Peace with honour, if it was good enough for Nixon then it's good enough for Putin.
The last just war America waged ended in 1945, and since then, like a lonely hearts suitor, they've pined to find another just war they can sink their flag into. The USA has fought wars every year since the end of World War Two but never found a war as morally comfortable as the one against Hitler. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, or hundreds of other places where they put boots on the ground, were sold as a necessity to rid the world of some evil or another. But it never took long for America's veneer of idealism to peel away like a cheap coat of paint to reveal ulterior motives behind these wars or crimes of humanity committed with impunity.
America would not know what to do with itself if it wasn’t in perpetual conflict with someone else or arming proxies to fight its battles. Perhaps, they’d have time to implement public healthcare and bring in gun control and a living wage. But empires need to empire. Empires, because it is in their job description must push around former empires to let them know who the top dog is. The USA has done that to Russia through economic and military means since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia would have acted no different or considerate if their roles were reversed and they had won the Cold War.
Being a Petroleum power is no consolation for Russia because it is a diminished nation that once had the manifest destiny of an empire. There are legitimate existential threats to its existence because the USA would be delighted to see Russia reduced to a satrap in its sphere of influence and used as a bulwark against China.
War with Ukraine for Putin was a gamble like the Battle of the Bulge was for Hitler. But for America and NATO, Russia's war with Ukraine was as serendipitous as it was for a Hollywood producer in the 1930s to walk into Schwab’s Drug Store and encounter an unknown Lana Turner who glistened with star attraction. This war is a win for them because it won't broaden democracy or end economic or social inequality at home but lessen it. For ordinary people outside of Ukraine we win nothing because Putin is not the father of all modern-day fascism or like the beast in Stranger Things- once it has been slayed, normality can return. Twenty-first-century fascism on our home front is born from the entitled classes who want right-wing governments to deliver them, fewer taxes and more compliant workers and consumers.
For all the idealism draped around this war, there is a great deal of cynicism to the way the west conducts it. Our news media frames this war as grandiose and as important as World War Two but allows no debate or inquiry into the conduct of the war, including its cost, which may total as much as all the wars waged by America since World War Two. Moreover, unlike the war against Hitler, no dividend for victory is on offer to us. There is no pledge to us, no promise for a new charter like my father’s generation received from their leaders for defeating Nazism. We will not get a Welfare State from womb to tomb. We will not get a public healthcare system that keeps us healthy and doesn't bankrupt us when we take ill. We will get the opposite- a society made harsh and jagged by the rank greed of the 1%.
This war is evil. But there is also great evil in demanding it resolve itself with the unconditional surrender of Russia under Putin.
This war must end at the peace table rather than in regime change. Turning Russia into a desert and calling it peace isn't about seeking justice but sending a message to China that the USA wants to be the eternal dominant power.
Nobody like you or me wins in war. The winners in war are always, the top income earners, corporations, the military-industrial complex, the politicians for war, and people who write propaganda for war. At best, ordinary people get their name up on a wall for the war dead and a moment of silence. The rich, however, get years of time to spend their profits from war while planning for the next one.
Putin's war must be stopped. Ukraine must have the right to choose its path, although the billions given to them by the USA to fight this war ensures their choices will be as limited as a Travel Lodge breakfast menu. But like the war criminal Nixon in Vietnam, Putin should have peace with honour. The USA and NATO are not going to do that. Instead, NATO wants to rewrite the maps of Europe, Asia and the Mideast as if it is 1815 or 1919. However, it's not a map we are getting but directions to our funeral.
