As is so often the case when it comes to war, it is the generals who provide a clear analysis to indicate the shortest path to peace. Wars are waged by politicians who often rely on the irrational and emotional pressure of populace intoxicated by their propaganda. The idea that armies are warmongers is one of the many illusions of peacetime, and what Europe still enjoys has lasted for almost a century.
Having said that, it is not surprising that among the very few voices from the chorus in the war in Ukraine, there are these by respected generals. The last is General Bertolini’s very clear analysis, which confirms what I have been told privately by other military strategists: that the war the Russians have waged so far follows a conspiracy well planned; that the aim is not to invade Ukraine, a decidedly antiMoscow country, or to invade Europe, which would be sheer madness, but to conquer areas with a strong Russian or proRussian ethnic presence in the east of the country and those adjoining the Azov and and the regions bordering the Black Sea, General Bertolini also confirms what many war analysts refuse to publicly admit: the prolongation of the conflict it will only claim more victimswill make the final agreements even more delicate and that the outcome of the conflict is as certain as it was before it began.
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At the risk of being lynched on social media, today I want to focus on the “victims, the attacked, and leave the attackers aside. I do it to support those who have been rowing towards peace for the past few weeks against those who have spent weeks arming a nation only this time sliding into yet another proxy war along the borders of Europe. First, as the New York Times reported, Chancellor Scholz proposed mediation prior to the invasion that included this neutrality Ukraine, therefore no NATO or EU accession, recognition of the annexation of Crimea in 2014 e the independence of Donbass where since 2014 there has been a war between Ukrainian militias, including the notorious Azov militia, and Russian separatists. Both the EU and the United States guarantee the agreement.
Zelenskyy said he didn’t care why he didn’t trust Putin. And not even Scholz? Biden’s? From Brussels? One wonders if Zelenskyy has opted for the certainty of immediate armed conflict, backed by Western armaments and billions, rather than peace with the risk of hypothetical conflict in the future. Better some war today than peace under the threat of tomorrow, was that his rationale? If the goal was and remains to teach Putin a lesson and end Moscow’s meddling once and for all, and if the price one is willing to pay is high, very high, given the images of the battered country considered, then This is the right time to do it. Nobody knows who will win the next White House race, what mood will be like in London, or how the European population will react to the wave of inflation sweeping the old continent.
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Wsj: “Scholz attempted mediation between Moscow and Kyiv in February. Zelenskyy refused: he did not believe that Putin would respect the pacts.
Second, from Draghi’s words, “If we want peace, let’s turn off the air conditioners” and arm Ukraine, we can see the ignorance of the current politicians about the war. Stop buying gas from Russia and supplying arms to Ukraine it does not end the conflict. I remind Draghi and his European colleagues that sanctions have never acted as a deterrent to war and that the first rule to prevent ethnic conflicts from escalating into genocide or allout wars is this: never arm anyone. Imagine what would have happened in Northern Ireland if the United States had allowed the Irish diaspora to arm the IRA instead of sending financial aid through various charities. The IRA bought the weapons themselves, of course, but did not have access to very modern and sophisticated weapons and procurement was also limited for logistical reasons. Imagine the fate of this conflict if missiles, guns, ammunition, mines and so on had arrived from the United States and if public opinion had done so openly sided in favor of the IRA. For those who don’t remember or don’t know the facts, in the early 1970s, during the socalled Troubles, there was civil war in some towns in Northern Ireland. Well, civil war has been raging in many areas of Donbass since 2014.
However, arming militias and peoples never leads to peace to eternal war and political destabilization. In the 1980s, the CIA, along with Saudi Arabia, funded the mujahideen against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan: that was the fuse that ignited Al Qaeda, the decadeslong terrorism of Islamic fundamentalism, the destabilization of a large part of the Muslim world. Mention that 9/11 and all later attacks.
Third, proxy wars have always been fought in silence, and this has kept alive the possibility of pacification, as was the case at the end of the Cold War, the mother of all proxy conflicts. using war propaganda for internal reasons, see the position of Boris Johnson who, thanks to the war in Ukraine, managed to avoid a government crisis that would have left him in the minority, it’s very dangerous. Words will sooner or later be followed by facts.
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Fourth, give Ed plenty excessive space to the war dialectics of one of the contenders and I am referring to Zelenskyy, who constantly pleads for more arms, but not for bringing food, medicine and drink to the wartorn country closes all avenues to peace. To applaud the President’s determination not to give up, to fight to the last man means means abolish diplomacy and go back to Hobbes’ natural state. The true heroes of history are not those who shave their land rather than bend down, the true heroes they compromise to save lives and territories. And for those who don’t remember, Hitler’s Germany didn’t give up until total collapse and Japan only surrendered after two atomic bombs.
Fifth, shaky and senile as it is, the UN is still a supranational institution and its Security Council is the heart of the world. This council, composed of permanent and rotating members, voted against armed intervention in Iraqa right decision since the Americans and British have provided evidence against Saddam’s regime they were wrong. The composition of the Security Council cannot be decided by Zelensky, who has called for Russia’s exclusion, or by any other head of state, nor can it be changed by a single conflict.
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And I conclude: the Ukrainian tragedy is the youngest of them very long and frightening List of equally inhuman conflicts. The atrocities being committed in Ukraine today have happened in Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, East and West Africa and Myanmar, but we have chosen not to see them; or maybe those who condition us, those who control the media bombardment we suffer every day, didn’t want us to see them. In the world beyond the borders of the rich west, however, the narrative is very different: in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, in China and in Africa all these atrocities are well impressed in the collective imagination, how well we remember our indifference towards them. We ponder this as we wonder why some UN nations did not vote for sanctions against Russia, as we westerners suggested, and continue to do business with them.
Moral: We are careful not to make the mistakes of the past, not to mention that the tragedy of a white people, Christian and at the gates of Europe, is more significant and relevant than that of peoples who are ethnically different from us. Let us make a beautiful act of conscience in the hope that it will help us rediscover the pacifist spirit of our grandparents who returned from WWII and spread it not only to the borders of Europe but wherever the specter of war lurks.