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Bruce, What Do You Think Should be Done About the War in Ukraine?

Bruce Gerencser 47 Comments
war in ukraine

Over the weekend, Merle asked me several thoughtful questions about what I think should be done about the war in Ukraine. Here’s what he had to say:

Bruce, can you let us know what you think Ukraine should do?

I share your concern with America’s emphasis on war. But I see there is also a time and place for legitimate defense. Is Ukraine in a place where defense is justified?

I see no way to describe the Russian attack on Ukraine as anything other than state-sponsored terrorism. Surely nations have the right to respond to most acts of terrorism. Do we come to the point where the terrorist actor is so powerful (Russia) that one is better off just stepping back and letting them ransack the country?

So what should Ukraine do? Should they fight back? Should they seek help from America? To what extent should America help?

I am a pacifist. I oppose all war on principle. I believe war never brings peace. At best, it brings a temporary cessation of hostilities. I can’t think of one war that brought permanent peace to a nation-state. Far too often, wars get recycled. The “War to End All Wars” gave birth to The “War to Really End All Wars — We Really Mean It This Time” in 1939. George H.W. Bush’s Iraq War gave birth to his son, George W. Bush’s Iraq War a decade later. The French War in Vietnam gave way to what Americans call Vietnam. The Soviets admitted defeat in Afghanistan, only to have the United States move in, thinking We’re #1, We’re Number #1, leaving twenty years later in defeat.

The United States has been at war with North Korea for seventy years. Currently, the U.S. is threatening China over Taiwan and threatening Iran over nuclear development. America has troops on the ground in numerous African countries, along with having tens of thousands of troops stationed in Europe, Japan, South Korea, and other countries. And thanks to the recent release of top-secret military documents, the American people now know that the U.S. has troops in Ukraine! Oh, they are just advisors, the Biden administration says. Oh where, or when, have I heard that before? Advisors on the ground in Vietnam turned into 500,000 American troops in Vietnam a few years later.

The United States is the world’s policeman, thanks to many countries across the globe abdicating their responsibility to provide for their own protection. The United States has the largest defense and security budget in the world. We give nation-states billions of dollars a year to protect themselves and sell other countries billions of dollars more of weaponry. The United States is in the war business. In 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower gave a nationally televised speech warning about the danger of the military-industrial complex:

As we peer into society’s future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

….

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations.

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

The American people have been taken hostage by the Pentagon, NSA, CIA and the military-industrial complex. Convinced by both Republican and Democratic politicians, most Americans believe that bad actors on the world stage are trying to take away from them the “American Way of Life”; the mythical “American Dream.” This, of course, is a bald-faced lie, yet we believe it to be true. And with over a trillion dollars in tax money, we pay for our protection from a mythical enemy. We send American men and women to bleed and die “over there,” so we don’t have to fight them “over here.” We as a people have bought into the lie called “American Exceptionalism”; that we are a city on a hill, ordained by the Christian God to advance the cause of Western democracy to the ends of the earth, and now, to outer space too.

We can no longer afford the heroin addiction of the defense department and the various U.S. security organizations. The first thing I would do is cut the defense and security budget by twenty-five percent. Second, I would drastically reduce the number U.S. military bases and outposts. Third, I would put an end to the military’s use of private contractors and private soldiers. Fourth, I would cut our nuclear weapons stockpile from 3,700 to 1,000 — still enough missiles to destroy the world.

My goal would be to neuter the United States’ ability to engage in nation-building, regime change, and fighting offensive wars on multiple fronts. Doing so would force America to seek other means of conflict resolution besides violence, bloodshed, and slaughter. I would, in certain circumstances, support the defensive use of the military.

I would fully fund the State Department while firing all of the CIA and NSA agents who are currently manning Department stations. The State Department should be tasked with one thing: promoting global peace. We must stop thinking that our way of life must be the way of life for everyone; that every nation must be a democracy and have a capitalist economic system.

Until we make systemic changes such as the ones I have mentioned in this post, we will continue to involve ourselves in the affairs of sovereign states. My God, there are Republican legislators calling for the U.S. military to invade Mexico in the latest chapter of the war on drugs.What’s next, invading Canada because they are “socialists?” This is what happens when we have a government that thinks every problem can be solved at end of a rifle.

war in ukraine 2

The United States is currently fighting a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. The United States is more than happy to sacrifice Ukraine, its soldiers, and civilians to destroy Russia’s military capabilities. We have no interest in peace between the warring factions. We have convinced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that the war can be won, with all contested lands remaining Ukraine’s. And this is true as long as the United States and NATO continue to send Ukraine billions of dollars of weaponry. If Ukraine had to fight this war on its own, Russia would have won by now.

Let me be clear, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is immoral. I am not pro-Russia, I’m pro-peace. I also know the United States, NATO, and Ukraine are culpable in the war too. From NATO’s expansion to Ukraine’s refusal to address the concerns of ethnic Russians in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, Russia felt threatened. And when authoritarian leaders feel threatened, what do they do? They bite; they push back. Peace cannot be brokered in Ukraine without understanding its complex history. The United States paints the war as a fight between democracy and capitalism on the one hand, and authoritarianism and communism (communism) on the other. This picture distorts the complexities on the ground. It lacks historical context and nuance.

Peace can be had in Ukraine if the United States and NATO stop fueling Ukraine’s war machine. I am not suggesting that we stop helping Ukraine defend itself. Ukraine has a right to self-defense and to repel Russia’s aggression, but the countries paying for this war must draw a peace line in the sand, telling Ukraine they must broker peace with Russia, and if they don’t the flow of weaponry will be cut off. (The idea that dirt is more important than people is insane.) Further, NATO must swallow their pride and stop its expansion farther into Europe. Admit Sweden, but that’s it. What about Ukraine? Were they NATO-worthy before the war? If not, I would not admit them into NATO. Russia must also stop its expansionist tendencies. Further, the United States, along Russia, and other countries bordering the Arctic Sea must begin immediately to engage in negotiations and peace talks over the North Pole. If they don’t, the Arctic Sea could be the next place there’s a war between the United States and Russia. We must to everything in our power to keep Santa’s home safe (a little levity with a serious subject).

war in ukraine

While I am a pacifist, I am also a pragmatist. I know there will be times when defensive wars are inevitable. That said, I believe world peace must be our top priority. This priority must be shown in our government’s spending and military use. We must show by our actions that we are a peaceful people. As it stands now, the United States is viewed as a bully; a people who use violence and slaughter to advance their agenda and gain their objectives. Eighty years ago, the world largely thought well of the United States. Those days are gone. Even in Europe, people have soured on America. We must rehabilitate our image, and the only way we can do that is to change our behavior. Most of all, we must see things as they are. Ask the average American who was behind 9-11, and they will tell you Afghanistan and Iraq. This, of course, is untrue. It was Saudi Arabia who was behind 9-11, a fact that the US government refuses to acknowledge to this day. Why? One word: oil.

If we want peace, we must stop lying to ourselves about our own history. I don’t think, for a moment, that the United States is evil, but I refuse to turn a blind eye to the bloody, violent, murderous history of the country I proudly call home. Merle used the word terrorism to describe Russia’s murderous actions in Ukraine. I wonder if he would use the same word to describe the United States’ actions in Yemen, Syria, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and countless other countries.

War is terrorism, period. Flying drones over civilian populations and killing men, women, and children is terrorism. Bombing Dresden and Tokyo is terrorism. Dropping atomic bombs on civilian populations in Nagasaki and Hiroshima is terrorism. Using napalm in southeast China is terrorism. The United States has slaughtered millions of non-combatants in its many wars. Aren’t these injuries, deaths, and property destruction terrorism too? As long as we call what other nations do in war terrorism, but call our violent actions “just war,” we will not truly understand the depravity and terror of war, and why peace must be our highest priority as a people.

When we fail to make peace our highest priority, we make war possible. The United States has largely given up on the United Nations ideal. We use the U.N. to advance our agenda, and when “peace” might cost us something, we bow out. We refuse to sign treaties that would reduce war in the world. Why does the United States refuse to participate in the International Court of Justice? It seems like we want one set of rules for the United States, and another set of rules for the rest of the world.

Peace in Ukraine is possible, but until the United States, Russia, Ukraine, and NATO choose a different path, the only thing that will happen is more bloodshed. A cessation of hostilities will happen sooner or later, but peace? I am not sure the warring parties have an appetite for real, lasting peace.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Quote of the Day: What’s Behind the War in Ukraine

Bruce Gerencser 3 Comments
noam chomsky

From 2014, the U.S. and NATO began to pour arms into Ukraine — advanced weapons, military training, joint military exercises, moves to integrate Ukraine into the NATO military command. There’s no secret about this. It was quite open. Recently, the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, bragged about it. He said: This is what we were doing since 2014. Well, of course, this is very consciously, highly provocative. They knew that they were encroaching on what every Russian leader regarded as an intolerable move. France and Germany vetoed it in 2008, but under U.S. pressure, it was kept on the agenda. And NATO, meaning the United States, moved to accelerate the de facto integration of Ukraine into the NATO military command.

In 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky was elected with an overwhelming majority — I think about 70% of the vote — on a peace platform, a plan to implement peace with Eastern Ukraine and Russia, to settle the problem. He began to move forward on it and, in fact, tried to go to the Donbas, the Russian-oriented eastern region, to implement what’s called the Minsk II agreement. It would have meant a kind of federalization of Ukraine with a degree of autonomy for the Donbas, which is what they wanted. Something like Switzerland or Belgium. He was blocked by right-wing militias which threatened to murder him if he persisted with his effort.

Well, he’s a courageous man. He could have gone forward if he had had any backing from the United States. The U.S. refused. No backing, nothing, which meant he was left to hang out to dry and had to back off. The U.S. was intent on this policy of integrating Ukraine step by step into the NATO military command. That accelerated further when President Biden was elected. In September 2021, you could read it on the White House website. It wasn’t reported but, of course, the Russians knew it. Biden announced a program, a joint statement to accelerate the process of military training, military exercises, more weapons as part of what his administration called an “enhanced program” of preparation for NATO membership.

It accelerated further in November. This was all before the invasion. Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed what was called a charter, which essentially formalized and extended this arrangement. A spokesman for the State Department conceded that before the invasion, the U.S. refused to discuss any Russian security concerns. All of this is part of the background.

On February 24th, Putin invaded, a criminal invasion. These serious provocations provide no justification for it. If Putin had been a statesman, what he would have done is something quite different. He would have gone back to French President Emmanuel Macron, grasped his tentative proposals, and moved to try to reach an accommodation with Europe, to take steps toward a European common home.

The U.S., of course, has always been opposed to that. This goes way back in Cold War history to French President De Gaulle’s initiatives to establish an independent Europe. In his phrase “from the Atlantic to the Urals,” integrating Russia with the West, which was a very natural accommodation for trade reasons and, obviously, security reasons as well. So, had there been any statesmen within Putin’s narrow circle, they would have grasped Macron’s initiatives and experimented to see whether, in fact, they could integrate with Europe and avert the crisis. Instead, what he chose was a policy which, from the Russian point of view, was total imbecility. Apart from the criminality of the invasion, he chose a policy that drove Europe deep into the pocket of the United States. In fact, it is even inducing Sweden and Finland to join NATO — the worst possible outcome from the Russian point of view, quite apart from the criminality of the invasion, and the very serious losses that Russia is suffering because of that.

So, criminality and stupidity on the Kremlin side, severe provocation on the U.S. side. That’s the background that has led to this. Can we try to bring this horror to an end? Or should we try to perpetuate it? Those are the choices.

There’s only one way to bring it to an end. That’s diplomacy. Now, diplomacy, by definition, means both sides accept it. They don’t like it, but they accept it as the least bad option. It would offer Putin some kind of escape hatch. That’s one possibility. The other is just to drag it out and see how much everybody will suffer, how many Ukrainians will die, how much Russia will suffer, how many millions of people will starve to death in Asia and Africa, how much we’ll proceed toward heating the environment to the point where there will be no possibility for a livable human existence. Those are the options. Well, with near 100% unanimity, the United States and most of Europe want to pick the no-diplomacy option. It’s explicit. We have to keep going to hurt Russia.

You can read columns in the New York Times, the London Financial Times, all over Europe. A common refrain is: we’ve got to make sure that Russia suffers. It doesn’t matter what happens to Ukraine or anyone else. Of course, this gamble assumes that if Putin is pushed to the limit, with no escape, forced to admit defeat, he’ll accept that and not use the weapons he has to devastate Ukraine.

There are a lot of things that Russia hasn’t done. Western analysts are rather surprised by it. Namely, they’ve not attacked the supply lines from Poland that are pouring weapons into Ukraine. They certainly could do it. That would very soon bring them into direct confrontation with NATO, meaning the U.S. Where it goes from there, you can guess. Anyone who’s ever looked at war games knows where it’ll go — up the escalatory ladder toward terminal nuclear war.

So, those are the games we’re playing with the lives of Ukrainians, Asians, and Africans, the future of civilization, in order to weaken Russia, to make sure that they suffer enough. Well, if you want to play that game, be honest about it. There’s no moral basis for it. In fact, it’s morally horrendous. And the people who are standing on a high horse about how we’re upholding principle are moral imbeciles when you think about what’s involved.

— Noam Chomsky, TomDispatch, Chomsky and Barsamian, In Ukraine, Diplomacy Has Been Ruled Out, June 16, 2022

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Gay Pride Parades to Blame for Ukraine’s Woes

Bruce Gerencser 10 Comments
gay pride flag
Fundamentalist Christian Mark Anthony Escalera Slays a Gay Pride Flag

[Orthodox Patriarch Kirill spoke directly to the Russian invasion of Ukraine but situated it in the context of Russians and Russian separatists who have been fighting the Ukrainian government in the region of Donbas prior to the current war. The Donbas is the easternmost region of Ukraine bordering Russia. The region’s unofficial capital is Donetsk.]

For eight years there have been attempts to destroy what exists in the Donbas. And in the Donbas there is rejection, a fundamental rejection of the so-called values ​​that are offered today by those who claim world power.

Today there is a test for the loyalty to this new world order, a kind of pass to that ‘happy’ world, the world of excess consumption, the world of false ‘freedom.’ Do you know what this test is? The test is very simple and at the same time terrible — it is the Gay Pride parade. The demands on many to hold a gay parade are a test of their loyalty to the new world order; and we know that if people or countries reject these demands, then they do not enter into that world order, they become strangers to it.

This [gay pride] is a sin that is condemned by the word of God, both the Old and the New Testament. Moreover, the Lord, condemning sin, does not condemn the sinner. He only calls him to repentance, but not to ensure that through a sinful person and his behavior, sin becomes a life standard, a variation of human behavior regarded as respected and acceptable.

….

“If humanity starts believing that sin is not a violation of God’s law, if humanity agrees that sin is one of the options for human behavior, then human civilization will end there. And Gay Pride parades are designed to demonstrate that sin is one of the legitimate variations of human behavior.

That is why in order to enter the club of those ‘free’ countries, it is necessary to hold a Gay Pride parade. Not to make a political statement ‘we are with you,’ not to sign any agreements, but to hold a Gay Pride parade. And we know how people resist these demands and how this resistance is suppressed by force. This means that we are talking about imposing by force a sin condemned by God’s law, and therefore, to impose on people by brutal force the denial of God and his truth.

….

We are talking about human salvation, about where humanity will end up, on which side of God the Savior, who comes into the world as its Judge and Creator, on the right or on the left, we will be. Today, out of weakness, stupidity, ignorance and most often out of unwillingness to resist, many go there, to the left side. And all that is connected with the justification of sin, condemned by the Bible, is today a test for our faithfulness to the Lord, for our ability to confess faith in our Savior.

— Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, Baptist News Global, As Putin bombs children, Russian Orthodox patriarch names the root of Ukraine’s sin: Gay Pride parades, March 10, 2022