Serious Discussions: “Ukraine: Stop the Carnage, Build the Peace”

By Ray McGovern, April 24, 2022

An extraordinary series of thoughtful webinar conversations arranged by Helena Cobban and Richard Falk of “Just World Educational” is described below in Helena’s recent letter to participants. Included are links not only to the final report, but also to the video and podcast of the live and lively discussion among some of the participants on the April 19 “zoom”, to launch and add comments to the report. The participants in that launch are listed below.

I was asked to put my two cents’ worth in twice: minutes 22:20-25:10 and minutes 54:36-58:14.

My first comments struck a discordant, but I believe, realist note.

That video and the others are quite good. I admit, though, that I can identify with that hungry goat rummaging around in an old Hollywood lot who said to his partner, “I enjoyed the book more than the film.” I encourage you to purchase or download the very well put-together, 32-page report summarizing this series of highly relevant conversations.

__________________________

Message from Helena Cobban
Executive Director, Just World Educational
justworldeducational.org
April 21, 2022

Dear friends–

The war, the killing, and the suffering in Ukraine all continue… And the often-deadly sequelae of this conflict– including its toxic effects on the environment in Ukraine and much further afield– are still roiling much of the world, especially in the Global South. …

On Tuesday [April 19], we held an excellent online launch for Just World Ed’s report, “Ukraine: Stop the Carnage, Build the Peace!” In this event, my colleague Richard Falk and I had the honor of hosting eight clear-eyed leaders of the antiwar and anti-nuclear movements. You can see the 66-minute video of our discussion here, or if you’re an audio person, you can listen to it on our podcast platform here.

Participating with Richard and me in the launch were the following:
–Medea Benjamin, representing report co-sponsor CODEPINK. (Medea also participated in one of the webinar sessions on which the report was based.)
–David Swanson, representing report co-sponsor World Beyond War
–Gar Smith, representing report co-sponsor Environmentalists Against War
–Cynthia Lazaroff and David Barash, our guest experts in the webinar session on the nuclear dimensions of the Ukraine Crisis
–Katrina vanden Heuvel and Ray McGovern, guest experts on Russian affairs in two of our other webinar sessions, and
–Rick Sterling, a member of JWE’s board and board chair of the Mount Diablo Peace & Justice Center.

Our discussion was fairly unstructured. We covered topics such as the list of Policy Recommendations that were included in the report and the challenges of explaining the realities of Cold War-era “mutually assured destruction” to a whole new generation of Americans who did not need to think much about such matters during the decades of the United States’ hegemonic dominance of the world.

You can download the whole text of our report in PDF format (1.2 MB) at this link on our website. Or, you can buy copies of the printed report from Amazon for $5 each, here. If you just want to look at our Policy Recommendations, you’ll find them in this PDF. Remember, too, that this report is complementary to the Online Learning Hub we released April 4, that presents the full multimedia records (videos, audio, transcripts) of the eight webinars on Ukraine we presented in March, along with links to other related materials.

We hope you’ll find that, between them, the printed (or print-at-home) report and the Online Learning Hub can spark thought-provoking discussions and engagement in your community group, classroom, or congregation.

What an honor and a great intellectual journey it was for me to plan and then work with Richard Falk to host all those smart and gripping online conversations.

“They must be out of their minds”: how the Collective West is stumbling towards nuclear Armageddon

By Gilbert Doctorow, April 21, 2022

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2022/04/21/they-must-be-out-of-their-minds-how-the-collective-west-is-stumbling-towards-nuclear-armageddon/

I (Gilbert Doctorow) have in past weeks focused attention on the political talk show “Evening with Vladimir Solovyov,” calling it the best of its kind on Russian state television and a good indicator of the thinking of  Russia’s political elites. …

Vladimir Solovyov has at least one advantage making it worthwhile to tune in. To my knowledge, he is the only host to go outside the usual circuit of ‘talking heads’ from universities, think tanks and the Duma. Solovyov regularly feature a bona fide top manager in the arts who rubs shoulders daily with the ‘creative classes.’  I have in mind Mosfilm general director Karen Shakhnazarov.

Over the course of the past six weeks, I have several times pointed to the changing mood of Shakhnazarov with respect to the ‘special military operation in Ukraine.’  At first he was buoyant, then he was fearful that the operation was going badly and running out of control, and finally he appeared to be ‘all in,’ looking for ways for Russia to win decisively and quickly.

Last night, we heard from yet another mood swing.  I bring it to the attention of readers, because it has great relevance to the current complete passivity of our general public in the face of some very peculiar policy decisions with respect to Russia being made at the highest levels in the USA and in Europe, with zero public consultation so far.

To be specific, Shakhnazarov expressed amazement and deep worry that Western leaders have literally ‘lost their minds’ by pursuing measures to destabilize Russia in the hope of precipitating the overthrow of Vladimir Putin and maybe even the disintegration of Russia in a way similar to the dissolution of the USSR in late 1991.  Shakhnazarov remarked that total absence of common or any other sense in Joe Biden is to be expected because of his health (read: senility). But his jaw dropped when he heard that the Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, declared a couple of days ago that “Russia must not be allowed to win this war!”    Where are his brains? Shakhnazarov asked rhetorically.

The point of Shakhnazarov’s reasoning is as follows:   Russia is the world’s leading power in terms of nuclear arms. An overthrow of Putin would lead to chaos, and very likely to genuine radicals assuming power.  Their aggressive inclinations for policy to the West would be underpinned by the vast majority of the Russian population, which, in Shakhnazarov’s view, is now overcome with pure hatred for the West brought on by the sanctions, by the rampant Russophobia that is now public policy in Europe and the USA. If the conflict should escalate to use of tactical nuclear missiles and beyond, then Russia would no longer limit its strikes to military installations but will happily target all capitals and populations centers in Europe and, we may assume, in North America.   In a word, Shakhnazarov equates destabilization of Russia with nuclear Armageddon.

I repeat, these are the fears of a highly responsible and publicly visible Russian general manager in the arts.  Is anybody in the West with comparable standing even beginning to imagine the coming catastrophe let alone speak out about it?

New ICBM: Are Biden’s Advisers Smart Enough to Realize …

Before closing, I (Doctorow) redirect attention to a major newsworthy development in Russia yesterday afternoon which even our Western media have reported on this morning:  the test launch of Russia’s new Sarmat ICBM, which sets new records for speed, distance, destructive force of its MIRV warheads and, surely most important, imperviousness to all known and projected anti-missile systems in the West.  Part of the invulnerability of the Sarmat is a function of its range, which extends to every point on planet Earth.  Sarmat’s trajectory can be set for travel via the South Pole, thereby evading American tracking systems, which look to attack from the Northwest.

The Sarmat can travel at 18,000 km/hour. Its 7 or 15 nuclear warheads can each also evade ABM systems and head for target at hypersonic speeds. Starting in September, the Sarmat will be installed in silos till now housing the world’s most powerful ICBM, the Voevoda, which will be gradually retired and redeployed as launchers for commercial satellites.

In his words of congratulations to the designers, project developers, and manufacturers of the Sarmat, President Putin stressed the importance of the new armaments as Russia’s dissuasion directed against those in the West who would threaten the country militarily.   Is anybody listening? 

Privileged Ignorant “Punks” Don’t Listen

Paragraphs below are drawn from https://www.businessinsider.com/sullivan-independent-ukraine-weakened-isolated-russia-putin-conflict-biden-2022-4 .

National security advisor Jake Sullivan on Sunday [April 10] said that the United States is pushing for an “independent” Ukraine and an “isolated” Russia, a stance that’s hardened as Moscow’s conflict against its western neighbor approaches the two-month mark.

During an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Sullivan told host Chuck Todd that the Biden administration would continue to send critical aid and additional resources to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his country’s military.

“Our policy is unequivocal that we will do whatever we can to help Ukraine succeed. And it will be … President Zelenskyy and the democratically-elected government of Ukraine that determines what that success constitutes,” he said.

He added: “We need to keep giving them military support and strong economic sanctions to improve their position, their posture at the negotiating table.”

Sullivan then said that US envisions a future of Ukraine without Russian interference — and with Russia essentially backed into a corner.

“At the end of the day, what we want to see is a free and independent Ukraine, a weakened and isolated Russia, and a stronger, more unified, more determined West,” he said. “We believe that all three of those objectives are in sight, can be accomplished, and we will do what it takes to support the Ukrainians in their effort to help bring those objectives about.”

Who’s This Jake Sullivan?

See excerpts below: “From the ‘Best and Brightest’ to a ‘Bunch of Ignorant Punks’

MUST-READ Abridged Excerpts From Interview of Ted Postol, Professor Emeritus, MIT, with Robert Scheer

Ted Postol: “My grave concern is I know some of these characters who worked for Obama, and who now work for Biden. And I’m sorry to say it—I know it will be considered arrogant to say this—but they are ignorant. Let me be very clear: this is not an accidental statement on my part. They are outright ignorant. And they’re a bunch of—you know, they trained at these elite schools; they don’t know anything, but they think they know things.

I have taught at Stanford; I have taught at MIT; I have taught at Princeton and at Harvard. So I know what a lot of these people are, because they are very privileged—this is of course a generalization; there are certainly some extremely intelligent and thoughtful people among these. But a great bulk of these people are just completely in love with themselves; they are convinced that they know a lot more than they do; they will not listen, they’re not interested in learning—I mean, you try to present facts to them, they sort of walk away from you laughing.

And they are not experts. And it’s not a problem—it’s no problem at all that they are not experts. The problem is that they’re not interested in learning. So, you know, I had this character, a guy named Colin Kahl, he’s the deputy assistant secretary now for policy at the Pentagon. He doesn’t know anything. He was at Stanford, they made him a co-director of the center there. Rude beyond belief. And you know, he tells me at one point, I’m trying to discuss something with him—discuss something—he turns around and he says, I’ve got a job, I’ve got a real job, I don’t have time for this. This is a guy who’s at the Department of Defense, top levels now, possibly advising Biden.

This is the danger. And if we look at the Obama administration, we saw similar dangers. There’s a very interesting Atlantic Monthly article written by a guy named Ben Rhodes. Rhodes was the national security advisor for communications in the White House, and he wrote a totally fraudulent, supposedly government intelligence report that was released to the public about the nerve agent attack that occurred in Damascus in August of 2013.

And it’s very interesting; I would suggest your readers go read that Atlantic Monthly article. Because in his attempt to show everybody what a smart guy he is, he’s revealing that his main objective with Obama, with the president, was to get him to make a decision which would have been a disaster for the United States, but he [Rhodes] didn’t know it. But to attack Syria, before the public outrage from the misinformation people had about that nerve agent attack died down. [Emphasis added.] In other words, he didn’t want the public outrage to die down before he forced or tricked or got Obama to make a momentous decision that would have been a disaster for the United States. A total disaster. [Ironically, it was Russian President Putin who pulled Obama’s chestnuts out of that fire. AND the misinformation was from a false flag chemical attack blamed on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and aimed at getting Obama to authorize an open military attack on Syria.] 

So Rhodes is bragging about in this article about the role he played. That’s a real window that people ought to use to look into the mindset of an individual who basically, through privilege and accident [check out Collegiate School in Manhattan, where he spent his formative years], became a national security advisor with no real knowledge of what’s going on.

So we’re in a dangerous situation. We have a lot of—I’m sorry, because I’m so disturbed by this—we have a bunch of punks, you know, 30-year-old punks who come from privileged backgrounds, claiming they’re experts in policy when they actually do not have the basic knowledge. And they’re advising presidents. [Emphasis added] And this is not a good professional system. We need to do something about it.

We Will All Be Dead

With respect to why nuclear weapons cannot be used is this: if we use them, we will all die. It’s that simple. And I can explain in much more detail why what I just said is correct. So if they ask the question again, why can’t we use these weapons, the simple answer is: if we do, we are all dead. … These weapons start getting used, and before you know it, it escalates into thousands of weapons being used. It’s just inevitable. It’s inevitable that the catastrophe will not be stoppable. So that is why you really ought to be very afraid that nuclear weapons will be used at a ‘low level’.

The argument about using small nuclear weapons is equivalent to saying, if I create only a small spark in this room that’s filled with gasoline vapors, it won’t be a problem. I think this is not a bad analogy. It’s physics rather than social, but it’s basically the situation. You can’t have a small spark in a room that’s filled with gasoline fumes. It’s not going to be a good outcome.”

END OF EXCERPTS from Robert Scheer Interview of Ted Postol

For more, see https://raymcgovern.com/2022/03/26/cold-reality-vs-nonchalant-talk-of-using-little-nukes/

Obama Did Not Call Putin’s Bluff: Will Biden?

(Includes a case study of events in Syria in autumn 2015, when Obama took Putin seriously and avoided an armed clash.)
By Ray McGovern, April 16, 2022

President Joe Biden will get it wrong again if he heeds advisers telling him he can send heaps of more lethal weaponry into Ukraine without much risk of open hostilities with Russia.

Like Biden, the Russians do not want that.  That’s why they spent last week warning there will be “unpredictable consequences” from surge-supplying billions of dollars-worth of weapons to Ukraine.  (See Scott Ritter & Ray on Ukraine: “Russian ‘Incoming’ To Destroy Weapons Coming In”.  https://raymcgovern.com/2022/04/16/scott-ritter-ray-on-ukraine-russian-incoming-to-destroy-weapons-coming-in/.

As Scott and I pointed out yesterday, one “consequence” seems entirely predictable.  And if we are correct in saying the Russians can be counted on to destroy most of that additional weaponry — Biden’s all-consuming attempt to appear strong vis-a-vis Putin will fall flat (with dire Dem damage). The optics — those that slip by the “Patriot defenses” of the corporate media — are likely to be a PR disaster. Worse still, at that point, Washington hawks (many of whom fully expect the above scenario) will be able to argue even more strongly that Biden needs to “do more”.

Here’s the Problem

What Establishment Washington seems unable to grasp is:

— Ukraine is a “must win” for Moscow, which sees it as an existential threat to Russian security; and

— If Putin falters, it is a good bet China will come to his aid, and the U.S. will be faced with the prospect of a two-front war. The Chinese know all too well that they are next in line for the tender ministrations of NATO/East.  Indeed, it is no secret that, in the Pentagon’s eyes, China remains enemy #1.  The Pentagon’s “2022 National Defense Strategy” issued two and a half weeks ago gives pride of place to a perceived threat from China, as in:

“The Defense priorities are:

1. Defending the homeland, paced to the growing multi-domain threat posed by the People’s Republic of China”. …

(In contrast, Russia doesn’t make it onto the list of the top four “Defense priorities”. ( See: https://media.defense.gov/2022/Mar/28/2002964702/-1/-1/1/NDS-FACT-SHEET.PDF )

Remembering Syria

Joe Biden was Vice President when President Barack Obama stepped out of character and actually reined in the military — expressly to avoid a military clash with Russia over Syria in the fall of 2015. One must hope that Biden remembers it. Putin surely does, for it offered all sorts of lessons with respect to what a U.S. president can do — and the political limits on his power. Putin talked about those lessons at the time.  Later, in a June 2021 speech, as Ukraine heated up, Putin noted yet again:

I am sure that it [US policy towards Russia] is primarily impacted by the domestic political processes. Russia-US relations have to a certain extent become hostage to the internal political processes that are taking place in the United States. ( See: https://tass.com/politics/1298867?utm )

U.S.-Russia maneuvers during Sept./Oct. 2015 were so instructive that I composed a brief chronology. What follows is extracted from that summary ( See: https://raymcgovern.com/2016/11/29/us-russian-relations-1989-2016/ ). Ironically, the most aggressive hawks President Biden faces now do not seem to be in the Pentagon; top military leaders seem sensible enough to want to avoid taking on Russia — or, worse still, both Russia and China.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Chronology from 2015, Syria

-Sept. 28, 2015:  At the UN, Putin tells Obama Russia will start air strikes in Syria; invites Obama to join Russia in air campaign against ISIS; Obama tells Kerry to get together with Lavrov to “deconflict” U.S. and Russian flights over Syria, and then to work hard for a lessening of hostilities and political settlement in Syria – leading to marathon negotiations.

++++++++++++++++++

-Sept 30, 2015: Russia starts airstrikes both against ISIS and in support of Syrian forces against rebels in Syria.

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-Oct 1, 2015 to Sept 9, 2016: Kerry and Lavrov labor hard to introduce ceasefire and some kind of political settlement.  Finally, a limited ceasefire is signed Sept 9, 2016 — with the explicit blessing of both Obama and Putin.

++++++++++++++++++

-Sept 12, 2016:  The limited ceasefire goes into effect; provisions include SEPARATING THE SO-CALLED “MODERATE” REBELS FROM THE, WELL, “IMMODERATE ONES.”  Kerry had earlier claimed that he had “refined” ways to accomplish the separation, but it did not happen; provisions also included safe access for relief for Aleppo.

++++++++++++++++++

-Sept 17, 2016: U.S. Air Force bombs fixed Syrian Army positions killing between 64 and 84 Syrian army troops, with about 100 others wounded — evidence enough to convince the Russians that the Pentagon was intent on scuttling meaningful cooperation with Russia AND FELT FREE TO DO SO AND THEN MERELY SAY OOPS, WITH NO ONE BEING HELD ACCOUNTABLE!

+++++++++++++++++

Sept 26, 2016:  We can assume that what Lavrov has told his boss in private is close to his uncharacteristically blunt words on Russian NTV on Sept. 26. (In public remarks bordering on the insubordinate, senior Pentagon officials a few days earlier had showed unusually open skepticism regarding key aspects of the Kerry-Lavrov agreement – like sharing intelligence with the Russians (a key provision of the deal approved by both Obama and Putin).

Here’s what Lavrov said on Sept 26:

“My good friend John Kerry … is under fierce criticism from the US military machine. Despite the fact that, as always, [they] made assurances that the US Commander in Chief, President Barack Obama, supported him in his contacts with Russia (he confirmed that during his meeting with President Vladimir Putin), apparently the military does not really listen to the Commander in Chief.”

Lavrov went beyond mere rhetoric. He specifically criticized JCS Chairman Joseph Dunford for telling Congress that he opposed sharing intelligence with Russia, “after the agreements concluded on direct orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Barack Obama stipulated that they would share intelligence. … It is difficult to work with such partners. …”

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-Sept 29, 2016: KERRY’S HUBRIS-TINGED FRUSTRATION:

Kerry’s whining reflects naiveté accompanied by hubris-on-steroids.  Apparently Victoria Nuland, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, Netanyahu, et al. had told Kerry it would be easy to “align things” in the Middle East.  In stentorian remarks betraying senatorial, sartorial ignorance, as well as what the Chinese used to call “great-power chauvinism,” Kerry indicates that he thought he could “align forces” using the misbegotten policies the U.S. has pursued in the Middle East over the past four, and many more, years.

And so, this is how Kerry started off his remarks at an open forum arranged by the Atlantic magazine and the Aspen Institute on Sept. 29, 2016.  (I was there and could hardly believe it; made me think that some of these stuffed shirts actually believe their own rhetoric about being “indispensable.”)

Syria is as complicated as anything I have ever done in my public life in the sense that there are probably about six wars going on at the same time: Kurds against Kurds, Kurds against Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sunni, Shia, everybody against ISIS, people against Assad, Al-Nusra…this is a mixed up sectarian and civil war and strategic and proxies, so it is very difficult to be able to align forces.”

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-October 1, 2016: Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova warns on Russian TV: “If the US launches a direct aggression against Damascus and the Syrian Army, it would cause a terrible, tectonic shift not only in the country, but in the entire region.”  She warned of those whose “logic is ‘why do we need diplomacy’ … when there is power … and methods of resolving a problem by power. We already know this logic; there is nothing new about it. It usually ends with one thing – full-scale war.” (The New York Times avoided reporting this.) …

++++++++++++++++++++

-Oct 6, 2016:

Russian defense spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov warns that Russia is prepared to shoot down unidentified aircraft – including any stealth aircraft – over Syria. It is a warning that should be taken seriously.   Experts differ as to whether the advanced air defense systems already in Syria can bring down stealth aircraft, but it would be a mistake to dismiss this warning out of hand. Besides, Konashenkov added, in a telling ex-ante, extenuating-circumstance vein, that Russian air defense “will not have time to identify the origin” of the aircraft.

++++++++++++++++++

-October 7, 2016:

John Kerry calls for Russia and the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad to be investigated for “war crimes” in relation to strikes carried out by Syrian and Russian warplanes against the Islamist militias.

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October 12, 2016:

As posted on raymcgovern.com, a summary of Ray’s remarks on RT:

The way we reconstruct events over the past several days is the following:

Obama realizes that this is getting dangerous; tells Kerry, “Enough already with the War-Crimes charges;” Obama tells Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, “Enough with the insubordination; rein in your air force cowboys.  We are going to do the only sensible thing on Syria; namely, resume talks Saturday (Oct. 15) in Lausanne, Switzerland, at the foreign minister level.”  The U.S., Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Iran will take part.

+++++++++++++++++

-October 15, 2016: Kerry flies to Geneva, where other invitees also gather.  But, alas, apparently, Obama was not able to hammer out and get his various top advisers to agree on a new approach.  In any event, Kerry arrives WITHOUT NEW INSTRUCTIONS.  An embarrassment; most gatherers go back home.

Probably the only somewhat useful outcome of this strange sequence of events is the clarity with which Obama signaled Putin that he is, indeed, taking seriously Putin’s stern message (via Zakharova and Gen. Konashenkov), and really would prefer not to have U.S. aircraft shot down over Syria (to the extent it is in Obama’s power to prevent this). …

+++++++++++++++++++

-Oct 27, 2016:  Putin speaks at the Valdai International Discussion Club

So how did the “growing trust”, that Russian President Vladimir Putin once wrote (in the Sept. 11, 2013 NY Times op-ed) marked his “working and personal relationship with President Obama”, change into deep distrust and saber-rattling?  At Valdai Putin spoke of the “feverish” state of international relations and lamented:

“My personal agreements with the President of the United States have not produced results.” He [Putin] complained about “people in Washington ready to do everything possible to prevent these agreements from being implemented in practice”; and, referring to Syria, Putin decried the lack of a “common front against terrorism after such lengthy negotiations, enormous effort, and difficult compromises.” (Emphasis added)

(See also my Baltimore Sun Op-Ed of October 30 for more detail):

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-putin-obama-20161030-story.html

Scott Ritter & Ray on Ukraine: “Russian ‘Incoming’ To Destroy Weapons Coming In”

(Friday Interview on The Critical Hour)

Scott and Ray discuss Russia’s repeated warnings that sending weapons into Ukraine will have “unpredictable consequences” — warnings that need to be taken seriously.

This neuralgic issue now comes to a head, as the U.S. announces $800 million-worth of weapons for Ukraine, and as Russia prepares to launch a major military campaign in south and eastern Ukraine. Scott notes that the circumspection Moscow has shown up until now, in tolerating the transport of outside weaponry — as well as the travel of senior clowns like Boris Johnson — is not likely to last. The new weapons will be destroyed, with the Boris Johnsons of the West made to look foolish.

China’ role is also discussed at some length, including what Biden’s advisers may finally understand (if the world is lucky) as the possibility of a two-front war.  Also: the ramifications of the possible accession to power of Marine Le Pen in France; and whether Chancellor Olaf Scholz may be forced to back down on the snap decisions that reversed decades of German policy on defense, and on sending arms into areas of hostility. 

Love One Another; Rough Times Ahead

By Ray McGovern, April 14, 2022

In the Judeo-Christian tradition we recall today and tomorrow the Passover meal that a Palestinian Jew named Jesus of Nazareth arranged for his friends AND their families (Sorry: Leonardo de Vinci was actually not there to paint it; no one sketched it; and cameras were prohibited in the Upper Room). Jesus had two main messages (excerpts are from John 14 & 15, Eugene H. Peterson translation): 

1 — “Remember the root command: Love one another”; and

2 — “Expect rough times ahead: They are going to throw you out of the meeting places. There will even come a time when anyone who kills you will think he’s doing God a favor.” (Ed., they may even throw you off Twitter and Facebook today for saying radically true things.)

Many of us who call ourselves Christians have — how best to say this — prescinded from those two key admonitions over these past 2000 years. More specifically, those of us who call ourselves North Americans have not shaken off what has been called, correctly, our country’s “original sin” — racism.

Racism

To our discredit, this lingering sore remains open: here is James Baldwin writing to Angela Davis 52 years ago during a war against brown people in Vietnam:

Let me put it this way, Angela. As long as white Americans take refuge in their whiteness… they will allow millions of other people to be slaughtered... So long as their whiteness puts so sinister a distance between their own experience and the experience of others, they will never feel themselves sufficiently worthwhile to become responsible for themselves. [Emphasis added]

A Half-Century Later: Giroux

More recently, Henry A. Giroux has brought us up to date with candid commentary ( See: https://truthout.org/articles/nonstop-corporate-news-on-ukraine-is-fueling-support-for-unchecked-us-militarism/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=77fff940-46b2-4233-a46f-c6b8512452b6 ).

It is abundantly clear that we in the U.S. are now called to summon the courage to acknowledge the role of racism in our “exceptional” foreign — as well as domestic — policy. The challenge is to do what we can to force the needed changes — if not simply because it is the right thing to do, then because Ukraine has now split the world between an all-white “West” and people of color (with the Russians so media-blackened over the past decade that they readily fall into the “colored” category). From an amoral perspective, the international relations school of “realism” would note that there are far more of “them” than there are of us whites.

Henry Giroux is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy at McMaster University. I found it very hard to pare down what he has to say; I hope you will the following excerpts:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

… Images of violence are replayed in the mainstream media over and over again, making violence not only more visible but also rootless. The sheer monopoly of such images gives them a fascist edge, all the while dissolving politics into a cinematic pathology. Writer and philosopher Susan Sontag’s observation about war coverage, made in a different historical context, is even more relevant today. According to Sontag, the endless images of war and suffering, removed from the context of rigorous historical analysis, represent a contempt for “all that is reflective, critical and pluralistic [and are] linked to forms of rabid masculinity [that] glamorizes death.” [Emphasis added.] …

In the face of the brutal Russian invasion, the concept of militarization is being amplified and put into service as a call for more upgraded weapons. Talk of war, not peace, dominates the mainstream media landscapes both at home and abroad. Such talk also fuels a global arms industry, oil and gas monopolies, and the weaponization of language itself. Militarism as a tool of unchecked nationalism and patriotism drives the mainstream and right-wing disimagination machines. Both fuel a global war fever through different degrees of misrepresentation and create what intellectual historian Jackson Lears writing in the London Review of Books calls “an atmosphere “poisoned by militarist rants.” He goes further in regarding his critique of the U.S. response to the war in Ukraine, writing in the New York Review of Books:

Yet the US has failed to put a cease-fire and a neutral Ukraine at the forefront of its policy agenda there. Quite the contrary: it has dramatically increased the flow of weapons to Ukraine, which had already been deployed for eight years to suppress the separatist uprising in the Donbas. US policy prolongs the war and creates the likelihood of a protracted insurgency after a Russian victory, which seems probable at this writing. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has refused to address Russia’s fear of NATO encirclement. Sometimes we must conduct diplomacy with nations whose actions we deplore. How does one negotiate with any potential diplomatic partner while ignoring its security concerns? The answer, of course, is that one does not. Without serious American diplomacy, the Ukraine war, too, may well become endless. …

Behind this disproportionate response by the international community and its media platforms lies the ghosts of colonialism and the merging of culture and the undercurrents of white supremacy. For example, the general indifference to comparable acts of war and unspeakable violence can be in part explained by the fact that the Ukrainian victims appearing on the mass media are white Europeans. What is not shown are “Black people being refused at border crossings in favor of white Ukrainians, leaving them stuck at borders for days in brutal conditions [or] Black people being pushed off trains.” The mainstream media celebrate Poland’s welcoming of Ukrainian refugees but are silent about the Polish government boasting about building walls and “creating a ‘fortress’ to keep out refugees from Syria and Afghanistan.”

The war in Ukraine makes clear that racism is not deterred by global boundaries. Empathy in this war only runs skin deep. It is easy for white people in the media to sympathize with people who look just like them. This was made clear when CBS News Senior Correspondent Charlie D’Agata, reporting on the war, stated that it was hard to watch the violence waged against Ukrainians because Ukraine “isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European [country] … one where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that it’s going to happen.” In this case, “civilized,” is code for white. D’Agata simply echoed the obvious normalization of racism as is clear in a number of comments that appeared in the mainstream press. The Guardian offered a summary of just a few, which include the following:

The BBC interviewed a former deputy prosecutor general of Ukraine, who told the network: ‘It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blond hair … being killed every day.’ Rather than question or challenge the comment, the BBC host flatly replied, ‘I understand and respect the emotion.’ On France’s BFM TV, journalist Phillipe Corbé stated this about Ukraine: ‘We’re not talking here about Syrians fleeing the bombing of the Syrian regime backed by Putin. We’re talking about Europeans leaving in cars that look like ours to save their lives…. And writing in the Telegraph, Daniel Hannan explained: ‘They seem so like us. That is what makes it so shocking. Ukraine is a European country. Its people watch Netflix and have Instagram accounts, vote in free elections and read uncensored newspapers. War is no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations.’

There is more here than a slip of the tongue; there is also the repressed history of white supremacy. As City University of New York Professor Moustafa Bayoumi writing in The Guardian observes, all of these comments point to a deeply ingrained and “pernicious racism that permeates today’s war coverage and seeps into its fabric like a stain that won’t go away. The implication is clear: war is a natural state for people of color, while white people naturally gravitate toward peace.”

Clearly, in the age of Western colonialism, a larger public is taught to take for granted that justice should weigh largely in favor of people whose skin color is the same as those who have the power to define whose lives count and whose do not. These comments are also emblematic of the propaganda machines that have resurfaced with the scourge of racism on their hands, indifferent to the legacy of racism with which they are complicit.

Historical amnesia and a prolonged military conflict combine making it easier to sell war rather than peace, which would demand not only condemnation of Russia but also an exercise in self-scrutiny with a particular focus on the military optic that has been driving U.S. foreign policy since President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in the 1950s of the danger of the military-industrial complex.

The Ukrainian war is truly insidious and rouses the deepest sympathies and robust moral outrage, but the calls to punish Russia overlook the equally crucial need to call for peace. In doing so, such actions ignore a crucial history and mode of analysis that make clear that behind this war are long-standing anti-democratic ideologies that have given us massive inequality, disastrous climate change, poverty, racial apartheid and the increasing threat of nuclear war.

War never escapes the tragedies it produces and is almost always an outgrowth of the dreams of the powerful — which always guarantees a world draped in suffering and death. Peace is difficult in an age when culture is organized around the interrelated discourse of militarism and state violence. War has become the only mirror in which alleged democratic capitalist and authoritarian societies recognize themselves. Rather than defined as a crisis, war for authoritarian rulers and the soulless arms industries becomes an opportunity for power and profits, however ill-conceived.

Peace demands a different assertion of collective identity, a different ethical posture and value system that takes seriously Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s admonition that human beings must do everything not to “spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear annihilation.” This is not merely a matter of conscience or resistance but of survival itself. [End of excerpts from Giroux.]