In conflicts neither side can be trusted. Both sides twist and distort. But the daily, almost hourly pictures from Ukraine — of hardship, suffering, of death, destruction and flight, all too genuine, cause me the despair I have always felt on seeing any pain inflicted on my fellow human beings.
But I also recoil at the hypocrisy and dishonesty which so often go unnoticed. The propagandists who feign despair but seek more conflict, more medals, more billions.
Chinese sources, like all others, must be met with caution. But can all the charges in their Foreign Affairs Department memorandum be completely denied?
“The history of the USA is characterised by violence and expansion… after World War II, the wars either provoked or launched by the United States included the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the Gulf war, the Kosovo war, the war in Afghanistan, the Iraq war, the Libyan war and the Syrian war… In recent years, the US average annual military budget has exceeded $700 billion, accounting for 40 per cent of the world’s total, more than the 15 countries behind it combined. The United States has about 800 overseas military bases, with 173,000 troops deployed in 159 countries…the United States has also adopted appalling methods in war… massive quantities of chemical and biological weapons as well as cluster bombs, fuel-air bombs, graphite bombs and depleted uranium bombs, causing enormous damage on civilian facilities, countless civilian casualties and lasting environmental pollution… Since 2001, the wars and military operations launched by the US in the name of fighting terrorism have claimed over 900,000 lives with some 335,000 of them civilians, injured millions and displaced tens of millions.”
Did none of this deserve the opprobrium now directed at Putin? Were any flags of sympathy displayed when the people of Serbia, Iraq or Afghanistan were bombed? When drones exploded on hospitals and wedding processions — were there also calls for tribunals against Bush — or Obama?
My despair grew far more intense when I read the following: “This Ukraine crisis … is just the warm-up,” said Navy Admiral Charles Richard, the commander of US Strategic Command. “The big one is coming. And it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested [in] a long time.”
Adm Richard’s threat came after the US released its new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which reaffirms the US doctrine on first use of nuclear weapons.
Only a few lonely voices questioned them and their likely cost, but were quickly muzzled. But I have one reason for joy.
Almost surprisingly, two of the best-known women in Germany overcame past differences and joined hands. Alice Schwarzer, now 80, had once, with her magazine Emma, been the main founder and expounder of the women’s rights movement in West Germany, including abortion rights, but had later drifted politically rightwards.
Sahra Wagenknecht, 52, with an East German background, was alongside party founder Gregor Gysi the most prominent, media-wise and popular spokesperson of Die Linke, a truly brilliant orator, but who has been disavowed by most of the present reformist leaders of her party, with some of them even demanding her expulsion.
This unusual duo joined to publish a manifesto calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine and urging not tanks and armaments for the Zelensky government in Kiev but pressure on both sides for peace negotiations. It warned of the consequences of more weapons – and more active participation by Germany, basically in the wake of Washington.
But what could these two women achieve against such high tidal waves? Their position, in today’s Germany, was considered purest heresy, which must quickly be exorcised.
Suddenly, the witch doctors found this far tougher than expected after 69 prominent Germans signed the manifesto, people originally from all the parties, popular, respected people: a former female church leader, singers, actors, the son of one-time chancellor Willy Brandt. And then the numbers of signatures grew, and grew, and grew! 50,000, 100,000 — by Saturday it had topped 650,000 and was aiming at a million!
The alarm bells rose to a deafening cacophony! The media, the politicians, sadly including many in Die Linke joined in a wild attack against the manifesto and especially against Wagenknecht.
Their attempts to disprove its arguments were less and less convincing. Could more weapons really bring Russia to its knees? Or might bigger attacks by Ukraine and the USA lead instead to desperate acts? All such questions are publicly taboo – like questions about who really blasted the German-Russian underwater gas pipelines, who was really throwing dangerous missiles at atomic energy plants controlled by Russian troops, or what the US-Ukrainian biological laboratories were really researching.
We had usual accusations of Putin-endearment, of blindness to death and destruction, denial of Kiev’s right to territorial sovereignty, awarding Putin territorial seizures without a fight. But none of this applied; the manifesto made no demands on anyone – except to sit down and end the slaughter before it exploded further and irreparably.
When Wagenknecht and Schwarzer called for a big rally in Berlin on February 25 the fears multiplied. A counter-demonstration was organized for the 24th, the anniversary of open warfare, aimed at convincing Germans to reject any blame on the preceding Nato provocation and blame Putin alone. One effort was to transport a wrecked Russian tank to a spot next to the Russian embassy, with its big gun aimed directly at its entrance.
But the main argument against Wagenknecht and Schwarzer stressed the support by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose anti-EU, pro-Russian positioning led its leaders to add their names to the manifesto and announce their intention to join the peace rally. Wagenknecht answered: “We can have nothing to do with fascists or racists, we must not permit them to raise their banners or posters. But we simply do not wish to exclude anyone from singly signing or attending.”
Many in eastern Germany vote for the AfD because of anger and disappointment at hardships caused by unification and their treatment as second-class citizens. Too many are fooled into blaming “privileged foreigners.” Many are just against “those on top,” somewhat like many simpler Trump voters, they want (affordable) butter not guns, therefore distrust further involvement in the Ukraine war. Since some Die Linke leaders gratefully joined in state governments they were seen, not always falsely, as “part of the Establishment,” so many Die Linke voters switched to the AfD or didn’t vote at all. Wagenknecht and Schwarzer hope a Manifesto for Peace movement can become a healthy antidote to fascists and their deceitful initiatives.
Yet it was this issue which was played upon by both media and politicians — trying to depict the Manifesto movement as a union of right-wing nationalists with leftist “Putin-lovers”. This method of attack has been utilised in the past to split and wreck attempts at building a broad peace movement.
Yet when the day of the march came, on this icy-cold Saturday afternoon, with snowflakes beginning to flutter down, the underground was jammed! There was hardly room to even stand properly! And at the next station more tried to push into the car! Where were they all going?
There was no doubt about it! When I arrived at the station near the Brandenburg Gate, the site of the rally, thousands and thousands climbed out of the jammed cars, ascended and merged into the crowded streets, all headed in one direction! I too moved through the famous arch towards the big speakers’ stage – but never got to a place where I could see them. I had just barely enough room to squeeze in to a free spot. And only later did I learn from my sons that the crowd had been huge on all sides, in wonderfully high spirits at the giant turnout, and determined in their applause, cheers, occasional boos (when war-hungry politicians were named), with occasional shouts like “No Weapons! Negotiations!”and “Make Peace not War”.
Many, perhaps most of those present deplored and condemned the Russian invasion. But many also insisted that Kiev’s mooted attack on the Donbass, the numerous manoeuvres all around Russian ports and borders, a secret CIA intensive training programme in 2015 for elite Ukrainian special operations forces, were part of a trap — which Russia fell into as in Afghanistan in 1979.
I, too, knew of an MSNBC report on March 4, saying: “Russia’s Ukraine invasion may have been preventable: The US refused to reconsider Ukraine’s Nato status as Putin threatened war. Experts say that was a huge mistake… Senator Joe Biden knew as far back as 1997 that Nato expansion, which he supported, could eventually lead to a hostile Russian reaction.”
And the neo-fascists? In media reports afterwards they were very much present, with an interview with one of their leaders somewhere on the periphery. We heard later that a few known far-rightists had indeed shown up with a banner, but a “left-wing Die Linke” group, at the ready, had quickly covered it over with a bigger anti-war banner and pushed the rightists — non-violently — away from the rally. As for me, I saw not one rightist sign, but rather many hundreds carrying peace dove depictions or self-made anti-war slogans.
The Manifesto, now being signed by additional tens of thousands, and especially the rally, have frightened all those who want to continue the war, who want no negotiations, who are determined, as some say openly, ”to ruin Russia”.
Of course, detente between Western Europe, Russia and China could mean fewer billions for US frackers and fuel providers, could cut profits for weapon-makers and other hungry expanders, from Amazon, Coca-Cola and Disney to Facebook, Unilever and the other queen bees in the honeyed hives of the pharmaceutical, movie, herbicide, food and other empires. Above all, the CEOs at Lockheed, Northrup, Raytheon, at Rheinmetall, Exxon Mobil and Chevron could then no longer rub their hands quite so gleefully or buy quite so many yachts, jets or mansions.
In her speech, Wagenknecht reiterated: “We want no German tanks firing at those Russian women and men whose great-grandparents, in millions, were inhumanly slaughtered by the German Wehrmacht.” She condemned as cynical the signing of agreements to provide armaments for years in advance and said that true solidarity meant getting engaged for peace, not war.
Of course Putin must also be willing to make compromises, Ukraine must not be turned into a Russian protectorate. But as we have since learned, negotiations were not stymied by the Russian side. Several speakers recalled that Antony Blinken, like his predecessors, had continued to push eastward, rejecting Russian appeals and offers and a final red-line warning in December 2021 to agree on security guarantees for all sides. New revelations by Naftali Bennett, the former prime minister of Israel, indicate that negotiations between Russia and Ukraine were moving ahead in March until Boris Johnson from London and his prompters in Washington made clear that an agreement was not desired.
Agreements are not impossible, but must be fought for, and must be wanted. A broad new peace movement is urgently necessary – and this rally must provide an impetus.
This is an edited version of Victor Grossman’s Berlin bulletin.
Source: Morning Star