Some Perspective
President Biden is half right when he refers to “an unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces” — unjustified indeed, unprovoked not in the least. Two sides have been escalating this conflict for years, each claiming to be acting defensively, each provoking the other. The NATO nations’ weaponry and forces that are now imagined as a solution are also the original source of the conflict. It is right to grow indignant now about Ukraine’s “sovereignty,” but so would it have been during the U.S.-backed coup eight years ago that has endangered Russian-speaking Ukrainians.
This is no time for anything other than de-escalation by all sides. The United Nations and the International Criminal Court ought to be upholding the rule of law just as if this were in Africa rather than Europe, exactly as ought to have been done with the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, et alia. Criminal sanctions that violate the Geneva Conventions are not a means of holding warmakers to the rule of law. Prosecutions in courts are.
We need nuclear weapons taken out of service by both sides. We need serious negotiations, beginning with the Minsk 2 agreement, not just empty talk. We need nations other than Russia or the United States to step up and insist on de-escalation and de-militarization, before this slowly spiraling madness reaches nuclear apocalypse.
Learn About the Ukraine Crisis
Watch this short clip of World BEYOND War Board Member Yurii Sheliazhenko. Find the full video of that interview, and other videos and articles below.
"It is disappointing that support of Ukraine in the West is mainly military support," says Ukrainian peace activist Yurii Sheliazhenko (@sheliazhenko). "Reporting on conflict focuses on warfare and almost ignores nonviolent resistance to war." pic.twitter.com/SiaTkRumj9
— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) March 1, 2022
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Letters to Editors
Find sample letters to editors here and modify them (or not) as you like and submit them to your local media outlets along with plans for your events.
Learn About Alternatives to War
Playlist
Myths
War gains support and acceptance from widespread belief in false information, and the accumulation of false information into generally false concepts or myths about war. This is good news, because it means we are not intractably divided by ideology or worldview. Rather, we will find more widespread agreement about war if we can just achieve more widespread awareness of accurate information. We’ve grouped myths about war into the following categories: