Thanks for your coverage of the 81st anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I agree with many experts who think the war in Ukraine is the most dangerous potential flashpoint of international conflict that could escalate into nuclear war between the U.S./NATO and Russia.
The U.S. continues providing Ukraine with billions of dollars of military, financial and intelligence assistance, including for its increased long-range drone attacks on Russia.
Russia is now responding by taking off its gloves of relative restraint, and going for an outright military victory by intensely bombing the major port facilities and transportation infrastructure of Odesa and nearby smaller ports, as well as imposing a blockade on shipping going in and out of these ports. This will strangle what’s left of the Ukrainian export economy and restrict its flow of arms imports.
They are also escalating their missile and drone attacks on military and industrial targets in Kiev and other cities.
The damage done by Russia’s attacks surpasses what Ukraine is able to do with its long-range drone strikes. The U.S. and NATO don’t have Patriot interceptor missiles to spare; our inventory’s been nearly emptied by sending them to Ukraine for the past four and a half years, and using much of the rest in the war against Iran.
In February, President Donald Trump refused to take the most important diplomatic step he could to reduce tensions with Russia and the risk of nuclear war. The START Treaty was expiring after 40 years of limiting the growth of nuclear weapons. Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to extend the treaty by one year while negotiating a new one, but Trump refused.
No matter what anyone thinks about the Ukraine War, Putin’s invasion and the alleged Russia threat, we should all raise our voices in alarm and demand immediate talks between the U.S. and Russia. We must call on Trump and Congress to extend the START Treaty limits rather than plunge into an expensive and dangerous nuclear arms race.
This month is also the fifth anniversary of the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan, and the end of our 20-year debacle in attempted regime change there. The sudden Taliban sweep across the country and capture of Kabul came as a shock, after years of being told that we were winning the war.
I fear the same could soon happen in Ukraine. We’re told that Ukraine’s drone attacks in Russia are turning the tide in its favor, when in reality Russia keeps pushing the Ukrainian army out of Donbas, while threatening to do the same in other regions of eastern Ukraine. For sources of this analysis, read/view recent interviews with renowned U.S. professors John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs, and retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis.
Ukraine has suffered huge losses of soldiers, millions of displaced refugees and an increasingly devastated country. A recent Gallup poll showed that the majority want the war to end now through a negotiated settlement rather than continued escalation — even if such a peace agreement means significant concessions in the face of military reality, such as Donbas and Crimea remaining part of Russia, and Ukraine agreeing to not join NATO.
Another sign of the Ukrainian people’s exhaustion is the serious desertion rate in the army, and the resistance of thousands of its men to brutal forced conscription by hiding in their homes, paying huge bribes or trying to escape across the borders.
It’s time for us to urge Ukraine to stop its bleeding out and reach a peace agreement with Russia. And we should stop supporting it with billions more dollars in arms and other military assistance. We need those tax dollars for urgent domestic priorities.
At the same time, we should sit down at the table with the Russians and talk about how to live together, despite our differences, with fewer nuclear weapons and more cooperation to tackle the other common threats we face, such as the growing climate crisis and artificial intelligence.
Contact your senators, representatives and President Trump, and call on them to urgently support peace through negotiations, rather than risk nuclear war through escalation.
Northampton resident John Berkowitz is a member of Massachusetts Peace Action’s Ukraine Peace Campaign.