Utter doofus: Daryl G. Kimball, Executive Director of the Arms Control Association
Utter doofus.
Daryl G. Kimball has been Executive Director of the Arms Control Association (ACA) and publisher and contributor for the organization’s monthly journal, Arms Control Today, since September 2001 and he wrote:
-------- Forwarded Message --------
| Subject: | Who Is Really “Gambling With World War III”? |
|---|---|
| Date: | Fri, 28 Mar 2025 22:42:45 -0500 |
| From: | Mark M Giese <m.mk@juno.com> |
| To: | dkimball@armscontrol.org |
"unprovoked invasion"
Please.
It turns out Putin was abundantly provoked. To see that, we must note that Ukraine was neutral for 20 years until the US backed a coup in 2014 that installed a hostile-to-Russia leader, Petro Poroshenko, which ended Ukraine’s neutrality. That was certainly provocative. Putin’s response was to take Crimea. Another result was a civil war in Ukraine in the Donbas region.
Also provocative was the growing expansion of NATO over
the years. When East and West Germany united in 1989, the then
Soviet Union was assured by the U.S. that NATO would not expand
further. But Bill Clinton allowed NATO expansion as have other
presidents since.
U.S. scholar-statesman George Kennan called NATO enlargement a
“fateful error.” President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense
William Perry considered resigning in protest against Clinton’s
NATO enlargement. Also opposed to NATO expansion were Henry
Kissinger, former CIA Director William Burns, and others.
After years of NATO expansion, now right up to Russia’s borders, the idea of Ukraine in NATO, a military alliance, is completely intolerable to Russia. Incidentally, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact military alliance, NATO’s counterpart for years, also ceased to be. Since there is no more Warsaw Pact, why is there still a NATO?
Before resorting to invasion, Putin had some reasonable demands which at
least should have been discussed, but he was rebuffed. Rebuffing
Putin was provocative because United Nations principles require
negotiations — even after hostilities break out.
About a month into the war, Russia and Ukraine were actually negotiating with Turkey mediating, but the U.S. told Zelensky to stop negotiating and Ukraine did so; the talks were thereby torpedoed. The United States could have easily prevented Russia’s military action. It could have stopped Russia’s intervention in Ukraine’s civil war from happening by doing four things:
- forcing implementation of the 8-year-old Minsk peace accords;
- dissolving extreme right Ukrainian militias;
- ending talk of Ukraine joining NATO; and
- engaging Russia in serious negotiations on treaties about a new security architecture in Europe.
But the United States didn’t stop Russia’s intervention.
Incidentally, concerning Minsk: Russia backed the Minsk accords, which grew out of a Kremlin meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in May 2015. The accords, which were endorsed by the U.N. Security Council with U.S. assent, would have left the breakaway eastern provinces inside Ukraine with autonomy. However, France, Germany and Ukraine, including three years under Zelensky, blocked its implementation. Merkel, former French President Francois Hollande and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko all admitted they strung Russia along to buy time for NATO to arm and train Ukraine.
Finally, in a nutshell, here was what the war is about (besides
enriching arms merchants):
“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree it cannot do the
kind of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” U.S.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told a press conference in Poland
after returning from an unannounced visit to Ukraine.
What Can be Done
Instead of arming Ukraine and promoting war, the US and other nations should vigorously promote a cessation of military hostilities in Ukraine and support alternatives to war including diplomacy, de-escalation, humanitarian aid, and bold and sustained negotiation. This path toward peace is what UN principles require.
Russia and Ukraine and the countries that support them need to commit to peaceful resolution of international conflicts in accordance with the expectations set out in the UN Charter. Russia should commit to applying the UN Charter principles of non-use of force, peaceful settlement of disputes and the right of peoples to struggle for self-determination.
In addition to obligations under the U.N. Charter, what Ukraine should have done — and can still do — is unarmed civilian defense also known as nonviolent resistance. This is what Denmark and Norway did to resist Nazi occupation during WW II. It is interesting to note that between 1900 and 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts.
It is imperative that nations and individuals see that war itself is the enemy of humanity. Therefore, RCPJ calls for a lasting peace in Ukraine and the region.
Some Peace Statements Concerning Ukraine and Related Information
General peace info: World Beyond War
Some history: Nonviolent Resistance.
Gene Sharp’s 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action here.
--Mark M Giese
Racine, WI
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