Actually, it's a good time to go wobbly on Ukraine

Storer Rowley, former foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, gets a lot wrong on his Trib op-ed “America must stand firm against Russia. This is no time to go wobbly.”

He’s right to call Russia’s war brutal and criminal. But calling it “unprovoked” is ludicrous. He omits from his analysis US/NATO plans to extend NATO through Ukraine up to Russia’s borders, allowing nuclear weapons to be minutes away from Moscow. That is provocation on steroids. He ignores US support, encouragement of the 2014 coup that ousted Russian leaning Ukraine president Victor Yanukovych, setting off civil war with Russian speaking Ukrainians in the Donbas. Together, these provocations made Russia’s war, while illegal and criminal, inevitable.

Storer’s lauding President Biden’s diplomacy in the war is preposterous as Biden has explicitly prohibited diplomacy to negotiate a ceasefire and eventual peace settlement. Storer apparently considers diplomacy to include sending top UK and US officials to Kiev in March to instruct, demand actually, Ukraine President Zelensky cease negotiation with Russia and Turkey for a quick end to the war.

Storer is also wrong to disparage Republican and Democratic lawmakers calling for negotiations and ending America’s blank check of support currently soaring towards $100 billion. Unlike, Storer, they understand endless US weapons, with no negotiations, merely prolongs the war, ensuring Ukraine descends further into failed state status. Yet, Storer, like all perpetual war cheerleaders, minimizes the enormous Ukraine destruction enabled by US weapons prolonging the war. He further exaggerates Russian weakness to present a plausible scenario of a totally implausible Ukraine victory.

To bolster his case for endless US military support, Storer resorts to the preposterous charge all pro war pundits trot out, that Russia is hell bent to re-establish the Russian empire.

Finally, but possibly most important, Storer uses a rhetorical trick to claim the US populous supports unlimited military support with no negotiations. He cites a poll that supports “continuing humanitarian and security assistance to Ukraine.” But that poll refers neither to negotiations nor end to the blank check on weaponizing Ukraine. To the contrary, a recent poll conducted for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft found likely voters, by 57% to 32 %, strongly support US pursuing diplomatic negotiations as soon as possible to end the war even if it requires Ukraine making compromises with Russia.

If going wobbly on Ukraine means ending the war and further destruction of Ukraine by using sensible negotiations rather than a blank check on weapons prolonging it, I proclaim, “Let’s wobble.” Storer Rowley should as well.

No tears for Truss being tossed as British PM after 44 days

The peace community is relieved the British Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned as PM after 44 days, shortest tenue ever for a British leader.

Truss lost our trust when candidate Truss told a Town Hall event she was ready to order a nuclear strike if called on to do it. But that wasn’t the question, which instead, was how’d she feel if called on to fire nukes. That was a perfect opportunity for Truss proclaim her commitment to preventing nuclear war. When the question was repeated Truss passed again, using the same line “I’m ready to do it.”

The world may be closer to nuclear war than any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis sixty years ago this month. This is due to the US proxy war with Russia over Ukraine and the potential real war with China over Taiwan. Picking fights with the largest and third largest nuclear powers is even more reckless than the US engaging in nuclear brinkmanship with the sole country of Russia over Cuban missiles sixty years ago.

With unrelenting tensions over Ukraine and Taiwan, the world will remain under the existential threat of nuclear annihilation regardless of who replaces the trustless Truss. But we’ll gain a tiny sliver of hope when the world’s fifth largest nuclear armed country is no longer led by a Prime Minister who proclaims pushing the button i no big deal.

Odds of Ukraine war going nuclear rising

After 247 days of war in Ukraine, the nuclear temperature is rising.

US intelligence officials now estimate a one in four possibility the Russo Ukraine war could see the use of nuclear weapons by both Russia and US-NATO forces. At the start of the war that likelihood was near zero.

What changed? Russia’s inability to win a quick, decisive victory based on Russian military failure and determined Ukraine resistance aided by $65 billion in US weapons. That may be good for Ukraine in the short run, but in the long run not so, if nuclear weapons are engaged.

Ukraine President Zelensky doesn’t seem too concerned about the prospect, promoting direct attacks on Russia to prevent the possibility of Russia using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Is Zelensky oblivious that such attacks would likely provoke the very nuclear attacks he’s trying to prevent? The US and NATO must keep him on a short lease, least we all perish.

The US doesn’t seem too concerned about approaching nuclear war either. This Monday, the NATO alliance will hold conduct massive military maneuvers to practice dropping nuclear weapons over Russia. Its Steadfast At Noon exercise will involve 14 NATO members and 60 aircraft, including B-52's and F-16's. That’s just 3 weeks after President Biden warned we’re closer to nuclear Armageddon than any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis precisely 60 years ago.

What could possibly go wrong? We just have to revisit America’s 1983 Able Archer nuclear exercises which nearly triggered a Russian nuclear response, to see what could.

Let’s hope Monday’s Steadfast At Noon doesn’t turn into Armageddon At Noon.

Democratic Progressive Caucus caves to war party, Democratic electoral politics, over Ukraine negotiations letter

That was quick.

On Monday, 30 House Democrats representing the Congressional Democratic Caucus, sent a letter to President Biden to initiate negotiations to end the Russo Ukraine war. “We urge you to pair the military and economic support the United States has provided to Ukraine with a proactive diplomatic push, redoubling efforts to seek a realistic framework for a ceasefire.”

Finally, a tiny contingent, 13% of House Dems, got the message after 250 days of unrelenting carnage in Ukraine, with no end in sight, that only negotiations will end this war. Check that. The other way is nuclear Armageddon. It’s likely the thought of reliving the Cuban Missile Crisis 60 years ago, this time with an explosive ending, motivated their plea.

It did, however, gave those of us in the peace community, a glimmer of hope Democrats controlling Congress would begin an actual debate promoting negotiations which are the only way this war will end short of nuclear confrontation.

But within 24 hours our slim hopes were dashed when the Progressive Caucus rescinded their letter and reiterated lockstep support for no negotiations without Ukraine approval.

They wilted amid of firestorm of criticism from pro war hardliners in government and the pundit class they were abandoning Ukraine by even considering negotiations without Ukraine’s lead, input and involvement. But this maligns the carefully worded letter which promoted negotiations to achieve “a free and independent Ukraine” but that “it is America’s responsibility to pursue every diplomatic avenue to support such a solution that is acceptable to the people of Ukraine.”

But even fiercer pushback came from the Democratic power structure more obsessed to avoid even a hint of some Democrats aligning with Republicans who have promised to revisit the endless US spigot of billions to supply an endless war in Ukraine.

Former Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-chair Mark Pocan explicitly admitted the letter appeared to have aligned the Democratic Party with the presumed Republican promise to abandon Ukraine. In a preposterous non-sequitur, Pocan argued “Every war ends with diplomacy, and this one will too after Ukrainian victory.” It’s sorta like “We’ll negotiate peace…after we kill you.”

The letter was in complete accord with President Biden’s earlier statements that all wars end in negotiated settlement and unless this one does it could go nuclear, the closest we’ve come to that since the ’62 Cuban Missile Crisis

It is a tragic day for the cause of peace when even the mildest effort to promote negotiations to end a war with nuclear possibilities is stamped out with irrational fury.

What’s truly bizarre is the call for negotiations aligns with growing public weariness for endless billions fueling a war having virtually no connection whatsoever to Americans’ national self-interests, much less their immediate well-being.

Sixty years ago JFK, with infinitely more sense than his current successor Biden, resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis in 13 days. At the rate Biden and the Democrats are governing this crisis, the history of it, if we’re lucky enough to avoid nuclear destruction, may be titled “1,300 Days.”

Go back a century to understand MAGA war on democracy

The January 6th armed insurrection at the Capitol. Heavily armed men intimidating early voters in Arizona. A 2020 election denier fanatic bashing in the head of Speaker Pelosi’s husband while shouting “Where’s Nancy?”

America appears to be replaying a 21st century version of the successful war by the Nazi Party on Germany’s democratic Weimar Republic a century ago.

While the differences are enormous, one factor should jump out at every American concerned about the fate of our 246 year old democratic experiment.

Like the Nazi Party a century ago, the Republican Party is unable to gain control of national government thru fair, democratic elections. They lost the popular vote for president, the worldwide democratic standard for victory, five of the last 6 elections, by wider and wider margins. The massive 7 million vote loss in 2020 triggered party wide effort, led by incumbent President Trump, to overturn the election with violent insurrection at the Capitol to stop Biden’s election certification.

Tho that failed, the Republican Party has spent the 2 years since, using an array of legislative roadblocks at Republican controlled state governments, to suppress the vote of likely Democratic voters.

Things may get worse with the November 8th election. So far, 345 Republican candidates for state and congressional office have been identified as 2020 election deniers. Those running for governor, attorney general and secretary of state will have great influence how elections in their state are run. Candidates for state legislatures could end up voting for laws further restricting voting such as minimizing early voting and reducing early and Election Day voting locations. US congressional candidates, if elected, will have influence on acceptance of presidential electors or any election thrown into the House of Representatives.

But the most ominous parallel to Weimar remains the resort to potential or real political violence as exemplified by the January 6h insurrection, armed thugs at polling places and now attempted assassination of the second in line to the presidency. It’s easy for Republican leaders to decry these tactics without doing or saying anything significant to discourage random acts of political violence from disturbed followers of the still active ‘Stop The Steal’ Republican meme.

The Republican Party is not the Nazi Party and America is not Weimar Germany. But it did happen there a century ago. If we’re not careful…it could happen here.

Puppet master Biden pulling puppet Zelensky’s negotiating strings in Ukraine

President Biden’s proxy war against Russia, using US firepower to shed endless Ukraine blood, remains an unrelenting catastrophe for over 8 months.

Tens of thousands of Ukrainians are dead or wounded. Millions have fled to safer climes. Ukraine has ceased to function as a viable state, totally dependent on US and NATO aid. We’ve poured tens of billions in weaponry into Ukraine to keep the carnage soaring with no chance of a Ukraine military victory. Upwards of a third of that weaponry never reaches the battlefield against Russia. But enough does to delay an inevitable resolution favorable to Russian security concerns. This ensures a long, bloody war.

That, tragically, is the primary US goal, to weaken Russia so they will never achieve political and economic integration into Europe. That has been the foundation of the US proxy war against Russia since the Soviet Union disbanded in 1991. Five presidents before Biden, beginning with George H.W. Bush, maintained that relatively bloodless proxy war by expanding NATO from 14 to 30 members, including former Soviet states, right up to Russia’s borders.

President Obama accelerated the march to this years’ hot war in Ukraine by greenlighting the US destruction of Ukraine democracy in 2014. Our encouragement and support of the February coup against Russian leaning Ukraine president Victor Yanukovych, set off a civil war in the Donbas, further encouraged and weaponized by America. Over 14,000 dead there when the 2015 Minsk II Accords, providing regional autonomy for the Donetsk and Luhansk, could have ended it early on. Obama, Trump and now Biden sabotaged Minsk II least it be viewed as a Russian victory in the proxy war.

But it was President Biden, for inexplicable reasons, who made Russia’s illegal, criminal invasion of Ukraine February 24, virtually inevitable. He kept dangling possible NATO membership for Ukraine, a red line Russia proclaimed we dare not cross. He totally rebuffed Russian President Putin’s December, 2021 efforts to negotiate a sensible resolution to the approaching war. Worse yet, Biden stood back as Ukraine massed thousands of elite troops near the Donbas to finish off the Russian speaking Ukrainians rightly seeking independence from the murderous Ukraine regime

As chief funder of the war, Biden is the only leader capable of negotiating a ceasefire and peace. Sadly, he’s so boxed himself and the US into total victory over Russia, the war is likely to proceed till Ukraine simply collapses regardless of America’s blank weapons check.

In a cop out for the ages, Biden insists only Ukraine President Zelensky can negotiate its end. Yet when Zelensky got on board a possible 15 point Turkey brokered agreement in March, Biden sent top UK and US officials scurrying to Kyiv to disabuse Zelensky of any settlement that does not weaken Russia in America’s self-destructive proxy war.

America’s puppet in Ukraine can’t make a move without the US pulling his strings to do as it says. We can only hope Zelensky, like Pinocchio, comes to life, throws off his US held strings and sits down at the Peace Table before reckless US string pulling destroys his country.

Where are both sides in reader opinion on Russo Ukraine war?

The Chicago Tribune published 2 letters Friday criticizing the mild op-ed by Jasen Castillo urging restraint on US/NATO war aims in the Russo Ukraine war (“The nuclear risks in Russia’s war with Ukraine are real”, October 31).

With 2 out of 2 readers totally supporting unlimited US weapons support for Ukraine till it wins the war, readers might conclude this represents widespread public support for US war aims. The opposite is true. A recent poll conducted for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft found 57% of likely voters strongly supporting US pursuing diplomatic negotiations as soon as possible to end the war even if it requires Ukraine making compromises with Russia. Just 32% of responders opposed such negotiations.

The reasons supporting negotiations are many: misuse of limited US treasure, faraway conflict not imperiling US national interests, continued war destroying Ukraine internally, recognition of US provocations making war inevitable, and most importantly, as outlined by Castillo’s op-ed, possible nuclear war.

The Tribune has a duty to accurately reflect valid public opinion supporting negotiations to end the Russo Ukraine war.