It should be of grave concern to all Americans when our president says aloud that we are as close to a nuclear exchange with Russia today than we were during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
While the world has lived with the threat of nuclear weapons for decades without incident, the fact that our president suggests that the risks are greater now should cause Americans to have grave concerns. We should be insisting our government to be leading the world towards a peaceful resolution of this conflict immediately.
Sadly, our government has taken an opposite path by using this conflict as a means to fight a useless proxy war against Russia. The intensification of fighting through the massive supply of resources by the U.S. and NATO allies will not lead towards a resolution with a Ukrainian victory. Rather, it will kill countless numbers of Russians and Ukrainians and worse, continue to destabilize the region and raise the risk of nuclear exchange.
We should, as a country, take a new and different path. President Biden should immediately call for a cease fire in the region and insist that both sides of the conflict engage in talks to end the conflict. The outline of a potential settlement of this conflict have already been negotiated in 2014 and 2015 in the Minsk Agreements between Ukraine and Russia.
Building on these, the U.S. and NATO allies should call for an immediate ceasefire, for Russian Forces to withdraw to preconflict Russian borders, and for a demilitarization of the Luhansk and Donbas regions. In exchange, the U.S. and NATO will end the military supply escalation, ease sanctions gradually, and slow the amassing of NATO forces in countries that border Russia.
Longer term, the Luhansk and Donbas regions could be granted semi-autonomous government and Ukraine could emerge as an independent, non-aligned military built for defensive purposes only. Something like this has already been agreed to by Russia and Ukraine. The U.S. should lead the world in supporting its implementation.
We are on the wrong path in this conflict. It is time for us to lead in a new and more peaceful way.
Doug Black lives in Furlong.
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