Wars, the Nuclear Trigger, and Peace Voters

Sep 16, 2024

For progressives and people on the left in the United States and around the world, the genocide in Gaza is the overriding issue today. Although progressives are divided on the both the causes and the potential solutions to the Ukraine War, the latest push by Ukrainian President Zelenskyy to authorize missile strikes deep into Russian territory is worrisome.

The most recent news is that no decision has been made by the United States and the United Kingdom to comply with the Ukrainian request. Fulfillment of the request would mean direct U.S. involvement in a war against Russia since the ATACMS missiles would be operated by U.S. personnel. A military conflict between the two most heavily armed nuclear states would increase the risk of escalation to a nuclear war, a fundamental threat to life on the planet.

How and why did we get here? Peace activists have been campaigning to ban the bomb for decades. Most United Nations members have ratified treaties to ban the testing of nuclear weapons, to stop their spread, and to ban them.

The treaty with the widest adherence is the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Signed by the Soviet Union, the U.S., and United Kingdom in 1968, the treaty came into force in 1970 and has 190 participating countries today. Only five states fail to participate – India, Pakistan, Israel, and South Sudan remain outside the treaty.

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) has been ratified by 178 states but has not yet come into force because of the failure to ratify by eight treaty-specified states including China and the U.S. Although Russia ratified the treaty in 2000, it rescinded its ratification in November 2023 in the wake of increased tensions with the U.S. Nevertheless, both the U.S. and Russia today pledge to refrain from testing.

The Arms Control Association notes that the Trump Administration “walked back the United States support for the CTBT,” stating it would not seek ratification of the treaty signed by President Bill Clinton and pledging only that the U.S. “will not resume nuclear explosive testing unless necessary to ensure the safety and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.” In contrast, the Biden Administration in 2021 stated that it would work to bring the treaty into force but has not sought Senate ratification.

Most far-reaching is the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into force on January 22, 2021. No nuclear weapons state adheres to it, but the fact that it came into force anyway shows the determination of many United Nations member-states to put an end to the madness of states continuing to maintain nuclear arsenals that can destroy the world. Ninety-eight states have signed the treaty and seventy have ratified it.

There is little discussion of the nuclear threat in the U.S. mainstream media or in the presidential campaign. There is no indication that either Democrats or Republicans will embrace efforts to get the U.S. to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Even so, along with effectively tackling global warming, eliminating nuclear weapons is humanity’s greatest need.

Although Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan supported arms control agreements, the most recent Republican presidents, George W. Bush and Trump withdrew the U.S. from the anti-ballistic missile treaty and the intermediate nuclear forces treaty, respectively.

Only two agreements remain in place, the non-proliferation treaty and the New START agreement limiting the number of nuclear warheads and employed intercontinental ballistic missiles. The latter agreement was negotiated by U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2010. However, Putin in 2023 suspended Russian participation in the treaty but stated Russia would continue to abide by the treaty’s limits.

For those of us in the United States faced with making a choice in a presidential election in fewer than eight weeks, we must weigh whose hand should be on the nuclear trigger. That former president Donald Trump is erratic and prone to making ill-thought emotional decisions is apparent even to his supporters. Only those who ignore the nuclear danger or are so angry they don’t care what happens to people could want Trump to oversee U.S. use of nuclear weapons.

In her debate with Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris showed herself to be calm, knowledgeable, and sensible. She evinces not anger against her enemies but empathy for those in need and a willingness to be a president for all.

Progressives are disappointed that the Biden Administration continues to provide arms to Israel despite the continuing genocide in Gaza, the protests by many thousands around the country, and the support by the public in both the U.S. and Israel for a ceasefire and hostage deal.

Some progressives may withhold their vote from Harris because of Gaza, but while Biden and Harris give lip service to the concerns of the uncommitted movement within the Democratic Party and the peace constituency that is working to end the genocide, Trump evinces not a whit of sympathy for Palestinians. The Republican candidate should gain no votes from supporters of Palestine.

The Ukraine story is more complicated. Harris is part of an administration that took no steps to avoid the Ukraine War and then prevented Ukraine from reaching a negotiated settlement one month into the war. It has supplied Ukraine with over $55 billion in military assistance in hopes of weakening Russia. So far, the administration has avoided a direct confrontation with Russia but the risk of that remains high.

How different is Trump’s Ukraine policy? In the debate between Harris and Trump, ABC News moderator David Muir pressed Trump to speak out for a Ukrainian victory. It’s “a very simple question. Do you want Ukraine to win this war?” Trump refused to give a direct answer and instead declared, “I want the war to stop. I want to save lives.”

Trump coupled his peace declaration by greatly exaggerating the loss of lives, stating that “people [were] being killed by the millions.” Given this misstatement and Trump’s general unwillingness to assimilate accurate information, can one take seriously his wish to be seen as a peace candidate? Not if one considers his willingness to see Israel eliminate the Palestinian population.

A number of Republican members of Congress have questioned continued funding for the Ukraine War. On July 29, 2024, the Pew Research Center found that “a 62% majority of Republicans say the United States does not have a responsibility to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia’s invasion.” Moreover, Pew reported that 48 percent of Republicans say the U.S. is providing too much aid.

Before examining how Trump and his vice-presidential running mate J.D. Vance are proposing to end the Ukrainian war, we need to look in more detail at the positions of Biden and Harris and the historical context for their views and policies.

In criticizing Trump on Ukraine in their debate, Harris relied on old cold war shibboleths. “If Donald Trump were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now. And understand what that would mean. Because Putin's agenda is not just about Ukraine. Understand why the European allies and our NATO allies are so thankful that you are no longer president and that we understand the importance of the greatest military alliance the world has ever known, which is NATO.”

Trump calls Harris a Marxist and a Communist and Harris calls Trump a Putin supporter. The old anti-communist and anti-Russia scares do not lead to critical thinking about how to improve our lives.

What is the nature of the NATO alliance? The alliance was formed in 1949 supposedly to prevent Soviet aggression in Europe. Its real purpose was to buttress U.S. economic and political domination of Western Europe.

Far from being a defensive alliance against Soviet or Russian expansionism, NATO is, as Noam Chomsky puts it, the “most violent, aggressive alliance in the world.” After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, U.S. promises not to expand NATO eastward were broken by President Bill Clinton and subsequent presidents. NATO has been involved in attacks on Yugoslavia, Libya, and Afghanistan.

NATO member states today include the former Soviet republics of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, as well as several former Soviet allies such as Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Viewing the addition of Ukraine to NATO as an existential threat to its security, Russia sought to reach an agreement with the U.S. on Ukrainian neutrality. When the U.S. failed to respond, Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Early in the war, the Biden Administration expanded sanctions against Russia and President Biden stated Putin “cannot remain in power.” The Chinese Ambassador to Malta, Yu Duhai, remarked at the time that Biden’s comment “reveals the true intentions of the US on Ukraine war, namely killing 3 birds with 1 stone: -a regime change -a much weakened Russia -a more dependent Europe."

Only one of the three objectives outlined by the Chinese Ambassador have come to pass. European states, despite their own economic interests, joined in the anti-Russia campaign. They stopped purchasing natural gas from Russia, and instead became depend on more expensive U.S. energy sources. Food prices rose. Can the economic gains to U.S. corporations justify the continued deaths in Ukraine?

The realist scholar of diplomatic relations John Mearsheimer characterizes the Biden Administration approach to the Ukraine Was as “delusional.” The recent Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region of Russia pulled troops away from the eastern front and weakened Ukraine’s position there.

The delusion referred to by Mearsheimer is the notion that Ukraine can prevail in the current conflict. Russia is winning the war. The Ukrainians are successful only in controlling the narrative in the U.S. and Europe, not on the battlefields. The Russians control the air and have decisive superiority in artillery and manpower. They occupy about 20 percent of Ukrainian territory, more if one includes Crimea, incorporated into the Russian Federation as the Republic of Crimea in 2014 after the overthrow of the Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Economist Jeffrey Sachs, a world leader in sustainable development, comments that the overthrow of Yanukovych “was a standard CIA-led covert regime change operation, of which there have been several dozen around the world, including sixty-four episodes between 1947 and 1989.” Sachs noted recently; “Thirty years ago, Ukraine was embraced by America’s neoconservatives, who believed that it was the perfect instrument for weakening Russia. The neocons are the ideological believers in American hegemony, that is, the right and responsibility of the U.S. to be the world’s sole superpower and global policeman.”

Although U.S. officials and the U.S. media act as if the war started with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it truly began in 2014 with large-scale fighting between the new Ukrainian government and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics in eastern Ukraine. The Minsk agreements among Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany in 2014 and 2015 led to a reduction in fighting but the compromise solution that envisioned autonomy for the eastern regions was never implemented.

How different is Trump’s approach to Ukraine? Would he be likely to produce an end to the war as he promises?

Vance suggested a peace deal that would include Ukraine retaining its sovereignty but it would be neutral and would not join NATO or “some of these allied institutions.”

There would be a "heavily fortified so the Russians don't invade again." Vance said he believes Trump will be able to "come to a deal very quickly" because "they're scared of him in Russia” and “worried about him in Europe.”

Trump said in the debate with Biden that if reelected, he would end the war in Ukraine even before he took office again. However, when CNN moderator Dana Bash described Putin’s conditions as keeping “the territory Russia has already claimed and Ukraine abandons its bid to join NATO,” and asked if this were acceptable to him, Trump said no.

Bash is right that Russia views the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions and the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics as part of the Russian Federation. However, some of Putin’s and other Russian representatives’ statements on negotiations have been more forthcoming. In April 2024, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated that the abortive 2022 agreement reached in Turkey could be the basis for negotiations.

"Are we ready to negotiate with them? We have never refused to do so," Putin said on September 5, 2024, at the Eastern Economic Forum. "However, not on the basis of some ephemeral demands, but on the basis of the documents that were agreed upon and inked in Istanbul." Tass reported that the March 2022 tentative agreement included “Ukraine’s obligations on a neutral non-aligned status and the rejection of stationing foreign arms, including nuclear ones, on its territory.”

Trump appears to be relying on the force of his personality and his absolute superiority to both Biden and Harris as the basis for negotiating an end to the Ukraine war. Vance offers specifics that Victoria Nuland, the State Department official who was the architect of the 2014 coup in Ukraine, characterizes as a “great gift” to Putin. However, Vance, too, is relying on Trump’s personal power.

The truth is that there a great potential for negotiations to end the Ukraine war no matter who wins the election. Though Harris is positioning herself as a hardliner on Ukraine and Trump as détente-oriented, it may be that the time is ripe for a settlement as soon as the election is over. The likely alternative is an even greater loss of territory by Ukraine and a frozen conflict.

There are many reasons to keep Trump out of the White House – his anti-immigrant and racist rants, his misogyny, his threat to democratic, labor, and reproductive rights, his promise to be a dictator, his full backing of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, his erratic nature, the danger of trusting him with the authority to use nuclear weapons. It would be foolish to rely on his positive statements about ending the Ukraine War. And even if one were to accept them as sincere (a dubious proposition) it would not be enough to earn a peace person’s vote.

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