147 - Peace in Ukraine: Mobilizing a Coalition of the Determined

and Valentine's Day

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva  seeks to mobilize a group of “neutral” nations to broker peace in Ukraine. He brought that message, and other more welcome ones about saving the Amazon rain forest, to President Biden’s White House on Friday. President Biden presumably held back from chiding Lula, recently elected to replace former President Jair Bolsonaro, the “Trump of the Tropics.”  But clearly what Ukraine needs is a group of important Latin American, Middle Eastern, Asian, and African nations to turn on Putin and demand the complete end of assaults on Ukraine – not a well-meaning if potentially clumsy essay into peace brokering.

            Putin will hear his sometime “neutral” friends only if they, in considerable number, indicate that the game is over and publicly label him the culpable outlaw that he is. Refusing to take sides now and refusing to condemn Putin as a brute can only be considered a fool’s gambit. Only by forthright opposition from those who say they are afraid to cross him can such nations and leaders conceivably assist the ending of hostilities. The fiction that there could be two aggressors rather than one over the top perpetrator hardly assists any attempt at a meaningful truce leading to conclusive peace negotiations.

            The list of wanton atrocities is too long, the merciless attack on Ukrainian civilians and their houses, the missiles flying over Moldova, the use of suicide drones, and the UN and the International Criminal Court’s ongoing investigations of myriad crimes against humanity all testify to Putin’s unprovoked attacks on an innocent – if uncomfortably close – neighbor and culture that desperately wanted to continue celebrating its escape from being tangled up in a post-Soviet, crypto-czarist, essay in megalomania.

            Lula says that Russia supplies 25 percent of its fertilizer imports, essential for the agricultural growth on which Brazil depends for its prosperity after several quarters of recession during the Bolsonaro era. But Brazil buys far more fertilizer from Russia than any other country; it thus has leverage that Lula could certainly exert if he were so minded.

Israel, another country anxious not to offend Putin, seeks to continue its anti-Hezbollah and anti-Iranian proxy air assaults in Syria and Lebanon without any hindrance from the Russians who prop up President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and still have air force detachments in the region.

  South Africa remembers the Soviet Union’s support of its freedom struggle, with training and education for African National Congress (ANC) exiles in Moscow, and critical funding. Today, too, the ANC is welcoming deals with Russian mining entrepreneurs and clandestine investments from Putin-friendly oligarchs. 

  The United Arab Emirates (UAE) are gleefully enjoying their new role as an entrepôt capable of profitably laundering Russian anti-sanctions petroleum and other proceeds, hosting wealthy Russians and protecting their yachts and their wealth, and cutting all kinds of other nefarious deals that strengthen Putin’s war effort.  Saudi Arabia, the long-time ally of the United States, does much the same, but less openly.

            Then there is Turkey. Until last week’s devastating earthquakes rightfully diverted attention, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was playing a masterful double-game: rhetorically friendly to Ukraine and helpful to a degree, while becoming a chief facilitator of Putin’s war machine. Critical components are trucked daily from Turkey overland through Georgia and Azerbaijan to fuel Moscow’s mayhem. Petroleum and natural gas are exported to Asia via Turkey, producing income for Putin and tidy profits for Erdogan.  Turkey also shelters all manner of Russians along its south coast.

            There are another fifteen or so African nations, and handfuls of Asian and Latin American regimes, that could abandon a stance of phony neutralism and finally take Ukraine’s side. Otherwise, they stand with hapless autocracies like Nicaragua and Venezuela that function effectively as Russian satellites.   If Lula truly seeks to forge a fortress of peace, he needs to stare the global bully fully in the face and urge the other supposed neutrals to join him in supporting Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelensky.

            This fight is the world’s fight for freedom and humanity. It must not be construed or portrayed as a Cold War battle between the East and the West.  If President Biden missed an opportunity to concentrate Lula’s mind in this regard, he can follow-up through envoys. And he can send shipments of American-made fertilizer to Brazil in case Russia foolishly wants to deprive itself of fertilizer revenues.

            If President Biden can focus Lula’s resolve effectively, together they can help President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa see the light.  Others may then join the crusade against dictatorial ambition. Gaining similar buy ins from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey will be much more difficult.  But if a ruler of a big country like Brazil leads the way, the Saudis and the sheikhs of Dubai and Abu Dhabi might decide to join a winning side.  Then this new movement, if well led by Lula and others, conceivably could help Erdogan come in from the proverbial cold.

            Fantasy?  Probably trying to override the initial seeming self-interests of such key players

is fantastical in concept but each of these leaders wants to stand or be seen to stand with the world’s winners.  Neutrality doesn’t accomplish that goal, especially since global opinion knows conclusively when and how the war started and how and why Ukraine resists so valiantly.

            Lula has the stature to intervene diplomatically at the head of a campaign for meaningful peace only if he utters truths, not repeats pious misrepresentations. “I want to end the war,” he said in Washington, not “to join the war.”   This is his chance.

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Valentine’s Day

St. Valentine’s day is tomorrow.  Let us celebrate, despite carnage in the settled world. Two curious ways of doing so come to us from China and India, bizarre counterpoints to the ongoing tragedy in Ukraine and the natural disasters that have stricken Turkey and Syria.

China

  In contrast to the purposely Russian-fostered devastation in Ukraine, China – now discovered sending large white balloons and other flying objects to spy on the United States and Canada – is constructing the largest vertical pig farm in the world. Instead of housing people, two massive twenty-six story high-rise towers on the southern side of the Yangtze River will soon house sows and little pigs at various stages of growth – until they are slaughtered for the table.  Fully half of the pork produced in the world is consumed in China. The new twin towers will raise 1.2 million pigs annually. Despite the epizootic dangers of housing so many little porkers in close quarters in apartment blocs, China is forging ahead.

India

          India, instead, has chosen to excoriate Valentine’s day. Romance is out. Cow hugging is in. The celebration of Valentine’s Day is “against Indian values.” Shops selling cards and gifts are raided and burned to “protect” Indians against promiscuity. The state’s animal welfare department originally urged all citizens to hug a cow on Valentine’s Day to promote Hindu values.  But when that was derided, even by higher officials who officially venerate cows, the welfare department decided that hugs were not necessary, only fervent devotion. It is not clear whether or not the cows, many wandering the streets of major cities, were ever consulted.  Nor India’s 200 million Muslims.

Overcoming the Oppressors

**** Subscribers have asked about my new book, a study of the freeing of southern Africa first from white colonial and white South African domination and, more recently, from indigenous African corrupt autocracies. Overcoming the Oppressors: White and Black in Southern Africa has just been published by Oxford University Press.  Available in your local bookstores.