{"id":206374,"date":"2022-03-07T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2022-03-07T12:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=206374"},"modified":"2022-03-04T09:25:01","modified_gmt":"2022-03-04T09:25:01","slug":"the-frailty-of-peace-in-the-midst-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/03\/the-frailty-of-peace-in-the-midst-of-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The Frailty of Peace in the Midst of War"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>2 Mar 2022 – <\/em>Prior to any analysis of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, prior to the casting of blame and outrage \u2014 at Putin\u2019s hubris, at NATO\u2019s pernicious eastward expansion over the last three decades \u2014 there\u2019s this:<\/p>\n

\u201cOur world has become so interdependent that violent conflict between two countries inevitably impacts the rest of the world. War is outdated \u2014 nonviolence is the only way. We need to develop a sense of the oneness of humanity by considering other human beings as brothers and sisters. This is how we will build a more peaceful world.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Too simple? Yada yada?<\/p>\n

The words are those of the Dalai Lama<\/a>, speaking a few days after the invasion, about the time Vladimir Putin was ordering his commanders to put Russia\u2019s nuclear weapons on a \u201cspecial regime of combat duty alert\u201d and the world began convulsing in shock. There may be around 13,000 nuclear weapons still haunting Planet Earth but, since the end of the Cold War, they\u2019ve been sitting quietly at the far edge of public awareness and concern. Suddenly they\u2019re back at the center of things.<\/p>\n

Is the world on the brink of nuclear war?<\/p>\n

I bring the Dalai Lama\u2019s words into the mix because, overly simple as they might sound, they can\u2019t be ignored. And, indeed, they are not simple. They transcend any talk of \u201cnational sovereignty.\u201d All humanity \u2014 all life \u2014 is interdependent. If that\u2019s the case, how in God\u2019s name do we move beyond this seldom-questioned world of borders and armed animosity?<\/p>\n

Hatred unifies. And yes, Putin\u2019s invasion \u2014 the murder of Ukrainians \u2014 not to mention his nuclear audacity, is a gash across the whole planet. But hardly the only one. As Jeff Cohen<\/a> has pointed out:<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, there was virtually no focus on civilian death and agony when it was the U.S. military launching the invasions. After the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 on false pretenses\u2014made possible by U.S. mainstream media complicity that I witnessed firsthand\u2014civilian deaths were largely ignored and undercounted through the years.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Any U.S. reaction to Putin\u2019s invasion has to be in both directions. The West in many ways has been provoking Russia\u2019s aggression since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Not only that, no country on Earth, in my lifetime, has invaded more countries, overthrown more democratically elected world leaders, than the United States of America. This doesn\u2019t excuse Putin, but how can it be so easily and quickly forgotten? The U.S. and its buddy, NATO, have not come close to anything resembling accountability for the wars they have waged over the years. Just the opposite. The trillion-dollar annual U.S. military budget, which grows larger every year, is beyond comprehension. To condemn Russia but ignore all this is, essentially, pointless \u2014 or worse. It revs up a unity of hatred.<\/p>\n

Glenn Greenwald<\/a> describes<\/p>\n

\u201cthe climate that arises whenever a new war erupts, instantly creating propaganda-driven, dissent-free consensus. There is no propaganda,\u201d<\/em> he writes, \u201cas potent or powerful as war propaganda. . . . The more unity that emerges in support of an overarching moral narrative, the more difficult it becomes for anyone to critically evaluate it.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, war itself is the enemy. As Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies<\/a> write:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe sincerely hope that Russia will end its illegal, brutal invasion of Ukraine long before it commits a fraction of the massive killing and destruction that the United States and its allies have committed in our illegal wars.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What I hear is an enormous, planetary cry for change. There is no such thing as a just or legal war \u2014 nor is there any sanity left in the process of preparation for war. And here, I believe, is where the words of the Dalai Lama start to make sense. Rather than the grotesque idiocy of the global military budget \u2014 including the maintenance and upgrading of those 13,000 nuclear weapons, 90 percent of which are in the hands of Russia and the United States \u2014 we need to begin consciously creating the future he describes: a future of oneness.<\/p>\n

Whatever<\/em> we do, we create the future. If we prepare for war \u2014 especially at a level that transcends virtually everything else \u2014 we create a future in which war is inevitable. And as the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons pointed out on its website<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, the dangerous policy of so-called nuclear deterrence is used to enable the continued invasion of Ukraine by Russia. It does not keep the peace, it allows for war to be carried out against Ukrainian people.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cAny theory which is based on the willingness to mass murder civilians and is kept in check by little more than sheer luck will eventually lead to a horrific humanitarian catastrophe. That\u2019s what is being risked right now, and it must stop.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don\u2019t know how this will stop. I do know that protests against the Ukraine invasion are occurring all across the planet, including in Russia, where so far over 5,000 people<\/a> have been arrested. I\u2019d love to see those protests not just expand, but transcend . . . and turn into policy.<\/p>\n

I wish I could personally embrace the whole planet, not with protest but with love.<\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Robert C. Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based peace journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, <\/em>Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press) is still available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0Go to Original \u2013 commonwonders.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2 Mar 2022 – Prior to any analysis of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, prior to the casting of blame and outrage \u2014 at Putin\u2019s hubris, at NATO\u2019s pernicious eastward expansion over the last three decades \u2014 there\u2019s this:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":77939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2385,2009,2197,1035,1268,91,688,818,253,278,254,961,70,92,481],"class_list":["post-206374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tms-peace-journalism","tag-14-dalai-lama-tenzin-gyatso","tag-anti-war","tag-biden","tag-eastern-europe","tag-european-union","tag-nato","tag-peace-journalism","tag-proxy-war","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-security","tag-ukraine","tag-usa","tag-violent-conflict","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}