CODEPINK
(January 25, 2022) — This is URGENT! President Biden has just ordered 8,500 US troops to be on heightened alert for possible deployment to Eastern Europe, exacerbating a conflict that could easily result in war between the world’s two most heavily armed nuclear states — the United States and Russia. We must immediately demand that NATO, the US, Russia and Ukraine pursue vigorous diplomacy for a negotiated solution.
Congress must pressure President Biden not to go to war with Russia over Ukraine. Congress must demand that NATO, the US, Russia and Ukraine pursue vigorous diplomacy for a negotiated solution.
ACTION: Contact your senators and representative now!
The US and NATO, whose Response Force is composed of some 40,000 international troops, are exacerbating a conflict that could easily result in war between the world’s two most heavily armed nuclear states — the United States and Russia.
We must immediately demand that NATO, the US, Russia and Ukraine pursue vigorous diplomacy for a negotiated solution. There is every reason to believe that a compromise can be made with Russia, including a guarantee that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO.
Since 2015, the Minsk II Accord has successfully prevented a new escalation of the civil war in Ukraine. But the United States and NATO have encouraged the Ukrainian government to ignore its obligations under Minsk II, and to instead reassert absolute sovereignty over the Donbas region. They have supplied powerful weapons, which Ukraine has deployed and used in Eastern Ukraine.
Russia has always been opposed to NATO’s eastern expansion to its borders, and it is determined to stop Ukraine from entering NATO. In 2008, when Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko first applied for NATO membership, President Putin called Ukrainian membership “a direct threat” to Russia.
NATO is a military alliance that should have dissolved with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. It should certainly not be expanding to include Ukraine.
Rather than NATO dissolving with the Warsaw Pact, as it should have done, it has violated the agreements that brought the original Cold War to an end and reunified Germany. Instead of keeping its promise not to expand eastward, it has added 11 member countries that were once either Soviet republics or members of the Warsaw Pact.
ACTION: Now the situation is teetering on the brink of a massive war. The time to speak out is now! Tell Congress not to let Biden send troops to Eastern Europe!
Towards peace,Medea and the entire CODEPINK team: Alice, Allison, Ann, Ariel, Carley, Danaka, Emily, Farida, Jodie, Justina, Kelly, Lauren, Leonardo, Madison, Marcy, Marissa, Mark, Michelle, Nancy, Olivia, Paki, Teri, Shea, and Suzie
Emergency Webinar: Washington’s Role in Creating the Tension Behind the Ukraine Stand-off
CODEPINK with Medea Benjamin and retired Army Colonel Larry Wilkerson
(January 25, 2022) — In 2014, a US-backed coup installed an anti-Russian government in Ukraine. Since the end of the Cold War — despite US/NATO promises not to extend “one inch eastward” toward the Russian border — NATO has annexed eleven former Warsaw Pact nations and now has troops and weapons massed along Russia’s Western border. The US has installed medium-range missiles across these NATO countries.
History’s lessons are clear — around the world, from the Middle East to South America to Africa and Europe — the US has been acting like an imperial aggressor and claiming a singular role as “the World’s Policeman.” Allowing NATO to recruit Ukraine as its newest member is not worth risking a war between two nuclear-armed nations.
The planet is collapsing because of Climate Change. Instead of meddling with the future of Ukraine and Taiwan — and trying to overthrow other countries like Honduras, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba — we need to focus our energies and wealth on dealing with two, overriding existential issues — climate change and nuclear weapons.
As Colonel Larry Wilkerson observes in the CODEPINK video, the real answer to the continuing expansion of the scourge of war is “profits.” And it’s the global weapons industry (lead by powerful US-based arms profiteers like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics) that lobbies politicians for ever-more bombs and bullets and promotes the expansion of he Pentagon’s bootprint in the halls of Congress and around the world.
Roots Action Petition No Weapons to Ukraine
Why is this important?
The United States is the leading provider of weapons to the world, and the practice of providing weapons to countries in crisis has proven disastrous, including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Expanding NATO to Russia’s border and arming Russia’s neighbors threatens something worse than disaster. The United States is toying with nuclear war.
US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt played significant roles in orchestrating the political crisis that led to a violent coup overthrowing Ukraine’s elected President. Nuland not only exclaimed “Fuck the EU!” on that recorded phone call, but she also seemed to decide on the new prime minister: “Yats is the guy.”
The Maidan protests were violently escalated by neo-Nazis and by snipers who opened fire on police. When Poland, Germany, and France negotiated a deal for the Maidan demands and an early election, neo-Nazis instead attacked the government and took over. The US State Department immediately recognized the coup government, and Yatsenyuk was indeed installed as Prime Minister.
The people of Crimea voted overwhelmingly to secede, and that — rather than the coup — has been labeled “aggression.” Ethnic Russians have been massacred by constant shelling from Kiev’s US-NATO backed Army, while Russia has been denounced for “aggression” in the form of various unsubstantiated accusations, including the downing of Flight 17.
It’s important to recognize Western interests at work here other than peace and generosity. GMO outfits want the excellent farming soil in Ukraine. The US and NATO want a “missile defense” base in Ukraine. Oil corporations want to drill for fracked gas in Ukraine. The US and EU want to get their hands on Russia’s “largest supply of natural gas” on the planet.
We routinely recognize the financial corruption of the US government in domestic policy making. We shouldn’t blind ourselves to it in matters of foreign policy. There may be a flag waving, but there is nuclear war looming, and that’s a bit more important.
A US Statement on the Ukraine Crisis
Petition: Reject S. 452
“A bill to provide lethal weapons to the Government of Ukraine.”
(January 26, 2022) — As organizations representing millions of people in the United States, we call upon President Biden to end the US role in escalating the extremely dangerous tensions with Russia over Ukraine. It is gravely irresponsible for the president to participate in brinkmanship between two nations that possess 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.
For the United States and Russia, the only sane course of action now is a commitment to genuine diplomacy with serious negotiations, not military escalation — which could easily spiral out of control to the point of pushing the world to the precipice of nuclear war.
While both sides are to blame for causing this crisis, its roots are entangled in the failure of the US government to live up to its promise made in 1990 by then-Secretary of State James Baker that NATO would expand not “one inch to the East.”
Since 1999, NATO has expanded to include numerous countries, including some that border Russia. Rather than dismissing out of hand the Russian government’s current insistence on a written guarantee that Ukraine will not become part of NATO, the US government should agree to a long-term moratorium on any NATO expansion.
Initial signers (organizations for identification):
David Swanson, World Beyond War.
Bruce Gagnon, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.
Nick Mottern, KnowDrones.com.
Tarak Kauff, Veterans For Peace.
Carolyn McCrady, Peace and Justice Can Win.
Medea Benjamin, Code Pink.
Gareth Porter.
Malachy Kilbride, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance.
Buzz Davis, WI Impeachment/Bring Our Troops Home Coalition.
Alice Slater, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
Doug Rawlings, Veterans For Peace.
Diane Turco, Cape Codders for Peace and Justice.
Rich Greve, Peace Action Staten Island.
Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance.
Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance.
Heinrich Buecker, Coop Anti-War Cafe Berlin.
Dud Hendrick.
Ellen Barfield, Veterans For Peace and War Resisters League.
Herbert Hoffman, Veterans For Peace.
Jean Athey, Peace Action Montgomery.
Kent Shifferd.
Matthew Hoh.
Bob Cushing, Pax Christi.
Bill Gilson, Veterans For Peace.
Michael Brenner, University of Pittsburgh.
Cindy Sheehan: Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox.
Jodie Evans, Code Pink.
Gar Smith, Environmentalists Against War.
Judith Deutsch.
Jim Haber.
Elliott Adams.
Joe Lombardo and Marilyn Levin, UNAC co-coordinators.
David Hartsough, World Beyond War.
Mairead Maguire, Nobel peace laureate, Co founder peace people.
Koohan Paik, International Forum on Globalization.
Ellen Judd, University of Manitoba.
Nicolas Davies.
Rosalie Tyler Paul, PeaceWorks, Brunswick Maine.
