Germany is being dragged screaming and kicking into the Russia-Ukraine War. The war is wrecking the economy and causing paroxysm in politics. Germany’s postwar pacifism and its culture of restraint is coming under strain as a center-left coalition dithers about...
Except in cases of total victory and unconditional surrender, wars end through a negotiation process. The Ukraine conflict shows no sign of evolving beyond an increasingly costly and tragic stalemate. This means it must end with some form of negotiations. The key to any successful negotiation is a realistic assessment of the security concerns on both sides.
History is always complex, especially in Eastern Europe. One of our authors draws lessons from the collapse of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s to make a case for Western intervention in Ukraine. This interpretation is simplistic and misleading because there are many other lessons to draw from the 1990s Balkan conflict.
Bosnia did not get the support it needed 30 years ago to defend itself. Today it is barely a state, and that's the fate that Ukraine needs to avoid.
Thousands of Ukrainians have fled to European nations since the Russian invasion in February. Unlike African or Middle Eastern refugees, Ukrainian ones have received a warm reception, revealing a deeply racist orientation towards refugees in the West.
The US is funding and supporting Ukraine but not participating in its war against Russia. This has produced the conditions for a radical upsurge in propaganda.
The prevailing atmosphere in North American media of alignment with US and NATO policy on Ukraine has led to the exclusion, if not the suppression, of voices advocating restraint and counseling negotiations instead of indefinitely prolonged war. In the trio of possible positions — isolationism, restraint or primacy — restraint has its supporters, and they deserve to be heard.
