Peace of the grave

On June 10, 1963, President Kennedy made a commencement address at the American University in Washington. US intelligence reports had Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Communist Party secretary, term it the best speech ever by a US president.

Committing to world peace, Kennedy said: “The most important topic on earth is world peace. What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war, not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. We shall do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. Confident, we labour on, not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace”.

On July 25, 1990, April Glaspie, US Ambassador to Iraq told Saddam: “We have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts and your border disagreement with Kuwait”. Earlier, in a public Congressional hearing on Iraq, the assistant secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, John Kelly, had confirmed that the “US had no obligation of defending Kuwait from an attack”. Taking it as a pat on the back, which it was, Saddam invaded Kuwait. This literally proved to be Washington’s kiss of death for him. It also brought about the horrific destruction of Iraq. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is yet another classic case of Washington calculatingly fostering the grounds of war. The nightmare is that with 4497 active nuclear weapons and the capability to strike London and Washington, Russia is no Iraq.

Nato was founded under the 1949 Washington Treaty. Its first secretary general, Lord Hastings Ismay, a former general in the British Indian Army, described that the purpose of Nato was to “keep the Americans in and the Russians out”. The disintegration of the Soviet Republic was followed by guarantees of limiting Nato to a unified Germany. Jack Matlock, the last US ambassador to the USSR, insisted that the US gave “categorical assurances to Gorbachev when the Soviet Union existed that if a united German stayed in Nato, the latter would not move eastward”.

Declassified US documents show that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev’s 1989 proposal to the Council of Europe called for restructuring Europe to create a common home and the creation of a new pan-European security setup that included Russia. The then US secretary of state, James Baker, arrogantly dismissed this as “a dream”. Despite this, successive Russian leaders including Boris Yelstin and Vladimir Putin tried their best to be accepted as a part of a unified Europe. Putin proposed this specifically to Bill Clinton when he visited Moscow in 2000, the effort proved fruitless again.

The Daily Telegraph reported in 2002 that “Mr Putin’s acquiescence to Nato expanding its borders to within 100 miles of his home city, St Petersburg, was the latest sign of his strategic shift toward the West”.

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote, “The level of US-Russian cooperation is the highest today since 1945. Putin is not just collaborating in the war on terror, not just allowing a US presence in the former Soviet Central Asian states, not just acquiescing to Nato expansion right up to Russia’s border and into Soviet space; he is knocking on Nato’s door, trying to get in”.

The arrogance that drives Washington’s policies saw the stonewalling of Moscow’s requests as Nato kept on its incessant expansion eastward. Within two decades, Nato’s ambit extended from 16 to 30 countries including the Baltic States. This consistent provocation through the years with a military alliance right at Russia’s doorstep evoked a rebuke. This was aired by President Putin in a July 2018 address to a group of Russian ambassadors. He said, “Our colleagues, who are seeking to include Georgia and Ukraine in the Nato alliance, should think about the possible consequences of such an irresponsible policy. We will respond appropriately to such steps, which pose a direct threat to Russia”.

Sensing a looming Ukraine invasion, French President Macron visited Russia. He was told by President Putin that the US and Nato had totally ignored Russia’s central security demand of permanently blocking Ukraine from the NATO alliance. He also said that “the US and Nato responses did not take into account Russia’s fundamental concerns including preventing Nato’s expansion and refusing to deploy strike weapons systems near Russia’s borders”. This was countered with Washington’s threats of sanctions. Compounded by Ukrainian President Zelensky’s acquiescence to Washington, a war was initiated. The irony is that redressal of Moscow’s genuine concerns could have averted it.

The West’s imperialistic designs and their constant goading that led to this war is not a justification for the invasion of Ukraine. With daily images of death and destruction of yet another war, the agonising truth is that it could have been so easily avoided. Wars, as Herodotus lamented, reverse the order of nature, with fathers burying sons. Cuba remains ostracised by Washington to this day because, in 1962, the Soviet Union deployed missiles there on Cuba’s request. The ensuing 13-day standoff almost started a nuclear war. John Kennedy, the peace seeker, was the US president.

Offering security of the slave or wreaking peace of the grave, Washington-led wars have seen the horrific and genocidal destruction of weaker countries. Since WWII, the US has imposed 19 wars resulting in the death of over 21 million people. Apart from Russia virtually being goaded into war, China too faces extreme provocation in the South and East China Seas. The recklessness, bordering on insanity, can be gauged from Commander of US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson’s recent proposal to Congress for a network of precision-strike missiles along the First Island Chain near Taiwan as part of the 27.4-billion-dollar Pacific Deterrence Initiative targeting China.

Blatant atrocities are perpetuated to gain excess to global natural resources and to feed the US military-industrial complex. The ravenous hunger on both counts remains unbounded and unsated. The only choice the Roman Empire gave to the world was Pax Romana, submission to the Empire or unleashing their legions of death. Pax Americana seeks to impose the same imperialistic maxim. Based on self-conceit, it is bound to be challenged. It will prove calamitous for the whole world.

The writer is a freelance contributor. He can be reached at: miradnanaziz@gmail.com