It’s said that nothing brings people together like a common enemy. If that was true then the world would actually be united in saving this planet.
Sadly, the truth is that we still refuse to see our common existential enemy: ourselves. If we could do that, we would end our divisive competition for unsustainable consumption and enlist in a war against mutual self-destruction. That would be our only war. All others would be recognized as inane rearrangements of the deck chairs of denial.
Instead of that one war to right our own collective wrongness, we continue to find ourselves embroiled in endless wars over the supposed entitlement of territorial sovereignty and perceived tribal superiority. The truism “might makes right,” clearly untrue, continues to carry far more currency than the far less ardent maxim “war begets war.” Everyone wants peace, another truism, may indeed be true, but peace arrived at through violence, by sheer force, is a coerced legitimacy, not an equitable or accepted settlement.
The invasion of Ukraine wasn’t just and cannot be made just. No amount of overwhelming brutality will make it so. No manner of rhetorical justification will make it right. Putin will never achieve a virtuous victory over an endlessly violated Ukraine. This conflict will eventually end, but without justice there will be no real peace, only a tenuous cessation of war. One cannot be beaten into forgiveness. Without forgiveness there can be no real acceptance.
As a pacifist veteran, I’ve always thought a permanent draft, with zero deferments, would do much to deter U.S. interventionism. Now, given Ukraine, I’ve come to believe that interventionism is sometimes indeed necessary. I also totally get that sanctions are often regrettable but they still offer the least violent vehicle for combating aggression. This war would already be over if Ukraine wasn’t incrementally armed. Sanctions should have similarly been as harsh as possible. It’s also clearly evident that alliances, the stronger and broader the better, are the best enforcement of a world order. That currently militaristic stick should and could become the wielded olive branch of a less-violent economic solidarity for peace, NATO made unnecessary by actually equipping the U.N. with truly democratic, veto-proof, muscular sanction powers.
War is always a crap-shoot. The only certainty is that this war will end. Way before Iraq and Afghanistan, the perpetual debacle of Vietnam did finally end. The world nevertheless soon provided other markets for military-industrial misadventure and profitability, and now Americans peacefully vacation in what remains a unified communist nation making a lot of L.L. Bean’s outsourced products.
Ukraine continues to prove that war is indeed hell and the fiercest warriors are those defending their homeland. These are tiresome and tragically enduring truisms for sure. At some point “time heals all wounds,” will be put to the test given Putin’s exceptionally cruel enmity.
Whenever it ends, by whatever geopolitical conclusion, what’s imperative is to finally figure out how to end war’s endless circle of violence, so this war in Ukraine actually becomes the imagined war that ends all wars, an end hopefully achieved without the finality of nuclear Armageddon.
One year of full-out Russian aggression has now passed with no off ramp in sight, except for: “Putin alone could end this war at any time.”
That’s the oft-repeated truism of the day. In reality, that’s likely as true as the U.S. having full sway over NATO or Biden being able to suddenly about-face. Putin, however, has met his match in Zelensky. Of the two, Putin is the one far, far better positioned to disengage and survive politically. Putin can far more likely call off the wrongness he has done than Zelensky can walk away from the commitment to rightness his nation and the majority of world opinion expects and continues to support.
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