An edited version was printed in the Plymouth Herald on 6.7.23. The unexpurgated version is below:

There is nothing namby-pamby about the quest for Peace.

Saturday 8th July is yet another day of events across the country and wider Europe, anti-war activists campaigning for a ceasefire in the war in Ukraine. 

Responses will be divided between those who believe outright victory is essential, and those of us who want de-escalation and an immediate ceasefire. 

We will all be united in distress for the terrible suffering of all civilians caught-up in the horror. Ukraine itself is now the landscape for the most bloody of industrialised wars – towns and villages utterly destroyed, large areas of fertile land polluted and front-lines peppered with land mines and unexploded munitions. 

Hundreds of thousands have died, on both sides.

It is not disrespectful to call for a ceasefire and negotiations now. Lives matter. This is no apology for Putin’s invasion. But the situation has developed into a battle-ground between the Russian State and the  Western NATO alliance. Indeed such a dynamic has been developing for well over a decade. 

Putin is an oligarch presiding over a powerful nuclear-armed nation. NATO has nuclear weapons close to and aimed at Russia. This represents imperialist rivalry, not a war of totalitarian communism versus free-market capitalism, but the latest Proxy-war between market rivals.  

Putin is outspoken against the Russian Revolution of 1917, has nothing to do with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics other than a nod to the totalitarianism of Joseph Stalin, and praises the previous absolutist monarchy of Tzar Nicholas II. Putin’s billionaire friends envision Russia as a major imperialist Capitalist power in the world.

And Putin has support from many countries outside the European Union and USA. The vast country, almost a continent that he presides over has an abundance of fossil fuel, agricultural and mineral wealth, much sought after. Russia is no push-over.

At the same time, Russia’s economy is a small percentage of the West’s, and Russia’s annual military spending one-tenth of that of the USA. Put together, suggestions that Putin is finished or that Russia can be defeated are extreme exaggerations. But he is under pressure to make military gains despite the assumed mutiny of the deadly Wagner Group.

The country’s dependence upon well-trained paid mercenaries is not unique, the level of private military and “security” forces in the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, for example, representing more than half the western military deployment. Private armies are also hired by corporations across the world, notably the oil and gas companies, collaborating with national governments to pursue their interests in land-grabs and exports of precious commodities. Wars always have an economic dimension as well as the issues of freedom and justice.

Wars are also enormously destructive of the environment, with pollution from radioactive depleted uranium shells through to the smoke from fossil fuelled armies and the explosions themselves. As we learnt from Agent Orange in Vietnam, so many wars before have dispersed toxic chemicals so widely that entire populations suffer ghastly health impacts for generations afterwards.

The military-industrial complex of arms manufacturing through to armed forces worldwide is the single largest emitter of the global warming gases that are driving climate catastrophe – environmental activists should, to a person, be against war.

Britain has now given over ten-thousand-millions of pounds in military support to Ukraine; the USA, ten times that amount. Welfare aid to the people of Ukraine has been a tiny fraction by comparison. There’s seemingly unlimited tax-payers cash for more arms-spending whilst funding for health, welfare, climate transition or simple wage rises in this cost-of-living crisis are disallowed. 

Next week’s NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania will provide the West with another opportunity to ramp up the war in Ukraine. The conference will likely see calls for further pledges of billions of pounds worth of arms for Ukraine despite the increasingly bloody stalemate on the battlefield.

The costs of war are just too high on all fronts. Destruction of Russia as a State will result in the same break-up into volatile, regional militarised War-Lords as has been the outcome of the western invasions of Iraq and Libya. And, should Putin really be cornered, the chance of use of nuclear weapons has never been higher. His administration is not one to submit.

A ceasefire with negotiations may mean a tense stand-off for years to come, but that’s infinitely preferable to years of war that could easily spread towards global nuclear conflagration. 

Peace is preferable. Please support the call.