[Salon] Ending the Ukraine War through Democratic Voting

[Chas Freeman <cwfresidence@gmail.com>]

FM: John Whitbeck

On the second anniversary of the launching of Russia's "special military operation", I am recirculating below the message which I transmitted on February 24, 2022.

Few people without personal financial and/or professional reasons for wishing the war to be perpetuated would today dispute that the Ukrainian people have been sacrificed, like the peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, on "the great game-board of full-spectrum global dominance."

For whatever it may be worth, I am also retransmitting immediately below the link to my proposal for ending the war in Ukraine through democratic voting rather than through continued competitive killing:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/03/17/a-democratic-end-to-ukraines-war

My proposal would, in accordance with the precedent set by NATO's war to separate Kosovo from Serbia, prioritize the self-determination of peoples over the territorial integrity of states, the subject of my article (below) which was published on February 24, 2022.

Awkwardly for American decision-makers, a decision to advocate a democratic solution in Ukraine's case, while serving the essential objective of saving face, would entail a high probability of producing what the U.S. government would deem the "wrong" result, as did the most recent Palestinian elections, which were democratically and decisively won by Hamas in 2006.

However, since, as I have noted on numerous occasions, American foreign/war policies in recent decades have not been results-oriented (at least in terms of their publicly proclaimed objectives), one may still hope that relevant decision-makers might, if only for self-centered and self-serving reasons, decide to prioritize saving face over probable results and, thereby, finally serve the genuine interests of the Ukrainian people, who do not need yet more Ukrainian deaths and destruction for no conceivable Ukrainian benefit or gain.

The slaughter of combatants in Ukraine, like the genocidal assault against the people of Gaza, needs to end, not to be perpetuated by Western politicians "for as long as it takes" or, so as to delay the eventually inevitable and politically embarrassing admission of failure, until after the American presidential election in November.