[Salon] Peace feelers and wishful thinking, cont'd....

[Chas Freeman <cwfresidence@gmail.com>]

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Peace feelers

and wishful thinking, cont’d...

Talleyrand Jul 30

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And so the Saudis are at it once again. Yesterday it was reported that a peace summit for Ukraine, following on last month’s Copenhagen meeting, will take place at Jedda at the end of this week. They’ll be no Russians there but the Russian government seems so far to be saying the right things about keeping an open mind.

If the representatives of the three dozen or so nations attending this meeting would like any advice, it would be this: do not waste time discussing war guilt. Look forward, not back. Because it is important to remember that ‘war’ itself is in the eye of the beholder. To quote von Clausewitz:

War actually takes place… more for the defensive than for the conqueror, for invasion only calls forth resistance, and it is not until there is resistance that there is War. A conqueror is always a lover of peace (as Buonaparte always asserted of himself); he would like to make his entry into our State unopposed; in order to prevent this, we must choose War, and therefore also to make preparations, that is in other words, it is just the weak, or that side which must defend itself, which should always be armed in order not to be taken by surprise.