The War in Ukraine at Four

It is old hat for those who know a bit about peace that it cannot be created by looking only at the various types of violence employed. The world’s focus on the Ukrainian battlefield and its characteristic mixing up ceasefire with peace is misplaced.

One has to ask: And why did they take to violence in the first place, particularly when other options and tools were ready to be employed? And could have stopped the violence and helped the parties find some kind of peaceful existence.

Further, what is it that makes it necessary for almost everybody to take sides with the parties but not address the underlying

How do we think about a doctor who just gives us a painkiller without doing a diagnosis that tells where the pain comes from and also has no Prognosis or Treatment?

At a deeper level, the tragic fourth anniversary of the war in Ukraine should be accompanied by an acknowledgement that the conflict is between NATO and Russia and has gone back to when NATO set up its first office in Kiev a couple of months after Ukraine became independent. It is about the conflict-accelerating expansion of NATO that broke all the well-documented promises Western leaders gave Gorbachev to the effect that NATO would not expand “one inch” – but later took in scores of countries around Russia.

And it is about the US-orchestrated and financed regime change under the Obama administration that took place – the Maidan Revolution/Uproar — that is 12 years ago these very days, February 18-23, 2014.

NATO is a military alliance; its expansion was politics by armament and spreading arms. Russia – after long and clear diplomatic warnings – decided to use weapons. Ukraine had built its army full of weapons (with the help of NATO countries, the US and its CIA, in particular) and killed thousands of Russians and took other Russophobic political initiatives — all backed up by the Army that then President Poroshenko later told the world that he considered “as my child.”

NATO answered with weapons. The EU answered with weapons. The US answered with weapons. The EU/NATO world plans to increase weapons to 5% of its GNP — unheard of ever in its history.

What on earth happened to diplomacy, mediation, secret backstage meetings, decent intelligence gathering, to the idea of media and journalism, to people’s common sense when asking: Why do I hear the same story again and again over four years – and only one story?

Yes, there were some attempts early at a negotiated solution. But how professional were they? Did neutral mediators with knowledge about conflict-resolution, peace-making and later reconciliation participate? Were the UN’s and the OSCE’s qualified people, NGOs and individuals in that profession ever invited? The questions are purely rhetorical, I know. But they deserve to be put forward anyhow.

In my view, everyone — everyone in this conflict — suffers from a militarist mindset.

In a way, it tells us that humanity has still not learned anything from all the wars of history and that leaders everywhere have no ethical problems with accepting the mass killing of fellow human beings. Violence is still so much more statesmanship-like than peace — and being peace and conflict illiterate is perfectly OK.

And who pays the price for these elites’ militarist mindset, for their Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex (MIMAC). The citizens — above all the Ukrainian goodhearted non-fighting citizens — and all the rest of us who will have to endure yet another year or decade of warfare, one large explosion all over — or, at least, a militarism-empoverished EU and a Western world that is sinking rapidly — militarising itself to death.

Peacelessness is the order of the day. Peace is out of politics, media and research. And therefore, we are out of peace and deep into that peacelessness. Instead of becoming more civilised over time.

And the saddest of it all?

a) None of it needed to have happened.

b) No political goal can justify this human, economic, moral and societal destruction and suffering.

c) There are still people who believe that arms lead to stability, security and peace – NATO’s mantra, no matter what it does. And if it so blatantly clear leads to more armament, increased risk of way and more stealing of resources from civil society and welfare, the solution is even more weapons.

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This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jan Oberg.