If you want peace, don’t prepare for war

At the moment, the war seems to be stuck in Ukraine. Ten months after entering the war, which he said would be short and quick to “denazify” Ukraine and install a new pro-Russian government in kyiv, Vladimir Putin suffered a monumental failure on all levels: military, political, strategic, and economic. He has led his country, Europe and the rest of the world to a dead end, anachronistic and senseless. He had the leaders of the Russian and Soviet empires as models, but he forgot that the world today was no longer the world of Peter the Great or Stalin.

When will this fight end? When can we stop counting the number of victims who have already reached several tens of thousands of people?

Some believe that the ceasefire will be used by Vladimir Putin to readjust his military posture and relaunch attacks. So, let’s continue to support Ukraine militarily by providing the weapons to defeat Russia, so that it will never start another war again.

Yes, maybe logical. But how much will it cost? Meanwhile, the people of Ukraine, the mothers and wives of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers will continue to suffer. Because, for now, the only winners are the shareholders of the weapons company.

And we should hope to find the best way, as soon as possible, to definitively stop Russian aggression and end the deadly battle.

Russia must be condemned by international justice and pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine.

Logically, Vladimir Putin and his entourage must be punished before an international criminal court which will be able to dismantle their unreasonable arguments to justify this war. Bearing in mind that advances in international law, since 1945 and the United Nations Charter, have stipulated a prohibition on the use of force to resolve disputes with other States, and the obligation to use peaceful means to resolve them, It then becomes a question of condemning Vladimir Putin’s inventions and lies in claiming that “special operations” are “war preventive” to defend Russia, supposedly before the West attacked it.

Putin’s Russia and his entourage must be condemned for the damage they caused to Ukraine and pay for its reconstruction. As of July 2022, after five months of war, the cost of reconstruction of Ukraine after the Russian attack is estimated at 750 billion dollars. By comparison, Russia’s annual gross domestic product is currently $1.5 trillion. And its annual military budget is $70 billion. This means that if it were to pay for all the war damage it caused in Ukraine, Russia would have to devote ten years to the equivalent of its annual military budget. The consequence: the collapse of its economy and the unprecedented impoverishment of its population.

A disturbing precedent with certain Western countries

Yes but. Unfortunately, this ideal may not come true. When Putin launches his troops to invade Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he may be thinking of March 20, 2003 when President George Bush announced to the world in awe that he had just launched US troops to invade Iraq.

President of America, under pressure from “neoconservative” had tried in vain to convince the United Nations Security Council of the need for intervention in Iraq Saddam Hussein, guilty according to America of possessing weapons of mass destruction and supporting Islamic terrorism who had carried out the attacks on September 11, 2001 causing the deaths of 3,000 people.

That too apreventive war” to punish Iraq, and to defend the United States. Except that, like Putin’s lies against Ukraine, Georges Bush and his entourage used arguments that turned out to be lies. No weapons of mass destruction have ever been found in Iraq, and Saddam Hussein’s regime has never had any ties to Al Qaeda, which was responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks.

And the consequences of this war in Iraq were disastrous. First, they cause between 300,000 and 500,000 deaths by various estimates. Then they led to a series of unpredictable and destabilizing developments across much of the Middle East and Europe. US forces have destroyed infrastructure and dismantled Iraqi forces. This was followed in particular by the attacks in Madrid in March 2004 (192 killed) and in London in July 2005 (56 killed). And a former Sunni Iraqi army officer has joined forces with Islamist groups to create Daesh, which has established itself permanently in northern Iraq and eastern Syria, and organized attacks in Paris in November 2015 (130 killed) and Brussels in 2016 (32 killed). . ).

The danger of weapons, the need for cooperation

George Bush and America have never been brought to justice for the war in Iraq which they illegally launched in 2003. Therefore it would be a huge step forward for international law if Vladimir Putin and Russia were really to be tried and condemned.

But what is certain is that in Western countries some must not forget to look in the rearview mirror of history, and refrain in future from setting a bad example to other apprentice dictators in the world. After the fall of the Soviet Union, they also contributed greatly in the 1990s to the privatization of the Russian economy and the advent of runaway capitalism. This resulted, in 2000, a former KGB colonel came to power who built for his own benefit an authoritarian and repressive security system, and organized around it a network of rich and powerful oligarchs.

In addition, Western countries prefer strengthening their military system, NATO, by extending it to the Russian gate which feels threatened. And forgetting to strengthen other systems with Russia, civil and diplomatic systems, systems that seek conflict prevention and true stability, by building mutual security and cooperation.

It is hoped that after the failure represented by the war in Ukraine, Russia and the West will finally be able to build a new security architecture in Europe that can prevent new barbaric acts in the future. Moral of the story? If you want peace, don’t subconsciously prepare for war.