The Courage to Stop the War Machine

Global NATO, in the name of an illusory “rules-based order”, has brought us to a situation, where the danger of a nuclear war is not only no longer unthinkable, but is openly discussed. Using proxies such as Ukraine and Israel, the level of disregard for human life and human rights displayed by Western leaders is shocking.

There are, however, voices warning of the danger. Senior British journalist Simon Jenkins wrote in The Guardian on March 5 that NATO’s strategy in Ukraine has “lost all coherence”, which means that “This is the moment when such wars run out of control”. He concludes that “The crass ineptitude of a quarter of a century of western military interventions should have taught us some lessons. Apparently not.”

Pope Francis, for his part, in an interview with the Swiss television RTS, called on the Ukrainians to recognize that they cannot win the war and to “have the courage” to raise the white flag and negotiate an end to the conflict. Even his very measured call for sanity to prevail set off a storm of protests in the West, although there are indications in this direction (cf. below).

In Gaza, the immediate danger is far more dramatic, where the first cases of children starving to death have been reported, while thousands of others face the same fate. The Biden Administration has staged a Hollywood-like spectacle of delivering aid to the Palestinians through airlifts, and is now engaged in building piers to deliver food and medicine by sea, while politely asking the Netanyahu government to scale back the killing. But at the same time, the Administration has not only refused to stop weapons deliveries to Israel, it has also approved, without public notice, at least 100 weapons sales since the war against Gaza began on Oct. 7. That in addition to rejecting all calls for a ceasefire at the United Nations.

The policy of the European Union has been no less hypocritical, on the contrary. Moreover, the supplies to be sent by sea will take several weeks, while the dying continues, and funding for the UN organization UNRWA has been suspended (cf. below).

What these governments should be doing is supporting an approach such as the Oasis Plan, which the Schiller Institute has proposed. This will be discussed in detail at the international conference on April 13, reported below.