Published by The Transnational on 10 April 2024
https://transnational.live/2024/04/10/three-avoidable-catastrophes/
The world is in turmoil and perhaps closer to the possibility of a devastating nuclear war than at any time since the Second World War. There are at least three ongoing conflicts that have the potential of expanding into something much more serious that will lead to regional or even global wars.
Wars are raging in the heart of Europe, the Middle East and, if some US hawks can get their way, soon there will be another disastrous war between the West and China. Yet, world leaders seem to be asleep and are moving blindly towards the precipice.
War in Ukraine
On 25 March 2024, in a letter to President Joe Biden, a large number of the members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity warned that in the light of the reports that France was preparing to dispatch a force of some 2,000 troops to Ukraine, the world was on the brink of nuclear war. (1) This is a very important warning from veteran intelligence professionals who know what they are talking about and who understand the unprecedented gravity of the present time.
After admitting practically all former East European members of the Soviet Union to NATO, the United States, in what can clearly be called a coup, toppled Ukraine’s democratically-elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, and replaced him with a hand-picked successor, Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
There is ample evidence to show that long before the events in the Maidan, US officials were hard at work to bring about regime change in Ukraine. In a live broadcast from Kyiv in December 2013, even before the Ukrainian coup/revolution in 2014, the late Senator John McCain told CNN that the US delegation in Ukraine was seeking to “bring about” a “transition” in the country (i.e., remove the government). He added how “pleased” he was that Victoria Nuland was with him on the scene, attempting to achieve this goal. (2)
Carl Gershman, the president of the US-funded Neoconservative National Endowment for Democracy, explained the plan in an op-ed on Sept. 26, 2013. Gershman called Ukraine “the biggest prize” and an important interim step toward toppling Putin, who “may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.” (3)
In a leaked conversation between the Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US ambassador in Ukraine, Nuland decided who the next appointed president of Ukraine should be. (4) In a speech to the US-Ukraine Foundation in December 2013, she boasted that in continuation of the Colour Revolutions, the United States had spent about $5 billion on “democracy-building programmes” in Ukraine. (5)
Not having been content with having changed the Ukrainian government and installing a pro-Western leader, the United States pushed Ukraine to join NATO too. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has confirmed that what Russia objected to was Ukraine joining NATO. Otherwise, there would have been no war. In testimony to the European Union Parliament, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg made clear that it was America’s relentless push to enlarge NATO to Ukraine that was the real cause of the war and why it continues today.
Stoltenberg said: “The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And [that] was a pre-condition for not invade [sic] Ukraine. Of course, we didn’t sign that.” (6)
President Kennedy nearly dragged the world into a nuclear war when the former Soviet Union was planning to build a military base in Cuba, but it seems the United States is entitled to encircle Russia from Turkey to Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Norway, and now Finland and Sweden with no Russian reaction.
Even after the war had started, the head of President Vladimir Zelensky’s parliamentary faction, David Arakhamia, said that Russia was ready to stop the fighting in March 2022 had Ukraine agreed to remain neutral, but the West advised Kyiv to keep going. All that was needed to avoid the war was to agree with Russia’s demand for neutral status for Ukraine. (7) Russia had never objected to Ukraine’s accession to the EU, but drew a line regarding Ukraine’s membership in the military alliance with the West which would have tightened the noose around Russia.
But the West had other plans. The aim was to get Russia engaged in a deadly war that would weaken her and enhance Western security, despite the human carnage involved. Early in the war, Senator Lindsay Graham voiced the really cynical reason behind the war. He said: “Four months into this thing, I like the structural path we’re on here. As long as we help Ukraine with the weapons they need and the economic support, they will fight to the last person.” (8) Later, he called the US’s contribution to the Ukraine war the “best money we’ve ever spent.”
Sen. Roger Wicker, ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told the Associated Press: “It is a relatively modest amount that we are contributing without being asked to risk life and limb. The Ukrainians are willing to fight the fight for us if the West will give them the provisions. It’s a pretty good deal.” (9)
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell remarked: “No Americans are getting killed in Ukraine. We’re rebuilding our industrial base. The Ukrainians are destroying the army of one of our biggest rivals. I have a hard time finding anything wrong with that.” (10)
The war may help to rebuild the US’s industrial base, but it has come at a very heavy cost for Ukrainians and Russians. According to Western intelligence estimates, more than half a million people have been killed or seriously injured in two years of war in Ukraine—a human toll not seen in Europe since World War II. This is appalling, and the war still continues, with the possibility that it may develop into a major war between Russia and NATO with the possible use of nuclear weapons. Despite sending hundreds of billions of dollars worth of military and economic aid to Ukraine, enabling Ukrainian soldiers to kill and be killed in large numbers, NATO members had at least verbally refused to have boots on the ground, knowing that it would result in a direct confrontation between Russian and NATO forces which might result in a devastating World War III. However, recently, there have been some noises, mainly in France and Poland to send Western troops to fight in Ukraine.
The tragedy is that by supposedly safeguarding the security of NATO members, the United States as the head of NATO has also dominated the decision-making and the military expenditure of the member states. In practice, this means that it has compromised the independence and autonomy of those states. Clearly, such a powerful military alliance with well over one trillion dollars of military spending every year is not an organisation that is interested in peace and security, but the reverse. “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”
The hawkish and erratic policies of most NATO members towards Russia are posing a major threat to international peace and security. The NATO secretary general, presumably speaking on behalf of all the members, has adopted a very irresponsible posture. On the eve of the latest NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels to mark NATO’s 75th anniversary, and to prepare for the NATO Summit in Washington in July, Jens Stoltenberg said: “Ukraine will become a member of NATO. It is a question of when, not if.” (11)
As its name denotes, NATO is a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, but it has already got involved in US’s wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere. The latest NATO meeting was also attended by its so-called partners from the Indo-Pacific area, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, together with the European Union. Such a gathering with the very belligerent tone that it has adopted is clearly very provocative not only to Russia, but also to China and all other countries in the Global South outside this elite military alliance.
By forming such military organisations, Western leaders have practically neutralised and side-lined the United Nations which should be in charge of preserving international peace and security, and are partitioning the world into various dangerous military alliances.
Such policies will have only one outcome; a more divided and militarised world, moving inexorably towards confrontation and global destruction. Expressing such warnings is not against the US or Europe. On the contrary, it is indeed in complete conformity with American values and the exhortations of the early fathers to US governments not to get entangled in foreign military alliances. The US’s entanglement in foreign wars, costing it trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, has not brought peace and security to the world, or indeed to the United States.
Critical times such as this require wisdom and prudence. Sadly, we cannot find any Western leader at the moment with the necessary vision and courage to deal with the daunting challenges that the world is facing. This is serious, because if the current expansionist policies continue, they will inevitably result in a global conflagration. The reason is that in this day and age no country or groups of countries are willing to submit to the dictates of a global hegemon or be prepared to live under a powerful US or Western empire. The only scenario that can ensure global peace and security is to accept the reality of a multipolar world and learn to live with others governed by international law, not by an arbitrary “rules-based international system”.
The carnage in Gaza
In addition to the war in Ukraine, the world is facing another disastrous war in the Middle East, which is likely to drag in more countries and result in another significant war in the region with unforeseen consequences. The brutal attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants was the worst attack on Israel since the establishment of the Jewish state, and must be condemned unreservedly.
According to Israeli sources, the attack resulted in the death of 695 Israeli civilians, 373 security forces and 71 foreigners, giving a total of 1,139. Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants also took 250 hostages who were dragged back to Gaza.
Since then, 110 have been released, but Israel says Hamas still holds 132 hostages, including 36 presumed dead. (12) The documentary prepared by Al Jazeera on the Hamas attack shows that at least some of the casualties were due to crossfire by Israeli forces and attacks on the premises that contained both Israeli citizens and HAMAS militants. (13)
In retaliation for that barbaric attack, Israeli forces launched a massive, indiscriminate and deadly invasion of Gaza that has devastated the Strip. The scale of the killing of innocent civilians has been described by the world’s highest judicial authority, the International Court of Justice, as a plausible genocide. The ICJ has also ordered Israel to desist from continuing such acts and to report to the ICJ within a month. Israel has ignored both orders. Yet, instead of imposing sanctions on that outlaw regime, the United States and its European allies have continued to send billions of dollars worth of deadly weapons to the apartheid regime.
Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza is entering its seventh month. It has already killed more than 40,000 (including those buried under the rubble) and wounded more than 70,000 Palestinians (mainly women and children), destroying practically all hospitals, universities, schools, mosques and churches and turning more than 70% of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure into rubble, killing nearly 200 aid workers, killing dozens of journalists, hundreds of medical personnel, etc. US and European leaders have openly admitted that Israel’s revenge for the terrible Hamas attack on 7 October has been in President Biden’s words “over the top” and “indiscriminate”.
In addition to the war in Gaza, in an attempt to expand the war, hoping to drag the United States into a regional war against all Israel’s enemies, Israeli forces have attacked both Lebanon and Syria, targeting many Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon and the so-called Resistance Front fighters in Syria. So far, Israeli strikes have killed more than 200 Hezbollah fighters and some 50 civilians in Lebanon, while attacks from Lebanon into Israel have killed a dozen Israeli soldiers and six civilians.
On 1st April 2024, Israeli forces attacked a World Central Kitchen convoy that had just delivered some food in Gaza. Israeli drones intentionally hit three vehicles carrying members of the charity group, killing three British nationals, an Australian national, a Polish national, a dual US and Canadian national and their Palestinian driver. This wanton attack, which is a continuation of killing at least 200 other aid workers and UN personnel, produced a storm of condemnation, even in the countries that are Israel’s allies. In a telephone call with Netanyahu, President Biden demanded an independent investigation of the incident and apparently told the Israeli prime minister that the continuation of such acts would force the United States to review its military assistance to Israel.
The Independent’s leading editorial on 3rd April rightly observed: “It may seem wrong that, after more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza have perished, it took the deaths of just seven international aid workers to stir Western governments into a sense of outrage, but that is the reality.”
“The least that can be asked is that Israel, as a member of the United Nations, complies with the resolutions of the Security Council and the instructions of the International Court of Justice,” wrote the paper’s editorial board. “That means no more massacres of innocent civilians or aid workers; a cease-fire now; no ground or aerial assault on Rafah; and full assistance afforded to the shipments of humanitarian aid.” (14)
Again, on the same day, 1st April 2024, Israel went well beyond attacking what it calls Iranian proxy-forces in Lebanon and Syria and, in contravention of international law and diplomatic norms, she attacked the Iranian embassy compound in the Syrian capital and, in addition to destroying the consular part of the building and the residence of the Iranian ambassador in Syria, killed seven Iranian and six Syrian personnel.
A special session of the UN Security Council was held on 3rd April to debate Israel’s criminal attack on the Iranian Embassy building which is regarded as a part of Iranian territory. In his opening remarks, the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Middle East, Asia and the Pacific condemned the Israeli attack and said: “I reiterate the Secretary-General’s condemnation of the attack. Let me be very clear: the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises and personnel must be respected in all cases in accordance with international law. The sovereignty and territorial integrity of Member States must be respected in accordance with international law. The rules-based international order is essential for international peace and security, which this Council is mandated to maintain.” (15)
However, despite this clear breach of international law by Israel, US, UK and French representatives could not even bring themselves to condemn that barbaric act, and even tried to justify it. Such double standards will not only bring those countries that try to cover up such clear violations of diplomatic norms into disrepute, it will also undermine their claim to be the upholders of international law. Such clear violations of diplomatic principles will weaken the rule of law throughout the world and will result in the law of the jungle, because it will pave the way for other countries to take the law into their own hands and engage in similar illegal acts.
Conflict with China
The relationship between the People’s Republic of China and the United States has been complex, at times cooperative and in recent times contentious and even hostile. The United States has the largest economy according to nominal GDP, while China has overtaken the United States as the biggest economy by GDP (PPP). Militarily, the United States is by far the strongest power in the world, spending the highest amount on its military, but China is catching up by having the second largest military budget.
The two countries are also engaged in territorial and military competition. After a period of proxy wars between the two countries during the Korean and Vietnam wars, the two countries reached a kind of détente in the early 1970s with President Nixon’s visit to China. Under the Soviet Union, the United States tried to use China as a counterweight to Russia, but as the result of recent disagreements and especially after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, China and Russia have moved much closer together and have formed a united front against the United States.
US-China relations took a nosedive under former President Donald Trump, but have further deteriorated under his successor. President Biden has characterised the US-China conflict as “a battle between the utility of democracies in the twenty-first century and autocracies.” This is despite the fact that the United States has backed and sustained some of the worst autocracies in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. Although expressed in such idealistic tones, the fact remains that the United States is worried about the economic and military rise of China and its attempts to challenge the United States, and wishes to stop its inexorable rise to become the number one economic power in the world.
In order to achieve this goal, Biden has imposed numerous sanctions on China and Chinese companies and, consequently, the US and China have imposed tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of one another’s goods. But the tensions between the two countries have not remained limited to economic competition, but have moved to great power rivalry and nationalism. Despite successive US presidents paying lip-service to “one state policy”, namely regarding Taiwan as a part of China, the US administration is actively militarising Taiwan against China and creating a third major arena of conflict in the Far East.
On the heels of the NATO meeting in Brussels, on April 11, U.S. President Joe Biden will host Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. in Washington for the first U.S.-Japan-Philippines trilateral summit. This is a mini-NATO organisation aimed at containing China. The three countries have already agreed to conduct regular joint maritime patrols in the South China Sea and will be looking to further deepen ties.
The summit aims to tighten and institutionalize trilateral cooperation to counter China’s regional assertiveness. The three countries have already agreed to conduct regular joint maritime patrols in the South China Sea in order to enhance their military cooperation.
Following the Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) and Japan-U.S.-South Korea trilaterals, and the U.S.-Japan-India-Australia Quad, the latest US-Japan-Philippines military alliance is yet another initiative to isolate China, and enhance the US’s position in the Asia-Pacific.
While in US’s eyes, such military alliances strengthen US’s dominance not only in the West with NATO, and in the Middle East as the result of a large number of bases, with between 45,000-50,000 US forces in a number of Arab countries and Israel, but also in its conflict with China. At the same time, such moves could undermine regional stability and the escalatory dynamics could push the Asia-Pacific region toward open conflict, with unimaginable consequences.
What is to be done?
Interesting too? Macron’s Letter: Words, words, words of EU nationalism
Surely, the world cannot remain silent in the face of these enormous dangers to the future of humanity. Although the situation looks bleak and the challenges are daunting, for the sake of our own survival we cannot passively watch the march towards mutual extinction. These grave crises must shake us out of our complacency and force us to join hands for turning these challenges to opportunities. As the ancient Iranian Prophet Zoroaster said: “To fight the Darkness, do not brandish your sword, but light a candle.” The fact is that there are constructive solutions to all the above-mentioned conflicts before they turn into an uncontrollable march towards Domesday.
Regarding the war in Ukraine, all that is needed is for Ukraine to declare that it will not join NATO, and give autonomy to the Russian-speaking and Greek Orthodox Donbas, and for Russia to withdraw its forces and recognise Ukraine’s neutral status as a sovereign state. Russia has always stated that its main concern is Ukraine’s membership of NATO. If Ukraine and NATO countries give a firm assurance that Ukraine will remain a neutral country, there would be no reason for Russia to continue the war at enormous military, political and economic costs to Ukraine and to herself.
It is clearly understood that after the Maidan revolution/coup, a section of the population that lives close to Russia, speaks Russian and mainly follows the Greek Orthodox Church felt side-lined and persecuted. It was very provocative of coup leaders to ban the use of Russian and to declare Catholicism as the official religion of the state. There must be a referendum among the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine and if a majority decides that it wants independence, it should be given autonomy within a federal state. Surely, such a solution would be preferable for them, as well as for Russia and Ukraine, rather than to continue with a devastating conflict.
In the Arab-Israeli conflict, the continuation of a violent apartheid regime, keeping millions of Palestinians under occupation and under siege as a stateless and oppressed people is no longer viable. The Balfour Declaration was issued long before the Holocaust, with the establishment of a colonial settler movement in Palestine which had nothing to do with the persecution of the Jews. Decades later, Israel was established with the attacks of some armed militant Zionist gangs supported by Britain, which resulted in the Nakba or Catastrophe, and ethnically cleansed about two-thirds of the original inhabitants of Palestine. What we see now in Gaza is the repetition of the atrocities committed against Palestinians in 1946.
The United Nations under the influence of big powers, especially the United States and Britain, partitioned Palestine in a very unfair manner, giving some 60% of the best lands on the Mediterranean to the Jews which even by then constituted only a third of the population and it gave the remaining 40% to the majority Arab population. During the 1967 pre-emptive war, Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, and ever since has been establishing illegal settlements in those territories.
In time, in the process of the Oslo Accords and the Madrid Conference, the Palestinians, including Hamas, agreed to accept a two-state solution, by establishing a Palestinians state on only 22% of Mandate Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital.
All Arab and Muslim states have accepted the Arab peace initiative unanimously approved by the Arab League summit in Beirut in 2002, and subsequently approved by all the 53 members of the Islamic Cooperation Organisation in the summit meeting held in Riyadh. The leadership of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation had already accepted the concept of a two-state solution since the 1982 Arab Summit in Fez.
Israel must be made to abide by UN resolutions 242 and 338 that call for the establishment of peace between the two communities on pre-1967 borders, and allow the establishment of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
The Palestinians and Arabs, and even the majority of decent people throughout the world, will no longer accept the existence of an apartheid state, keeping the majority of Palestinians stateless under its military control. After the events of 7th October and the carnage in Gaza, it is not possible to return to pre-war conditions and pretend that everything will remain the same.
In order to put an end to the genocide in Gaza, not only Netanyahu’s ultra-right-wing Likud party should be held accountable, but all those in the war cabinet who have been involved in the genocide must also be dismissed and punished. There should be fresh elections in Israel to form a less extreme government which accepts the UN resolutions on a two-state solution.
There should also be elections among the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and the world should accept the decision of the majority of Palestinians to choose their leaders, not like 2005 when the results of a fair and free election in which Hamas emerged victorious were dismissed and the United States and Israel waged a vicious political, propaganda and even military campaign against it, which still continues. Surely, either a two-state solution as envisaged by UN resolution, or in time a single democratic state with equal rights for the Jews and Arabs will be much preferable to continued cycles of hostility and bloodshed.
As far as the conflict with China is concerned, fortunately, it has not yet degenerated to the level of the two other conflicts. It is important for both the West and China to take a step back and instead of continuing the path of hostility should engage in constructive dialogue.
As far as one can see, China is not interested in a military confrontation with the West, but wishes to pursue its path of economic development. As it happens, the two sides are quite complimentary and can help each other to achieve greater economic development to benefit their citizens and the world. The two sides should engage in healthy economic competition, not in political and military confrontation.
The choice is clear. We either believe in a world organised on the basis of equality and the rule of law, in which case we must reject any form of hegemony and empire-building by any state, or accept a return to barbarism, military confrontation and an ultimate global conflagration.
Notes
(1) VIPS MEMO: The French Road to Nuclear War, TFF, April 3, 2024.
(2) On Twitter.
(3) Robert Parry, “The Ukraine Mess that Nuland Made”, Consortium News, July 15, 2015.
(4) Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pratt conversation during Maidan uprising. YouTube.
(5) DeBenedictis, Kent (2022). Russian ‘Hybrid Warfare’ and the Annexation of Crimea. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 40–41.
(6) North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, “Opening Remarks”.
(7) “Ongoing conflict could have ended in 2022 if Ukraine agreed to remain neutral, Kiev’s top MP”. Firstpost, November 25, 2023.
(8) Facebook.
(9) “GOP leaders start laying groundworks for more Ukraine aid”, AP, February 14, 2023.
(10) On YouTube.
(11) On NATO’s homepage.
(12) “Israel social security data reveals true picture of October 7 deaths” AFP, Jerusalem, 15/12/2023.
(13) “October 7: Forensic analysis shows Hamas abuses, many false Israeli claims” – On AlJazeera.
(14) The Independent editorial: “It is Time to Stop”, 3 April 2024.
(15) “UN Condemns Israeli Attack on an Iranian Embassy Building in Damascus”.
F Jahanpour 