While condemning Russians unambiguously President Vladimir Putin’s brutal war on Ukraine, some U.S. experts on Tuesday made the case for prioritizing diplomacy and humanitarian assistance over military aid to end the violence, help suffering Ukrainians, and promote long-term peace.
Their arguments were made in Russia held Drills for nuclear weapons and continued to attack Kyiv other Ukrainian cities — and as the United Nations refugee agency and other humanitarian groups called for Funding to assist the millions of people who have been forced from their homes by the war.
Several countries have offered to donate fighter planes from European countries, despite the fact that a plan was canceled for this week. have sent or pledged to send arms and other military aid — including ammunition, anti-tank weapons, assault rifles, body armor, helmets, and missiles as well as fuel, medical supplies, and ration packages — to Ukrainians fighting off Russian invaders.
The Biden administration maintains that it won’t send U.S. troops into a war with Russia, has responded to the invasion with economic sanctions and more military aid. Antony Blinken, Secretary-of-State, said last week that the United States had made significant progress in the past year. committed Ukraine has received more than $1B in security assistance
The White House asked Congress for at least $6.4 billion — including $3.5 billion for the Pentagon and $2.9 billion for providing European allies with humanitarian and security assistance — but some lawmakers reportedly think the Ukraine package may ultimately top $10 billion.
Noting plans to include that package in an annual budget Congress has pledged to finish by next week, William D. Hartung — a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft — urged U.S. lawmakers not to cause more global conflict, writing:
Whatever Congress decides to do in regard to aid to Ukraine the military portion should not be an open-ended commitment that would raise U.S. military participation in Europe back to Cold War levels. Or create a loosely managed slush funds like the one used to fund the Iraq and Afghan wars. The growing humanitarian crisis caused by the war means that the bulk of new funding should go towards humanitarian aid, and not troops or guns.
Congress should not encourage steps that could push the current conflict toward a direct military confrontation with Russia. This goes beyond the question about the composition of a new assistance package. A shooting war between two nuclear-armed countries would increase the likelihood of an escalation towards nuclear confrontation. To avoid this risk, there are no U.S. troops or NATO forces in Ukraine and no impositions of a no fly zone that would lead to aerial combat between NATO forces and Russian forces. The Biden administration has wisely ruled these options out and should resist any pressures to pursue them.
While blasting the Russian invasion as “a major war crime, ranking alongside the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Hitler-Stalin invasion of Poland in September 1939,” world-renowned intellectual Noam Chomsky also pointed out that “perhaps Putin meant what he and his associates have been saying loud and clear for years” about the eastward expansion of NATO.
Chomsky spoke to C.J. about the current crisis. Interview with Polychroniou Published By Truthout, “has been brewing for 25 years as the U.S. contemptuously rejected Russian security concerns, in particular their clear red lines: Georgia and especially Ukraine.”
Referencing Moscow’s recent demands that preceded the invasion last week — including the exclusion of Ukraine from NATO — Chomsky said that “there is good reason to believe that this tragedy could have been avoided, until the last minute.”
Though “it’s easy to understand why those suffering from the crime may regard it as an unacceptable indulgence to inquire into why it happened and whether it could have been avoided,” he continued, “if we want to respond to the tragedy in ways that will help the victims, and avert still worse catastrophes that loom ahead, it is wise, and necessary, to learn as much as we can about what went wrong and how the course could have been corrected.”
According to the UN, 12 million people will require protection and relief.
As lawmakers respond in crisis to Ukraine, humanitarian assistance must be given top priority. https://t.co/4EnTGAg2z8
— FCNL (Quakers) (@FCNL) March 1, 2022
Of the “grim” choices that remain, Chomsky said, “the least bad is support for the diplomatic options that still exist, in the hope of reaching an outcome not too far from what was very likely achievable a few days ago: Austrian-style neutralization of Ukraine, some version of Minsk II federalism within.”
That is “much harder to reach now,” he added, while also emphasizing that it is necessary to include “an escape hatch for Putin, or outcomes will be still more dire for Ukraine and everyone else, perhaps almost unimaginably so.”
“Like it or not,” he said, “the choices are now reduced to an ugly outcome that rewards rather than punishes Putin for the act of aggression — or the strong possibility of terminal war.”
Chomsky also asserted that “we should do anything we can to provide meaningful support for those valiantly defending their homeland against cruel aggressors, for those escaping the horrors, and for the thousands of courageous Russians publicly opposing the crime of their state at great personal risk, a lesson to all of us.”
In her weekly column The Washington Post, Katrina vanden Heuvel also encouraged learning from “Putin’s indefensible invasion” that has fueled a “perilous escalation of violence.”
“Putin has simply (and brutally) reasserted Russia’s role. The old order — with its Cold War attitudes, militaries, alliances, and enmities — is reclaiming center stage,” she wrote. The Nation’s editorial director and publisher continued:
NATO, which has been lost since the collapse of the Soviet Union, now has new purpose and energy. Both the United States and Russia are bolstered by their hawks. Weapons-makers are creating plans to profit from the coming arms increase, and ideologues as well as demagogues are reviving old rhetoric. China, which is clearly helping Russia reduce its sanctions, now has a significant role in the balance.
We should expect ringing calls for arms for a long-term battle against authoritarianism. These cries will be sounded by a foreign strategy establishment that has been discredited for its serial failures in Afghanistan to Libya to Iraq, but will still seek to consolidate bilateral and militarized support. Already an armchair warrior at the Atlantic Council has called on the United States to prepare to fight Russia and China at the same time — and double our military budget to do so.
What’s lacking here is any sense of proportion or grasp on reality. The new Cold War will take resources and attention away from the urgent dangers that we already face.
“The intense diplomacy spurred by the crisis should also lead to new thinking about security,” she argued. “Could security focus first on building the cooperation needed to address pandemics and climate change? Could it create institutions that divert resources from the entrenched institutions of war?”
“Rather than build up weaponry in Europe, could the United States initiate negotiations about shared security, disarmament, and a military stand-down?” vanden Heuvel wondered. “Could this war lead us to think more seriously about how to build peace rather than how to build weapons?”
Calling for a “courageous and transnational citizens’ movement demanding not simply the end of the war on Ukraine but also an end to perpetual wars” as well as “political leaders who will speak out about our real security needs,” she concluded that “by invading Ukraine, Putin demands a return to just that archaic and obsolete Cold War order. The world would be wise not to accede.”
