Yves right here. CODEPINK is making an attempt to boost the alarms over US warmongering, now with China. CODEPINK despatched two protestors to the newly-formed China-bashing Choose Committee on the Strategic Competitors Between the US and the Chinese language Communist Celebration, whose first assembly depicted the US and China as engaged in “an existential wrestle over what life will appear to be within the twenty first century.” The CODEPINK representatives, with their message of “China will not be the enemy” had been rapidly ushered out.
One has to marvel if the CODEPINK authors are reflecting a change within the zeitgeist, a minimum of exterior the US. Heretofore, articles co-authored by Medea Benjamin on the Ukraine battle have been largely vital of Russia whereas taking the realist stance of needing to make concessions to avoid wasting lives. This piece calls out the US threats to Russia’s safety and the price of Western sanctions on nations everywhere in the world. I ponder if the change in stance is the results of the Munich Safety Convention, the place US/NATO efforts to rally assist for his or her opposition to Russia backfired. The brand new invitees from the so-called International South complained that the struggle was diverting assets and a spotlight from much more urgent wants, like world warming and starvation.
China could also be ready for the ripples of its peace ploy to calm down earlier than it makes one other transfer. Nevertheless, the depth of the Western response reveals the US as threatened by the prospect of China inserting itself into the controversy, and even worse, a decision to the battle.
China may play up sanctions, and say that the West’s financial struggle on Russia has turned fully uninvolved nations into members, escalating it effectively past its pure European boundaries. I’m certain that may go over effectively.
By Medea Benjamin, cofounder of CODEPINK, and writer of a number of books, together with Battle in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Mindless Battle; Marcy Winograd serves as Co-Chair of the Peace in Ukraine Coalition, which requires a ceasefire, diplomacy and an finish to weapons shipments that escalate the struggle in Ukraine; and Wei Yu is the China Is Not Our Enemy marketing campaign coordinator for CODEPINK
There’s one thing irrational about President Biden’s knee-jerk dismissal of China’s 12-point peace proposal titled “China’s Place on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Disaster.”
“Not rational” is how Biden described the plan that requires de-escalation towards a ceasefire, respect for nationwide sovereignty, institution of humanitarian corridors and resumption of peace talks.
“Dialogue and negotiation are the one viable answer to the Ukraine disaster,” reads the plan. “All efforts conducive to the peaceable settlement of the disaster should be inspired and supported.”
Biden turned thumbs down.
“I’ve seen nothing within the plan that might point out that there’s something that might be useful to anybody apart from Russia if the Chinese language plan had been adopted,” Biden advised the press.
In a brutal battle that has left 1000’s of useless Ukrainian civilians, a whole lot of 1000’s of useless troopers, eight million Ukrainians displaced from their houses, contamination of land, air and water, elevated greenhouse gasses and disruption of the worldwide meals provide, China’s name for de-escalation would certainly profit somebody in Ukraine.
Different factors in China’s plan, which is actually extra a set of ideas reasonably than an in depth proposal, name for cover for prisoners of struggle, cessation of assaults on civilians, safeguards for nuclear energy crops and facilitation of grain exports.
“The concept China goes to be negotiating the result of a struggle that’s a very unjust struggle for Ukraine is simply not rational,” mentioned Biden.
As an alternative of partaking China–a rustic of 1.5 billion folks, the world’s largest exporter, the proprietor of a trillion {dollars} in US debt and an industrial large–in negotiating an finish to the disaster in Ukraine, the Biden administration prefers to wag its finger and bark at China, warning it to not arm Russia within the battle.
Psychologists would possibly name this finger-wagging projection–the outdated pot calling the kettle black routine. It’s the US, not China, that’s fueling the battle with a minimum of $45 billion {dollars} in ammunition, drones, tanks and rockets in a proxy struggle that dangers–with one miscalculation–turning the world to ash in a nuclear holocaust.
It’s the US, not China, that has provoked this disaster by encouraging Ukraine to hitch NATO, a hostile army alliance that targets Russia in mock nuclear strikes, and by backing a 2014 coup of Ukraine’s democratically elected Russia-friendly president Viktor Yanukovych, thus triggering a civil struggle between Ukrainian nationalists and ethnic Russians in jap Ukraine, areas Russia has extra just lately annexed.
Biden’s bitter perspective towards the Chinese language peace framework hardly comes as a shock. In spite of everything, even former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett candidly acknowledged in a five-hour interview on YouTube that it was the West that final March blocked a near-peace deal he had mediated between Ukraine and Russia.
Why did the US block a peace deal? Why gained’t President Biden present a critical response to the Chinese language peace plan, not to mention interact the Chinese language at a negotiating desk?
President Biden and his coterie of neo-conservatives, amongst them Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, have no real interest in peace if it means the US concedes hegemonic energy to a multi-polar world untethered from the all-mighty greenback.
What could have gotten Biden unnerved—apart from the likelihood that China would possibly emerge the hero on this bloody saga—is China’s name for the lifting of unilateral sanctions. The US imposes unilateral sanctions on officers and firms from Russia, China and Iran. It imposes sanctions on complete nations, too, like Cuba, the place a merciless 60-year embargo, plus task to the State Sponsor of Terrorism listing, made it troublesome for Cuba to acquire syringes to manage its personal vaccines through the COVID pandemic. Oh, and let’s not overlook Syria, the place after an earthquake killed tens of 1000’s and left a whole lot of 1000’s homeless, the nation struggles to obtain drugs and blankets resulting from US sanctions that discourage humanitarian help employees fromoperating inside Syria.
Regardless of China’s insistence it’s not contemplating weapons shipments to Russia, Reuters reviews the Biden administration is taking the heartbeat of G-7 nations to see if they might approve new sanctions in opposition to China if that nation supplies Russia with army assist.
The concept China may play a optimistic position was additionally dismissed by NATO Secretary Common Jens Stoltenberg, who mentioned, “China doesn’t have a lot credibility as a result of they haven’t been in a position to condemn the unlawful invasion of Ukraine.”
Ditto from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who advised ABC’s Good Morning America, “China has been attempting to have it each methods: It’s on the one hand attempting to current itself publicly as impartial and looking for peace, whereas on the similar time it’s speaking up Russia’s false narrative concerning the struggle.”
False narrative or completely different perspective?
In August of 2022, China’s ambassador to Moscow charged that the US was the “essential instigator”of the Ukraine struggle, upsetting Russia with NATO enlargement to Russia’s borders.
This isn’t an unusual perspective and is one shared by economist Jeffrey Sachs who, in a February 25, 2023 video directed at 1000’s of anti-war protesters in Berlin, mentioned the struggle in Ukraine didn’t begin a yr in the past, however 9 years in the past when the US backed the coup that overthrew Yanukovych after he most popular Russia’s mortgage phrases to the European Union’s provide.
Shortly after China launched its peace framework, the Kremlin responded cautiously, lauding the Chinese language effort to assist however including that the small print “should be painstakingly analyzed considering the pursuits of all of the completely different sides.” As for Ukraine, President Zelinsky hopes to fulfill quickly with Chinese language President Xi Jinping to discover China’s peace proposal and dissuade China from supplying weapons to Russia.
The peace proposal garnered extra optimistic response from nations neighboring the warring states. Putin’s ally in Belarus, chief Alexander Lukashenko, mentioned his nation “totally helps” the Beijing plan. Kazakhstan accredited of China’s peace framework in a press release describing it as “worthy of assist.” Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán–who desires his nation to remain out of the struggle– additionally confirmed assist for the proposal.
China’s name for a peaceable answer stands in stark distinction to US warmongering this previous yr, when Secretary of Protection Lloyd Austin, a former Raytheon board member, mentioned the US goals to weaken Russia, presumably for regime change–a technique that failed miserably in Afghanistan the place a close to 20-year US occupation left the nation broke and ravenous.
China’s assist for de-escalation is in step with its long-standing opposition to US/NATO enlargement, now extending into the Pacific with a whole lot of US bases encircling China, together with a brand new base in Guam to deal with 5,000 marines. From China’s perspective, US militarism jeopardizes the peaceable reunification of the Individuals’s Republic of China with its break-away province of Taiwan. For China, Taiwan is unfinished enterprise, left over from the civil struggle 70 years in the past.
In provocations harking back to US meddling in Ukraine, a hawkish Congress final yr accredited $10 billion in weapons and army coaching for Taiwan, whereas Home chief Nancy Pelosi flew to Taipei – over protestsfrom her constituents–to whip up pressure in a transfer that introduced US-China local weather cooperation to a halt.
A US willingness to work with China on a peace plan for Ukraine won’t solely assist cease the every day lack of lives in Ukraine and stop a nuclear confrontation, but additionally pave the best way for cooperation with China on every kind of different points–from drugs to schooling to local weather–that might profit all the globe.
