NEW YORK, November 3 (IPS) – On November 1, a statement of solidarity with Russians opposed to the Ukraine War was published. It was signed by more than 1,000 American men and women who protested against the US invasions of Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
At a time when the Ukraine War became increasingly similar to the trench warfare of World War I and the spiraling escalation of the Cuban Missile Crisis, leading American peace organizations co-sponsored announced, while calling for negotiations to end the disastrous Ukraine War.
The notice was first sent to a friend in St.Petersburg, Russia, who must remain anonymous. He is a humble and dedicated scientist who lost his job many years ago after revealing independent radiation measurements he made after the Chernobyl disaster.
On the day after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this man signed and is publishing a petition signed by over a million Russians condemning the imperialist invasion of Ukraine and calling on those who ordered him to be tried as a war criminal. In public and sporadic ways, he and others continued to oppose the war despite the risk of serious imprisonment.
The second person to receive our statement was a Russian psychologist who fled Russia shortly before the war. She uses social media to connect and organize those left behind and others in the Russian diaspora. And, before the statement was published in the press and through social networks, it reached Yurii Sheliazhenko, a courageous Ukrainian professor and pacifist who always tells inconvenient truths about futility. of the war and who had previously translated our statement into Russian and Ukrainian.
Despite the risks involved, each is committed to sharing the claim, especially among the estimated 500,000 men who risked their lives to flee Putin’s increasingly militarized Russia.
What is the value of an expression of solidarity, even as modest as the click of a computer mouse?
For many people around the world, it is immediately recognizable to images of hundreds of thousands of young Russians fleeing to impoverished and remote countries like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, as well as to Kazakhstan and Germany to escape war.
They leave their families and careers behind, likely never to return. They face challenges in finding a place to sleep and finding work to support themselves in unknown countries and cultures. And we have learned to our sadness and outrage that across the West, desperate refugees are not always welcomed or tolerated for long.
However, as one Russian woman in exile wrote, she must bear the weight of those who think that all Russians support Russian aggression. It helps, she writes, that she and other Russians are being recognized as different. That makes it easy for her to face the demands of every uncertain day. I would like to say more about this, it shows the potential for peaceful and mutually beneficial relationship between our peoples.
Of course, it takes more than solidarity. Our statement also called for a ceasefire and “negotiations leading to a just peace, including respect for Ukraine’s sovereignty as a neutral country”. As we did in our early years of protesting the nation’s self-destructive aggressions in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, this statement is designed to add weight to growing calls for change in national policy.
Biden and Zelensky’s pledges to fight this war to the last Ukrainian to weaken Russia (which will remain a nuclear power) and recapture all of historic Ukraine including Crimea are worse than futile . The devastation of Ukraine began to resemble Beirut and Grozny at the end of those civil wars.
And Russia’s nuclear doctrine tells us that it can resort to nuclear attacks when the very existence of the state – read Putin’s political career – is in jeopardy. The push for diplomacy to prevent killing and prevent escalation of war, as well as to show solidarity, has become urgent.
Our solidarity initiative is rooted in the experiences and lessons some of us have drawn from the Vietnam War such as from Margaret Mead’s maxim that a small group of people can change. world. This initiative grew out of a partnership between veterans of the Vietnam era peace movement, Terry Provence, now of the United Christ Church, and Doug Hostetter, a Mennonite pastor and Deputy Representative of the United Nations. United Nations of Pax Christi International, and I.
It was during the Vietnam War that I first learned the value of solidarity. After reviewing a Canadian exile, I became an anti-conscription facing possible imprisonment and served as a leading organizer against the war in the wasteland intellectually and morally. virtues of the land then the Valley of the Phoenix.
Talk about isolation and alienation. I am an aspiring East Coast intellectual who is disoriented and is making my way to Barry Goldwater’s Arizona. That was before the fax machine, before the Internet, and when Phoenix was dominated by a far-right monopoly of the John Birch Association that limited and distorted what people could know, and this newspaper used her pages to guide readers where to find our little community. of opponents in the war and how to defeat us.
Back then, despite constitutional guarantees, people could still be arrested and subjected to what more recently became known as Eric Garner’s grip at the hands of the police and sentenced to six months in prison. jailed for “crime” of disseminating War leaflets on public sidewalks – an act ostensibly protected by the Constitution.
We and other opponents of war have experienced the salvation and inspiration of solidarity in many forms, from local religious leaders who have demonstrated that they care, from activists in the East sent bail, and from the far-fetched moral courage of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, the courageous denouncer of the war traveled the world – even to the desert. Arizona.
Since then, I have learned the enduring value of even small expressions of human solidarity: from Palestinians whose homes were destroyed in Israel’s illegal collective sanctions; from the suffering and bravery of the people of Japan, the Marshall Islands, and the American A-bomb survivors, and from the Okinawans, who endured and resisted military colonialism of Japan and the United States for eight decades. In each case, international support and solidarity played a part in their ongoing struggles for justice.
Is solidarity enough? Of course not! Our appeal therefore urges the United States to change its policy. It is possible to support the Ukrainians without prompting and fund an unending war. In recent weeks, we have been reminded of Gandhi’s truth that “When people lead, leaders follow.” The retraction of a letter signed by thirty members of Congress urging President Biden to make negotiations a priority would have long been seen as a cowardly record.
With the exception of some members of Congress including Ro Khanna and Jamaal Bowman who held their ground, others were pro-Ukrainian but also diplomatic, lacking confidence in their public support and withering in opposition to face threats from Speaker Pelosi.
Our declaration of solidarity is just one of the ways that people are beginning to break silence, open the way for rational and humane discourse, and provide a boost to leaders. USA, Russia, Ukraine and Europe.
A re-attack of the Cuban Missile Crisis or a recurrence of World War I must be avoided. The negotiations may not end the war immediately, but we should learn from the nuclear non-destruction diplomacy of Russia’s missiles in Cuba fifty years ago, which gave our armistice ended World War I, and that led to arms control over the last Cold War agreements that war was not the answer.
Pope Francis, United Nations Secretary-General Guterres and more and more people in power: human solidarity and diplomacy!
Dr. Joseph Gerson is the President of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Joint Security and the author of With Eyes and the Hiroshima Empire and The Bomb.
IPS UN Office
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