically taking NATO membership off the table. At the very least, it would have brought additional pressure to bear.

But suppose the Biden Administration and NATO’s only approach is sanctions against Russia and arms for Ukraine, without a diplomatic blitz. In that case, one wonders if the intent is to drag Russia into an Afghanistan-type quagmire at the expense of the Ukrainian people? A drawn-out war will only result in more destruction, death, and suffering.

The mythic origin narrative

Putin laid out his view of Russia-Ukraine history and relations in a lengthy article on July 12, 2021, which many historians have criticized. In it, Putin conjures up a mythic Russian origin narrative and declares Ukraine an illegitimate state, created by Bolshevik policies following the 1917 October Revolution. In reality, the revolution formed the USSR as a union of republics to address the Ukrainian people’s legitimate national rights and aspirations and other nations oppressed by Czarist Russia, known as the “prison house of nations.”

But Putin believes Russia and Ukraine, along with Belarus, form three branches of a distinct historically developed Russian people. In this version of history, Putin invents a justification for violating Ukraine’s national sovereignty. Putin concluded by stating, “true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.” And therefore, the aim becomes to absorb Ukraine into Russia or make Ukraine a subordinate colony.

Therefore, taking Putin at his word, the very existence of Ukraine as a sovereign nation is at stake. Ukrainians will never accept such an outcome and the fierce resistance reflects their national aspirations. An occupation will result in ongoing resistance by Ukrainians and brutal repression by Russia.

But the invasion and Ukraine’s struggle for national sovereignty and self-determination also occurs under sharpening global geopolitical rivalries, including between U.S. and Russian imperialism and the US’s “strategic competition” with China and Russia. Simultaneously, Russia is attempting to assert its role in the global order, including military means, and upend the US’s still mainly hegemonic role. The invasion may signal a tectonic shift in international affairs, an era of greater instability and fracturing, and a growing world war danger.

NATO and other factors

But it still begs the question: did NATO expansion precipitate the invasion, or did other factors play a role? Indeed, NATO expansion and U.S. interference were critical to laying the foundation for the crisis. But it can never justify Russia’s brutal invasion and war of choice over diplomacy. In any case, NATO wouldn’t have accepted Ukraine’s bid for membership because Germany and France opposed it.

Indeed, Putin would have known a Russian invasion would strengthen support for NATO and militarization of Europe, which precisely is what has happened. Perhaps Putin didn’t care and made it quite clear in his Feb. 22 speech that all territory once part of the Russian empire is fair game.

Whether Putin means this as a rhetorical device or not, it alarms those countries that were former Russian colonies which have struggled for independence against Russian domination historically. As such, public opinion has swung in favor of NATO. That includes the countries of the former USSR, including the Baltic States, Finland, and Poland.

Not only do NATO countries in Eastern Europe feel more vulnerable, but previously unaligned countries like Finland are aligning with NATO, and Germany and Norway are increasing military budgets. Any effort to phase out NATO, demilitarize and denuclearize Europe is now much more difficult, if not impossible, for the foreseeable future.

An even more significant issue may be Ukraine’s desire to join the European Union, robbing Russia of what Putin believes is a critical part of Russia’s economic sphere. Putin refuses to acknowledge Ukraine’s right to pursue its foreign policy, trade, and financial relationships.

Other justifications falling apart

Putin’s other justifications for invading are falling apart. By shelling majority Russian-speaking cities, Putin undercuts his claim to be protecting Russian-speaking Ukrainians.

The military offensive across the breadth of Ukraine undermines the claim of “denazification” of the Donbas region. A “fascist regime” doesn’t square with a country that elected a Jewish president, who lost family in the holocaust, by 73% of the vote and where far-right parties got less than 3% of the vote in the last presidential election.

Nor does Putin define what he means by “fascists,” which could encompass the Ukrainian people as a whole given its historical meaning in Russia. Ousting the Zelensky government, what Putin describes as the “neo-fascist” regime, is a cover for justifying the imperial expansion of Russia.

Indeed, Ukraine has become deeply polarized since the Euromaidan events of 2014, Russia’s invasion of Crimea, and the orientation toward EU and NATO. Since the invasion, the government has curtailed democratic rights, including banning political parties, and inflamed nationalism, including far-right nationalism.

Right-wing nationalism and the integration of fascist militias, including the Azov Battalion and other followers of the WWII fascist Stephen Bandera, into the national guard in the Donbas region is a dangerous development made worse by the invasion. But this still does not justify the attack, and defeating this menace is an internal matter for the Ukrainian people.

The struggle for economic and political democracy is a matter for the Ukrainian people, as it is for each country. And Ukraine’s national democratic movement has been struggling to win advances. Still, it now wages the fight for democracy and against far-right movements while defending national sovereignty in a war situation.

Great Russian nationalism and fascism

According to some scholars, the ideas of Ivan Ilyin, Russia’s Christian fascist philosopher and an admirer of Hitler and Mussolini, have a significant and insidious influence on Putin. Ilyin asserts “a quasi-mystical belief in the destiny of nations and rulers” and that Russia is pure and the embodiment of redemption from the corruption of the West.

By combining ideas of Russian national and racial supremacy with authoritarianism, anti-Semitism, and white Christian nationalism, the result touches many of the hallmarks of fascism. Indeed, these ideas resonate with fascist movements globally, and Putin and Russia are a beacon for far-right movements, white nationalists, and fascists worldwide, including the US.

Putin’s stated objective is to break up the prevailing world order by brute force, one he sees dominated by the U.S. and “globalists,” which is eerily similar to the “global Jewish conspiracy.” Putin seeks to ensure Russia has a top place in a multipolar world and sees himself as the historic figure who will restore the traditional Russian empire under authoritarian rule.

A new global reality

Russia’s invasion challenges the post-Cold War paradigm whereby U.S imperialism is the world’s sole superpower and source of global tensions. And anything opposing U.S. policies, including by Russia in Ukraine, is seen as anti-imperialist.

U.S. imperialism has a long, shameful history of invading and occupying other countries, committing state-sponsored terrorism and war crimes, engineering coups, installing puppet governments, possessing colonies, and controlling and exploiting other countries by dominating the global financial system. But that view doesn’t account for a vastly changed world in which U.S. domination is steadily giving way to a multipolar world, and other actors have emerged on the global stage.

The rise of China as the world’s largest economy and its growing trade and diplomatic relations is profoundly influencing global developments. The newly emerging economies like Russia, Brazil, and India, the election of left governments in Latin America and elsewhere, and other global alliances also herald a new era of globalization.

On the one hand, U.S. imperialism is not behind every development. On the other, nations and people are not passive actors but also have agency. Domestic democratic movements impact national developments and national sovereignty within the broader geopolitical struggle.

At the same time, new threats to peace, security, and democracy have emerged, including climate change, pandemics, mass disinformation, global fascism, white nationalism, other anti-democratic movements, regional rivalries, and far-right religious nationalist movements.

The main danger to peace and democracy

The invasion of Ukraine reflects the logical outcome of what some call kleptocratic patronage capitalism and the narrow economic interests of Russia’s ruling elite. This immensely wealthy cabal enriched themselves by looting the vast wealth of the USSR. Putin’s extreme nationalism and reverence for the glory of Czarism and Russian fascism reflect this gangster-reactionary class outlook. Repression and attacks on democratic rights flow from this internal dynamic.

As part of the sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry with the U.S. and effort to assert its role in the world order, the Putin regime interfered in U.S .internal affairs, including the 2016 elections when it helped Trump. Russia also interfered in the 2018 and 2020 elections, Brexit vote, and spread mass disinformation about covid vaccines to widen internal political divisions in the U.S .and other capitalist countries.

By invading Ukraine and seeking to redraw internationally recognized borders violently based on Great Russian chauvinism, the Putin regime has emerged as the main danger to global peace and international law at this moment. Global collective unity is required on the order of the WWII anti-fascist alliance to end the invasion and in solidarity with the Russian people to oust Putin from power.

The world must chart a way forward that rejects war and seeks a new global democratic order. One that strengthens international law respects national sovereignty and self-determination, non-interference in internal affairs, equality of nations, democratic and human rights, demilitarization, and dissolving military alliances.

Humanity faces existential threats from ecological crises and nuclear destruction. Our survival depends on global cooperation over competition and peaceful co-existence between states. Too much is at stake.

John Bachtell is president of Long View Publishing Co., the publisher of People’s World. He served as national chair of the Communist Party USA from 2014 to 2019. He is a regular writer for People’s World, and active in electoral, labor, environmental, and social justice struggles. He grew up in Ohio, Pittsburgh, and Albuquerque and attended Antioch College. He currently lives in Chicago where he is an avid swimmer, cyclist, runner, and dabbler in guitar and occasional singer in a community chorus.

People’s World, March 23, 2002, https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/putin-regime-emerges-as-the-main-danger-to-global-peace-and-security/