A peace proposal for the Russia-Ukraine War
‘We will provide the weapons you need, this year, next year, and for as long as it takes.’ This was foreign secretary David Cameron’s promise to Volodymyr Zelensky in November. Since then Rishi Sunak has made a flying visit to Ukraine to pledge £2.5 billion for their military spending this year.
Assuming it doesn’t escalate out of control, the war in Ukraine could drag on for years. This makes no sense for Ukraine, for Britain or for the planet.
It is surely time to press for serious negotiations to begin to find a settlement, so that the killing and destruction can end.
Zelensky recently put forward his 10 point Peace Plan at the World Economic Forum in Davos. But it is completely unrealistic as it requires total and humiliating capitulation by Russia. That is just not going to happen.
Members of the Green Party’s Peace, Security and Defence Working Group have come up with an idea which we think could spark some discussion and lead us away from the stalemate.
Currently the United States deploys over 100 B61 nuclear gravity bombs in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Turkey. The US now plans to reintroduce these bombs to the UK too .
The weapons have recently been upgraded to make them more accurately deliverable and their yield can be dialled up or down from around 0.3 of a kiloton to 50 kilotons. The bomb which laid waste to Hiroshima was just 15 kilotons.
Russia has recently completed the transfer of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus. We are suggesting that the United States should be urged to withdraw its tactical nuclear weapons from European soil in exchange for Russia taking its nuclear weapons out of Belarus and withdrawing its troops from Ukraine.
We think that floating this idea could be useful on several fronts. It draws attention to the presence of US nuclear weapons in Europe, which many people may be unaware of and it is a proposal which would allow all sides in the conflict to claim some level of victory.
If such a plan were to be adopted it would significantly reduce the risk of nuclear war, as it is the smaller tactical weapons which are most likely to be used.
It would save many Ukrainian and Russian lives; end the destruction of homes, industry, agricultural land and infrastructure in Ukraine; allow grain to flow freely again; and allow the billions of dollars which would have been spent on further fighting to be redirected to rebuilding.
And it would be a popular idea. An opinion poll in 2020 showed that 74% of Italians wanted US nuclear weapons removed from their soil, with a similar figure in the Netherlands and over 80% in Germany.
As the recent BBC documentary ‘Nuclear Armageddon’ made clear the risk of nuclear war is higher than it has been at any time since the Cuban Missile crisis. If tactical nuclear weapons could be removed from Europe it might just move the Doomsday Clock a few seconds further away from Midnight.
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This article is all about big-power politics: the assumed right of powerful countries to determine what “lesser” – smaller, weaker or poorer – countries have to do. In the East European context this has come to be known as “westsplaining.”
Surely that is the opposite of Green politics, which supports the small, poor or weak whenever they are pushed around by the strong. That applies in international politics as much as anywhere. Greens actively supported Iraq against the USA and UK 20 years ago, the Palestinians against Israel at all times, and we have to support Ukraine against Russia’s genocidal invasion now.
It is, to say the least, extremely disrespectful to tell another country’s President how he must respond to a foreign invasion, that he must sue for peace, and where, when and how he should do it. Only the government in Kyiv can decide that.
Two years into the Second World War, in 1941, there was pressure – led by former King Edward VIII – for the UK to give up its support for the occupied countries of Europe and negotiate a comprehensive peace with Nazi Germany. But fortunately that pressure was resisted, and four years later Nazism was defeated comprehensively.
Putin has made it abundantly clear that he shares the age-old Russian prejudice that Ukraine has no right to independent existence, insisting it is not even a nation and Ukrainian not even a language separate from Russian. We can be absolutely certain that if Kyiv made peace with Moscow now, in a few years’ time Putin’s Russia would be on the attack again – just as it was in 2022, eight years after occupying the Crimea and the Donbas.
The day before Russia’s invasion two years ago I published a blog (at https://tomlines.org/2022/02/23/russias-insecurity/) in which I listed Russia’s assaults on Ukraine or parts of it since 1917 alone. They were in 1918-19, 1932-33, 1939, 1944-45 and 2014, as well as 2022. Likewise in the 18th century, Russia undertook three wars of aggression against Poland before it was finally subdued and sliced up between Russia and its co-belligerents, Prussia and Austria.
In December 1991, accompanying a European Parliament delegation to the Rada (Parliament) in Kyiv at the time of the independence referendum, in which 90% voted for Ukrainian independence (with majorities in all regions), one deputy simply said to me, “We’ve had enough of being someone else’s little brother.” For that is the insolent way in which Russian authorities have treated Ukraine for the last 300 years and more. An aggressive fascist state with that tradition has to be resisted.
Walker says Russia shouldn’t be made to capitulate but that is exactly what Russia demands of Ukraine:
Russia Ex-President Names Demand to End Ukraine War: ‘Total Capitulation’
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ex-president-names-demand-end-ukraine-war-total-capitulation-1742264
As war began, Putin rejected peace deal recommended by an aide https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/exclusive-war-began-putin-rejected-ukraine-peace-deal-recommended-by-his-aide-2022-09-14/