A reader writes:
Nobody else seems to be doing it, so this week's ZGBlog - up today - presents a plan for peace in Ukraine. If you think it has merit, will you pass it around? Social media, letters to editors, etc? I've made a quick way to reach it: TinyURL.com/Plan4Peace
-A Reader
http://theanarchistalternative.info/zgb/
—
Dear Reader,
I admire the effort. Generally, I think that the peace plan you present misses individuals and plays to government narratives. I’m going to give three examples.
1.) Your peace plan does not address the fact that families in Lugansk (as one example), some who have ostensibly been there 8 generations have been under attack by their own government for better than ten years at this point. That is their home. They don’t want to move anywhere else. They want their government to leave them alone. They don’t want to move to Russia. Why should anyone want to move to Russia? The language? The culture? The president of the Ukraine is a Russian speaker from birth. Almost all residents of Kiev and everything east of there are Russian speakers from birth. Culturally, Kiev and everything East of there are as culturally Russian as Russia. The distinctions are minor.
2.) Your proposed peace plan reinforces a false concept that Ukraine is an independent country with any natural boundaries that will hold. There are a Ukrainian people. They are gathered around Lviv (335 miles or 540 km from Kiev). They deserve a country if they want one. It is fair to call it Ukraine. So do three Western oblasts which fit poorly in Ukraine deserve to be their own countries. The Frankenstein’s monster that is now Ukraine deserves no artificial effort to hold it together. It is even more of a fiction than most countries and the narrative being promoted now has little bearing on the actual history of that place. The only sensible argument for why Uzgorod, Lviv, Kiev, and Lugansk belong in the same country was because the Red Army was once strong enough to make it so. Today that is no longer the case. These people never belonged forced into the same country and do not now either.
3.) Numerous republics will ultimately be created on that land. Why is now the time to take a stand in favor of centralization? That question must be answered. How many years of forced centralization will you comfortably endure under your plan? 50? 100? 200? Why is now not the time to rip the band aid off ?
In these three ways, I believe your admirable peace effort misses individuals and plays to the narratives of Moscow and Brussels/Washington DC being promoted in the creation of the conflict. During my two trips to Kiev prior to this conflict, I was able to unquestionably say that it was a culturally and linguistically Russian city.
Lviv is a different story. It’s tragicomic to see a populace so ignorant about the differences between Kiev and Lviv while upholding the narrative that Kiev must rule all and that its government must be a Western planted one. I suppose not 1 in 100 people in Washington DC can speak to the difference between Kiev and Lviv, an internal difference that makes long term federation between the two very unlikely. I suppose not 1 in 1000 voices in the debate with their Ukrainian flags in their bios can do that either.
I have no special love for Russian culture and would be more likely to dislike Russian power than like it, but this war is entirely a fabrication by the West. End the Western antagonism and the war ends. It’s that simple. That is what the plan should be — end the Western antagonism. There are no “sides” in this conflict between the Ukrainian people and Russian people. It is a fight between Brussels / DC and Moscow. One side has no interest in backing down — Brussels/DC, the other side is making a last stand in its crumbling empire — Moscow.
Truthfully both sides are overseeing crumbling empires. One is further down that road than the other.
One side (Brussels / DC ) in this conflict has placed a government in power in Kiev. To pretend that this government is going to ignore NATO is silly. The government has been placed there by Western interests. Aside from the NATO general that just became President of the Czech Republic, Zelensky is the closest thing that exists to a European head of state being the reliable voice of NATO.
To wit, the statement in the peace plan proposal “Ukraine's government will renounce all ties to NATO,” is the same as saying that Ukraine will remove President Zelinsky and his ministers. Is this really what you mean to say? If so, your peace plan probably could work.
Rather than designing borders halfway around the world, the question should be about designing limits on what Washington DC is involving itself in. Because we have failed to reign in our government, it has once again brought bloodshed and misery to a relatively peaceful place in exchange for a massive payday.
This video, regardless of its source is the most accurate depiction I’ve seen of this conflict to date.
https://archive.org/details/stop-nazi-games-barracudas
I know the region well enough and know DC and Brussels well enough to be disgusted by what my country is doing there. I know and love many Ukrainians and Ukrainian expats. The Ukraine, however, is not an ally and has never been. There is no US national interest there. This war being driven by very bad people domestically and Washington must be told to stop.
This article you have written buys into false dichotomies created by internal domestic enemies who do not deserve to be paid the honor of having their narratives honored in such a way. Please point your attention toward DC. That is the main requirement for achieving peace in the Ukraine.
Allan, your explanations of this being for the various governments involved and not for the people of Ukraine. One of the members of the Purebloods reassured me that there could not be a nuclear war. That it was literally an impossible outcome. I admire your knowledgeable response to what seemed an impossible situation. I trust the people of the Ukraine will prevail.
Steve, I'm honored by your detailed response. And you're right; for once (once only, I hope!) I'm "playing to government narratives." I think the situation is too dire to do otherwise. If they do fling nukes at each other we shall all die in the crossfire. I'd like to avoid that.
1. Of course, residents of the "Orange strip" wish to be left alone. Don't we all. But for at least nine years, the UkeGov has made it plain that it will not do that. My Plan for Peace would give them the option of staying put and getting shelled or, assuming they are ethnically Russian, going without cost to their choice of another part of Russia. I think many will choose that.
2. You know better than I do that Ukraine is a mess more than a country, but the Russian beef with it is that its government is eager to play host to NATO, providing it with yet another base to encircle and threaten Moscow. My Plan for Peace removes that threat. What Ukrainians do internally after such a settlement is outside the scope of the Plan.
3. Again, the aftermath within Ukraine is not my primary concern. I'm certainly not "forcing centralization" on them; where in the Plan did you find that? If any Ukrainian asks me I would direct their attention to http://tolfa.us so that all government there will vanish. But that will not happen overnight, even if you helped by translating into Ukrainian.
I do agree that DC/Brussels is the instigator and maintainer of this war. It's for that reason that my Plan proposes that DC/Brussels should be ignored; that Moscow and Kiev agree terms with no reference to those puppeteers. If and when they do, exactly what can DC/Brussels do about it?
I cannot tell whether Zelensky would accept a Plan of this kind; but I do think he is starting to feel isolated, that the West is backing down from its support and that Russians are winning. If he negotiates peace, his place in history will be assured. Again: if that's done, DC can go chase.
Agreed, "Washington must be told to stop" - but Washington is not listening. It needs therefore to be bypassed. That's the point of this Plan. Washington - and every vestige of government in every state, city and hamlet needs to be erased in total, and I know of only one way to do that, and in TOLFA (above) I've provided that way. But it will take a decade or three; and right now, it does not appear to me that we have that long before the lunatics destroy civilization.