{"id":245539,"date":"2023-10-09T12:00:32","date_gmt":"2023-10-09T11:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=245539"},"modified":"2024-07-01T08:20:09","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T07:20:09","slug":"beyond-the-neocon-debacle-to-peace-in-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/10\/beyond-the-neocon-debacle-to-peace-in-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the Neocon Debacle to Peace in Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

French soldiers observe a live-fire NATO multinational battlegroup exercise in Cincu, Romania, April 27, 2022.
NATO, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0<\/p><\/div>\n

3 Oct 2023 – <\/em>We are entering the end stage of the 30-year US neocon debacle in Ukraine.\u00a0 The neocon plan\u00a0to surround Russia in the Black Sea region<\/a>\u00a0by NATO has failed.\u00a0 Decisions now by the US and Russia will matter enormously for peace, security, and wellbeing for the entire world.<\/p>\n

Four events<\/strong> have shattered the neocon hopes for NATO enlargement eastward, to Ukraine, Georgia, and onward.<\/p>\n

The first<\/strong> is straightforward.\u00a0 Ukraine has been devastated on the battlefield, with tragic and appalling losses. Russia is winning the war of attrition, an outcome that\u00a0was predictable<\/a>\u00a0from the start but which the neocons and mainstream media deny till today.<\/p>\n

The second<\/strong> is the collapsing support in Europe for the US neocon strategy.\u00a0 Poland no longer speaks with Ukraine.\u00a0 Hungary has long opposed the neocons.\u00a0 Slovakia has elected an anti-neocon government.\u00a0 EU leaders (Macron, Meloni, Sanchez, Scholz, Sunak, and others)\u00a0have disapproval ratings<\/a>\u00a0far higher than approvals.<\/p>\n

The third<\/strong> is the cut in US financial support for Ukraine.\u00a0 The Republican Party grassroots, several Republican Presidential candidates, and a growing number of Republican members of Congress, oppose more spending on Ukraine.\u00a0 In the stop-gap bill to keep the government running, Republicans stripped away new financial support for Ukraine.\u00a0 The White House has called for new aid legislation, but this will be an uphill fight.<\/p>\n

The fourth<\/strong>, and most urgent from Ukraine\u2019s point of view, is the likelihood of a Russian offensive.\u00a0 Ukraine\u2019s casualties are in the hundreds of thousands, and Ukraine has burned through its artillery, air defenses, tanks, and others heavy weapons.\u00a0 Russia is likely to follow with a massive offensive.
\nThe neocons have created utter disasters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and now Ukraine.\u00a0 The US political system has not yet held the neocons to account, since foreign policy is carried out with little public or Congressional scrutiny to date.\u00a0 Mainstream media have sided with the slogans of the neocons.<\/p>\n

Ukraine is at risk of economic, demographic and military collapse.\u00a0 What should the US Government do to face this potential disaster?<\/p>\n

Urgently, it should change course.\u00a0 Britain advises the US to escalate, as Britain is stuck with 19th century imperial reveries.\u00a0 US neocons are stuck with imperial bravado.\u00a0 Cooler heads urgently need to prevail.<\/p>\n

President Joe Biden should immediately inform President Vladimir Putin that the US will end NATO enlargement eastward if the US and Russia reach a new agreement on security arrangements.\u00a0 By ending NATO expansion, the US can still save Ukraine from the policy debacles of the past 30 years.<\/p>\n

Biden should agree to negotiate a security arrangement of the kind, though not precise details, of\u00a0President Putin\u2019s proposals of December 17, 2021<\/a>.\u00a0 Biden foolishly refused to negotiate with Putin in December 2021.\u00a0 It\u2019s time to negotiate now.<\/p>\n

There are four keys<\/strong> to an agreement.<\/p>\n

First<\/strong>, as part of an overall agreement Biden should agree that NATO will not enlarge eastward, but not reverse the past NATO enlargement.\u00a0 NATO would of course not tolerate Russian encroachments in existing NATO states.\u00a0 Both Russia and the US would pledge to avoid provocations near Russia\u2019s borders, including provocative missile placement, military exercises, and the like.<\/p>\n

Second<\/strong>, the new US \u2013 Russia security agreement should cover nuclear weapons.\u00a0 The US unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, followed by the placement of Aegis missiles in Poland and Romania, gravely inflamed tensions, which were further exacerbated by the US withdrawal from the Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) Agreement in 2019 and Russia\u2019s suspension of the New Start Treaty in 2023.\u00a0 Russian leaders have repeatedly pointed to US missiles near Russia, unconstrained by the abandoned ABM Treaty, as a dire threat to Russia\u2019s national security.<\/p>\n

Third<\/strong>, Russia and Ukraine would agree on new borders, in which the overwhelmingly ethnic Russian Crimea and heavily ethnic Russian districts of eastern Ukraine would remain part of Russia.\u00a0 The border changes would be accompanied by security guarantees for Ukraine backed unanimously by the UN Security Council and other states such as Germany, Turkey, and India.<\/p>\n

Fourth<\/strong>, as part of a settlement, the US, Russia, and EU would re-establish trade, finance, cultural exchange, and tourist relations.\u00a0 It\u2019s certainly time once again to hear Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky in US and European concert halls.<\/p>\n

Border changes are a last resort, and should be made UN Security Council auspices.\u00a0 They must never be an invitation to further territorial demands, such as by Russia regarding ethnic Russians in other countries.\u00a0 Yet borders change, and the US has recently backed two border changes. NATO bombed Serbia for 47 days until it relinquished the Albanian-majority region of Kosovo.\u00a0 In 2008, the US recognized Kosovo as a sovereign nation. The US similarly backed South Sudan\u2019s insurgency to break away from Sudan.<\/p>\n

If Russia, Ukraine, or the US subsequently violated the new agreement, they would be challenging the rest of the world.\u00a0 As JFK observed, \u201ceven the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

The US neocons carry much blame for undermining Ukraine\u2019s 1991 borders.\u00a0 Russia did not claim Crimea until after the US-backed overthrow of Ukraine\u2019s President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.\u00a0 Nor did Russia annex the Donbas after 2014, instead calling on Ukraine to honor the UN-backed Minsk II agreement, based on autonomy for the Donbas.\u00a0 The neocons preferred to arm Ukraine to retake the Donbas by force rather than grant the Donbas autonomy.<\/p>\n

The long-term key to peace in Europe is collective security as called for by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).\u00a0 According to\u00a0OSCE agreements<\/a>, OSCE member states \u201cwill not strengthen their security at the expense of the security of other States.\u201d Neocon unilateralism undermined Europe\u2019s collective security by pushing NATO enlargement without regard to third parties, notably Russia.\u00a0 Europe \u2014 including the EU, Russia, and Ukraine \u2014 needs more OSCE and less neocon unilateralism as key to lasting peace in Europe.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, is Director of Columbia\u2019s Center for Sustainable Development and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has served as Special Adviser to three UN Secretaries-General [Kofi Annan (2001-7), Ban Ki-moon (2008-16), and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres. His books include <\/em>The End of Poverty<\/a>, Common Wealth<\/a>, The Age of Sustainable Development<\/a>, Building the New American Economy<\/a>, and most recently,<\/em> A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism<\/a>. Sachs was also an advisor to the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as to the first president of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

3 Oct 2023 – The neocons have created utter disasters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and now Ukraine. The US has not yet held the neocons to account, since foreign policy is carried out with little public or Congressional scrutiny to date. Mainstream media have sided with the slogans of the neocons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":229079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[867,1268,91,1377,278,961,70,1594,481],"class_list":["post-245539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-anglo-america","tag-european-union","tag-nato","tag-neoconservatives","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-usa","tag-war-economy","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245539","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=245539"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":245562,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245539\/revisions\/245562"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}