In this moment, Europe and the world stands at the precipice of the largest military invasion in Europe since 1945. If war breaks out, it will be horrific, with catastrophic humanitarian consequences.
We hold our breath at the knife-edge of terror: the moment before bloodshed will be unleashed on a massive scale — or somehow, a miraculous diplomatic solution will emerge in the moments before the clock strikes midnight.
This morning, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said:
“We believe President Putin has made the decision, but until the tanks are actually rolling, and the planes are flying, we will use every opportunity and every minute we have to see if diplomacy can still dissuade President Putin from carrying this forward.”
In response to the threats, President Biden has adopted an approach that has never been used before by a U.S. President: radical transparency. Announcing that this approach will fail, and pursuing it anyway, hour by hour, has made it more difficult to Putin to launch his war. Rather than treat the most important high-level intelligence as “top secret” for a handful of advisors, Biden has published it in real time, in a chess game with Putin with the highest possible stakes, played out in the open. The chess game is not over, and results are not yet certain. Biden has announced that he expects to lose, and we should take him at his word. Perhaps there is a small chance that by making this announcement there will be a different outcome.
So we hold our breath, and check the NY Times headlines throughout the day. At this intersection of war and peace, obscene cost-benefit calculations are being made over which we have no impact, mathematics in which human beings are less than numbers or firewood.
In this hour, unless we choose to look away, to bury our heads in denial, we must live with the tension between opposing truths: on the one hand, our dread at the unspeakable calamity that is being planned in front of our eyes, and fear for the consequences; on the other hand, our fervent prayer and call for peace.
Fear and dread at the inexorable; prayer and hope that somehow there will be a reprieve, that war will be called off at the last minute.
Holding both of these realities in our hearts and minds at the same time is excruciating. Holding one of these emotional realities, to the exclusion of the other, while understandable, is distorted and untenable.
For Gandhi and King, satyagraha means nonviolence, soul power, and the fierce commitment to hold fast to truth. In the spirit of satyagraha, I share the words of women who demand our attention in this desperate hour, when everything is at stake.
A few days ago, the following statement was published by American and Russian women participating in a dialogue and peace-building initiative founded in 2021 by Women Transforming Our Nuclear Legacy and the American Committee for US-Russia Accord
This is from a framing essay published in Nation Magazine, February 15, 2022 written by journalists Nadezhda Azhgikhina, Director, Moscow PEN, Board Member, Article 19:
The Russians naturally do not want war. Just like the Ukrainians and Americans. But not everyone is prepared to say so. Many people think nothing depends on my opinion, no one in the decision-making realm will take me into account. Others, however, write petitions and call for peace. There may not be very many of them yet, but their voice—every voice—has meaning, and it brings us closer to peace. By letting wise and talented diplomats, and there are many both in Russia and America, use their experience for a constructive dialogue. By removing the rhetoric of war and it’s threat of unpredictable consequences from our daily life. I am infinitely pleased and grateful that the American and Russian women who a year ago initiated a conversation on the need for nuclear disarmament have now written an open letter addressed to everyone—politicians, journalists, the women and men of our countries—calling for the preservation of peace and our common future. I believe that our voice will have meaning in our mutual goal of overcoming the crisis and building a better, safer world.
Here is the statement: INDEPENDENT AMERICAN AND RUSSIAN WOMEN CALL FOR PEACE
We are women from the United States and Russia who are deeply concerned about the risk of possible war between our two countries, who together possess over 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons.
We are mothers, daughters, grandmothers, and we are sisters, one to another.
Today we stand with our sisters in Ukraine, East and West, whose families and country have been torn apart, have already suffered more than 14,000 deaths.
We stand together and we call for peace and diplomacy, with respect for all.
We are united in the belief that diplomacy, dialogue, engagement and exchange are urgently needed to end the current crisis and avert a catastrophic military conflict that could spiral out of control — even push the world to the precipice of nuclear war.
For the U.S. and Russia, the only sane and humane course of action now is a principled commitment to clear, creative and persistent diplomacy— not military action.
At this perilous juncture, rather than allocate blame, we should be seeking 21st century alternatives to senseless military conflicts and wasteful spending on war. It is a time to redefine security so that women, families, and our children, can live in peace.
At a time when we find ourselves in perhaps the most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis, we call on the media in both our countries to stop fueling the flames of war. We call on the media to fulfill their ethical responsibility as journalists to remind us of the price of war, the bloodshed and loss of human lives, to demand evidence when claims are made that can escalate tensions, and to have the courage to sound the alarm on the risk of escalation to a nuclear war that would mean the end of life as we know it.
At a time when poverty is increasing in the U.S., Ukraine and Russia, when the world collectively faces the existential threat of climate change, a pandemic that has taken 5.8 million lives and caused rising “deaths of despair,” declining life expectancy and extreme inequality, isn’t it time to think anew?
How might we seize the day and lay out a 21st century vision — that not only advances peace and security, but can unite the world — essentially a new realism? What could creative, humane diplomacy look like? If done thoughtfully, it could do more than resolve the standoff in Ukraine — it could pave the way for broader cooperation between the U.S., Russia, and Europe and beyond on climate, disarmament and more. It could lay the seeds for a new, demilitarized and shared security architecture.
We independent women, seekers of peace and security, understand the vital importance of engaging minds and hearts. We call on you to share this call for peace and urge our governments to keep talking, to pursue clear, creative and persistent diplomacy.
These are times of fear but also of hope and possibility. The world is in motion, the future is not written. As Americans and Russians, we have a compelling stake in deescalating tensions between our countries. The approach we suggest surely is more realistic, more wise, than preparing for a military conflict that could lead to unthinkable nuclear war.
We stand together and we call for peace. Stand with us.
#WomenCall4PeaceUkraine #WOMENPEACEBUILDERS #MINDFULCHERNOBYL #WOMENSAYNOTOWAR #WHEREISOURPEACEDIVIDEND #MONEYFORSCHOOLSNOTMISSILES #SISTERSAGAINSTWAR #PEACEWINS #KEEPTALKINGUKRAINE #TALKANDLISTEN
You can find the signatories here.
It is moving that American and Russian women are standing together in this call for diplomacy and peace. At the same time it is important to acknowledge that the risks faced by the Russian participants are immensely greater than those faced by their U.S. partners; we must praise the courage of our Russian sisters, and follow in their footsteps.
I pray that their voices of sanity and restraint, peace and reconciliation, spreads from Moscow through the European capitals to Washington and across the world. I pray for a groundswell of peace to emerge as we recognize the morally unacceptable reality of the alternative.
At the same time I fear. I fear the inexorable drift to calamity happening in front of our eyes. Absent a miracle, the door of immense death and destruction will swing wide open, with Donetsk, Kyiv and Lviv on fire, tens of thousands dead, millions of internally displaced persons and refugees forced from their homes, and all of our lives changed forever.
Coincident with the test-firing of nuclear -capable Cruise and ballistic missile, and the shelling of civilians by Russian-backed separatists, Ukraine is surrounded by 150,000 Russian troops, ready and mobilized to attack, to bomb and strafe civilian populations and seize territory in a sovereign country that presents no threat to Russia’s sovereignty, territory or citizens. Russian claims of genocide against Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the Donbas region are lies manufactured to provide a pretext for invasion. Any such illegal military intervention would constitute the crime of aggression under international law, and would very likely include atrocities and crimes of war on a massive scale, just as Russia’s wars in Chechnya (199-2009), invasion of Georgia (2008), seizure of Crimea (2014) and the subsequent ongoing covert war in eastern Ukraine, and the alliance between Russia and Syria leading to the mass slaughter of Syrian civilians — all were illegal, unjustified, and unspeakably murderous, without regard for human life.
The word “resolve” can be a cover for aggression and a failure to explore opportunities for peace. I hate the way that word has often been misused to justify militarism, and hard line resistance to compromises that should be made. But in this case, I am grateful for the resolve the US and European states have shown in the face of extortion and violence, including the resolve to keep diplomacy moving forward under threat. The US and Europe were correct to make it clear that they would not send troops or engage with Russia militarily in the event of an invasion — but they have been equally clear that they would stand together in a unified, coordinated alliance to impose significant high costs on the Putin regime, costs that we hope will be high enough to deter the invasion. Even if Putin pulls back from the brink at the last minute, even as Russia has legitimate security concerns that should be addressed by the US and European states, and even if NATO erred in the scope of its expansion in the immediate post-Soviet years, it is morally reprehensible to seek to extract concessions from powerful third parties by threatening to unleash massive violence against a captive population that has done nothing to deserve it, and it is morally corrupt to sell off the fundamental human rights of Ukrainians or any other people at gunpoint. In this moment we need resolve, just as we need to support all forms of nonviolent resistance to military aggression and the threat of war.
Among the courageous Russian women who have fought for democracy, human rights, and peace in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union, I praise the women who signed the statement reprinted above. I wholeheartedly endorse their statement, and pray that it can make a difference somehow.
At the same time I feel a responsibility to honor the memory of Anna Politkovskaya, the extraordinarily brave and eloquent Russian journalist who spoke out against Russia’s crimes of war and crimes against humanity in Chechnya, and who was murdered in a contract killing in 2006 in which those responsible for issuing the orders have not been held accountable. Two years before her assassination, Politkovskaya wrote the following reflections on the only person who, in the end, will make the fateful decision that will plunge Europe into a horrendous war or save it from destruction.
Why do I so dislike Putin? This is precisely why. I dislike him for a matter-of-factness worse than felony, for his cynicism, for his racism, for his lies, for the gas he used in the Nord-Ost siege, for the massacre of the innocents that went on throughout his first term as president [2000-2008].
This is how I see it. Others have different views. The killing of children has not deterred people from trying to have Putin’s term in office extended to ten years. The project is being conducted through the creation of pro-Putin youth movements on instructions from the Kremlin….
Such was the state of play on inauguration day, May 7, 2004. Putin has, by chance, gotten hold of enormous power and has used it to catastrophic effect. I dislike him because he does not like people. He despises us. He sees us as a means to his ends, a means for the achievement and retention of personal power, no more than that. Accordingly, he believes he can do anything he likes with us, play with us as he sees fit, destroy us if he wishes. We are nobody, while he whom chance has enabled to clamber to the top is today czar and God.
In Russia we have had leaders with this outlook before. It led to tragedy, to bloodshed on a vast scale, to civil wars. Because I want no more of that, I dislike this typical Soviet Chekist as he struts down the red carpet in the Kremlin on his way to the throne of Russia.
Anna Politkovskaya, Putin’s Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy, 2004.
Our only hope for survival amidst the cursed, broken politics of our world is to follow the path of human rights advocates like Nadezhda Azhgikhina, the Russian journalist who had a leading role in publishing the letter calling for peace and diplomacy, reprinted above, and Anna Politkovskaya, may she rest in peace, and follow their powerful example — the life and death necessity of speaking truth to power — even as we in the U.S. can do so at far less cost, at least for now.
Jonathan D. Greenberg.
