Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Peace is the highest good – every day that passes, more soldiers and civilians are killed in the Ukrainian war. It is estimated that more than a million persons have lost their lives in this senseless war, which must be brought to an end as early as possible. This can be done with a modicum of common sense and professionalism. The war should never have started, and it could have been ended in March 2022, if Ukraine had not renegued on the compromise negotiated by Turkish President Erdogan in Istanbul. There were many opportunities to sit down and discuss terms for a cease fire, but the US, Europe and Ukraine insisted that “Putin must lose”. Thus, the many blueprints for peace issued by the African countries, China and countless international organizations including the International Peace Bureau, as well as private scholars, were fruitless. This stubbornness and intransigence continues as Ursula von der Leyen, Friedrich Merz and other European leaders oppose the US peace initiative and conspire to continue the war no matter what.

When Trump and Putin meet at the Elmendorf-Richardson base outside Anchorage, Alaska on 15 August, peace will be on the table. It will not be an easy meeting, because US-Russian relations have never been as dire. Nevertheless, the Global Majority of humanity wishes them a good beginning of direct negotiations, a businesslike summit that will build on the prior footwork of Steve Witkoff and Sergei Lavrov. Peace is crucial for Europe, for the US, for civilization.

At the Peace of Westfalia in 1648 a sustainable peace was crafted that allowed the major European States and hundreds of German principalities to close the chapter on the disastrous Thirty Years’ War, which cost eight million lives and economically devastated central Europe. There were no winners. Everyone was exhausted and wanted out.

The Ukraine-Russia conundrum is not a bilateral conflict, but a messy multiparty war involving the United States and most NATO and EU countries, which since 2014 have provided military, economic, political, diplomatic and propagandistic support to Ukraine. I say 2014 and not 2022, because the war in the Donbass started with the US and European supported Putsch against the democratically elected President of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovich, and with the arrival in Kiew of a rabidly Russophobic, unconstitutional regime that prohibited the use of the Russian language and relentlessly shelled the Russian civilian population of Lugansk and Donetsk, causing some 14,000 deaths before the Russian invasion of 24 February 2022.

This human tragedy has a long pre-history. There will be no peace until the root causes of the war are addressed, something with the Biden/Blinken Administration and the European powers have refused to do. Most importantly, a European security architecture must be agreed upon that will guarantee the sovereignty of Ukraine and at the same time end the Eastward expansion of NATO, which was condemned by George F. Kennan as early as 1997.

The most serious obstacle to crafting a........

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