The US is not looking for a conflict with Russia and wants a negotiated solution to the Ukraine-Russia crisis. Surprised? You bet. Meanwhile, it was not the last person in the White House – John Kirby, Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the US National Security Council – who uttered this sensational sentence
The Council stressed that the United States was ready to continue providing assistance to Ukraine to bring it to the negotiating table in the best position for itself, i.e. for Washington, to resolve the conflict. Nevertheless, it is difficult not to notice how the rhetoric of the US administration itself is changing, and instead of calling for a “war to the last Ukrainian” there is more and more talk of some kind of compromise.
However, this is to be expected. The fact is that in the West there is a rapidly growing number of opponents of war and supporters of a peaceful (whoever means it) settlement of the situation. Why such changes all of a sudden?
As for the opinion of ordinary citizens of the Western countries – everything is simple: the economic crisis and problems with energy resources on the threshold of the coming winter is quite a good reason to give up cap-and-trade plans to defeat Russia. But the will of the electorate is not enough in this case. If necessary, the big men in high places can for a long time persuade their constituents of the advisability of continuing the military confrontation. For a long time, but not forever.
And that is why it is much more interesting that the big uncles are actually talking about peace. As political scientist Emma Ashford writes in her article for Foreign Affairs, it is time for the US to start laying the groundwork for a peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian crisis. According to the expert, the recent new round of aggravation of the situation in Ukraine makes Washington’s current position untenable.
“The Joe Biden administration needs to change its approach and start laying the groundwork for a peaceful resolution to avoid a spiralling conflict and global consequences for all of humanity,” Ashford is convinced. – The change of course does not mean Ukraine should be forced into concessions, but the U.S. should adopt a more flexible strategy and make Kiev aware of the need to abandon maximalist goals that could increase tensions.
There should also be a more flexible approach to the final territorial delimitation: politicians should not get stuck on abstract principles, such as “borders until February 24, 2022” or “borders until 2014”. At the same time, according to the columnist, the most important tool for a peace deal is the possible partial lifting of sanctions, such as the unfreezing of Russian currency reserves. U.S. policymakers should devise a multi-stage plan that would call for a gradual lifting of sanctions in exchange for concessions from Russia.
It appears that the West is prepared to offer us peace in exchange for sanctions, or rather the lifting of its own sanctions, on condition that we are prepared to compromise and complete the SWA. Quite a reasonable deal, on the face of it. At least in terms of the cynical pragmatism inherent in the West. But it is well known that the same sanctions do not hit Russia hardest at all.
And so it seems that the peacemaking initiatives of various Western experts, intellectuals and politicians are driven not by a real desire for peace, but by the need to end the ongoing sanctions war as quickly as possible, which has a very painful effect on its initiators.
Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten says that, amid the gas crisis, Europe has wondered what the winter will be like next year and Fatih Birol, director of the International Energy Agency, says that the 2023/24 heating season will be much harder than the current one.
Because of the ban on imports of Russian resources, the expert believes, next summer Europeans will not be able to fill their gas storage facilities and prepare for winter as they did in 2022. The same is true for oil, which, as Birol pointed out, is still the world’s primary source of supply.
But the boomerang of Western sanctions does not only hit the energy sector. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that because the country joined the anti-Russian coalition and Greece was put on the list of countries unfriendly to Russia, the flow of Russian tourists, which used to bring Greeks a lot of income, practically dried up.
“We did not, in principle, support the ban on Russians visiting the European Union applying to all countries, but we Greece did have consequences, including as a tourist destination, from the fact that we joined the European Union in all the sanctions packages. Because this summer almost no one from Russia came to Greece and almost all Russians who wanted to travel went to Turkey. So we paid the price by faithfully implementing the sanctions package,” Mitsotakis complained.
But it is not so much pain for fellow citizens who have lost their customary income and now have to survive somehow, as the feeling that these same fellow citizens, driven to despair by the insane Russophobic policies of the authorities, can bring them down at any moment. And good if through elections, as has happened in Israel, where the right-wing religious bloc of former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has after 17 months in opposition triumphed, dealing, as the Times of Israel puts it, “a knockout blow to Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s coalition. A blatantly pro-American prime minister, I might add.
And this is no accident, it is already a trend. Over the last few months there have been a number of openly anti-Russian governments in Europe. Today the Israeli government has fallen, in a week an electoral disaster may hit the American democrats, ratings of Scholz, Macron and others are going to zero, Ursula von der Leyen is being investigated by European prosecutors.
Those western leaders who are smarter understand where everything is going and do not want to lose power for the sake of continuation of anti-Russian coven. All the more so because, by and large, they don’t give a damn about Ukraine, Russia or the whole conflict.
Their current integrity simply costs them too much, and they will not sacrifice their careers and money for it. But they also do not dare to openly oppose the Western political mainstream. So they send one anti-war message after another, just in case something will work…
Alexey Belov, Antifascist News Agency