GPAX

The Green Party Peace Action Committee (GPAX) urges that the party participate in the wave of worldwide mass protests against the US-Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere.

Our main concern is US military and diplomatic participation in the war and in the criminal siege and bombardment that have already killed thousands in Gaza, wounded tens of thousands, and left a million homeless.

GPAX calls for ending the supply of weapons and financing to Israel; withdrawing US military assets from the region; and ending US war threats. The U.S. must also become constructively engaged in diplomatic efforts to resolve this persistent threat to world peace.

We support the widespread calls by UN officials and member countries, trade unionists, and others for a ceasefire, provision of humanitarian aid, the release of detained people, and long-term solutions based on justice and equality. We urge the Green Party and state parties to work with others for all these goals.

We believe that the recent meeting of President Joe Biden with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, combined with US unconditional support for the Israelis, will inflame the region even further. Without taking the steps we propose, the death and destruction will continue. Our goal is peace, but a peace accompanied by justice for all people of this region.

As the devastating war in Ukraine continues with no end in sight, the Green Party Peace Action Committee (GPAX) renews its call for the U.S. to end its participation in this proxy war against Russia. It has become clear that the pro-war elements of the Biden administration miscalculated badly in their plans to make Ukraine into a NATO bulwark against Russia. Economic sanctions and vast military and financial assistance have failed to secure victory for Ukraine, and the U.S. is now cynically sacrificing Ukrainian lives to avoid political embarrassment before the 2024 U.S. elections.

By continuing to enable this war, the Biden administration is perpetuating needless bloodshed, weakening our European allies, damaging our relations with non-aligned countries, and increasing the risk of a catastrophic nuclear war. The only beneficiaries of this failed belligerent policy are the U.S. arms makers, who are reaping profits from the replacement of weaponry fed into the fires of the Ukraine war.

GPAX calls for the U.S. government to immediately commence diplomatic negotiations with Russia to bring an end to the war in Ukraine. A negotiated cease-fire should be followed by a permanent settlement that considers the interests of all parties. By pretending that the U.S. cannot end this war, and instead supplying progressively more destructive weaponry, the Biden administration is perpetuating a conflict that is costing thousands of lives and devastating an entire nation.

While refusing to enter negotiations, Biden has steadily escalated U.S. involvement, most recently by supplying artillery cluster munitions. This type of weapon has been banned by many nations because of the danger to civilians of unexploded bomblets that remain lethal for years. Adding this hazard to the huge number of landmines present in the battlefields is creating a deadly legacy for the civilians of Ukraine.

It is time for rationality and realism to return to U.S. foreign policy and for the Washington neocons who engineered the disaster in Ukraine to be removed from power. More war is not the path to peace; it will lead to greater ruin for Ukraine and greater danger for the whole world.

Sowing Death in Ukraine

The decision by the Biden administration to supply large quantities of artillery cluster munitions to Ukraine will create a long-term danger to civilians caused by unexploded ordnance lingering in former war zones. In 2008, recognition of the harmful effects of such weapons led to an international treaty banning their production and use. The Convention on Cluster Munitions has since been ratified by 111 nations. Unfortunately, the U.S. is not a party to this treaty.

The U.S. used vast quantities of cluster munitions in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. The Red Cross has reported that Laos is contaminated by about 80 million cluster submunitions, affecting all 17 provinces and resulting in 300 yearly casualties. The U.S. also used cluster munitions in the 1991 Gulf War, dropping 61,000 cluster bombs. Usage of this type of weapon has diminished in more recent years, but the U.S. retains a vast arsenal of over a million cluster artillery shells, which it now intends to provide to Ukraine.

The small percentage of cluster munition bomblets that fail to detonate immediately remain dangerous unexploded ordnance (UXO). They may explode randomly, or when a farmer works in a field, or when a child handles one, mistaking it for a toy. The arithmetic of calculating this danger is simple: multiply the dud rate (usually around 2%) times the number of bomblets in a shell (typically about 50) times the number of shells fired (Ukraine currently fires thousands a day). This calculation yields the ugly result that the U.S. will cause the sowing of civilian death in the fields and towns of Ukraine.

The danger of cluster munitions UXO compounds the hazard of widespread mining of the battlefields of Ukraine. In addition to conventional mine-laying methods, both sides in the Ukraine war now employ remote mining weaponry that scatters mines via rocket and conventional artillery. The locations of these new minefields are unlikely to be documented accurately and will pose a long-term postwar danger to civilians.

Callous disregard for the consequences of sending cluster munitions to Ukraine is consistent with the cynical U.S. use of Ukraine as a proxy for harming Russia. Heedless of the escalation risk, the U.S. will continue sending weapons to Ukraine as long as the Zelensky regime is willing to sacrifice Ukraine’s people to serve U.S. geopolitical goals. The civilians who die because of the legacy of death bequeathed by unexploded U.S. weapons in Ukraine is considered acceptable collateral damage by the Washington neocons who remain firmly in control of U.S. foreign policy.

The Peace Action Committee of the U.S. Green Party calls for an end to the arming of Ukraine and immediate U.S. negotiations for a cease-fire and permanent settlement of this conflict. The U.S. can and must stop this war that is destroying Ukraine and seeding its land with future death and destruction.

 

The National Committee of the Green Party of the United States (GPUS) has voted to endorse the “Rage Against the War Machine” demonstration planned for February 19 in Washington D.C. This action has been endorsed by other anti-war groups and individuals. GPUS  joins them to strengthen opposition to the United States’ endless wars.

GPUS plans to play a leading role in the emergence of a unified and strong U.S. anti-war movement. The involvement of the US and NATO in the war in Ukraine presents a world-wide emergency that demands a strong anti-war movement around the following demands being made at this upcoming event:

• • Not One More Penny for War in Ukraine
  • Negotiate Peace
  • Stop the War Inflation
  • Disband NATO
  • Global Nuclear De-Escalation
  • Slash the Pentagon Budget
  • Abolish the CIA and Military-Industrial Deep State
  • Abolish War and Empire
  • Restore Civil Liberties
  • Free Julian Assange

The Green Party US Peace Action Committee (GPAX) urges Greens across the country to attend or to hold similar events locally. We are proud to say that Jill Stein will be speaking  at the rally about what makes GPUS’s position so inclusive – our commitments to social, economic and environmental justice. We believe the extreme danger to world peace posed by the war in Ukraine should make unified action against this war a priority for all peace activists.

For more information, contact:

Madelyn Hoffman    lepaix@aol.com

Co-Chair, Green Party Peace Action Committee

Haig Hovaness    hovaness@pipeline.com

Co-Chair, Green Party Peace Action Committee

The Green Party of the United States (GPUS) views the war in Ukraine with great concern. As the US party of peace, we emphatically oppose the recourse to war as a means of inter-state dispute resolution and, accordingly, condemn the present violence in Ukraine by all sides. With respect to the US and Western response, we express specific concerns regarding:

1. The militaristic approach of indefinitely arming Ukraine. This strategy is demonstrably flawed. Ukraine is losing the war (despite heavy Western military assistance) and protracting the conflict through further armament will only lead to more death and destruction in Ukraine – not to a Ukrainian victory. This approach does not reflect a sincere interest in the well-being of the Ukrainian people, but rather the geopolitical and financial interests of Western elites.
2. The misbegotten approach of imposing inefficacious and self-destructive sanctions on Russia. This strategy is empirically flawed. In keeping with the long track record of previous failures of punitive sanctions regimes, the current sanctions on Russia have not altered its behavior in Ukraine. Instead, they have increased its energy revenues and strengthened the Ruble, while damaging the Western European economy and undermining confidence in the US financial system. Aggravating international tensions through economic warfare will not bring peace to Ukraine.
3. The unwillingness to engage in diplomacy. A ceasefire, and subsequent negotiated peace, is the only realistic way to end the war shy of the utter ruination of Ukraine. Adoption of a realistic negotiating position and willingness to make concessions is essential to the initiation of genuine peace talks, but the U.S. has failed to pursue a diplomatic solution.
4. The dishonest portrayal of developments in Ukraine. Russian aggression is rightfully covered and denounced. However, sole attribution of blame to Russia whitewashes an extended history of inimical US interference in Ukraine, contributing to current hostilities. Additionally, depiction of the Zelensky Government as a democratic force representative of the Ukrainian people and selective coverage of Ukrainian military successes deceitfully engender popular support for the failing strategy of continued military aid. The West proudly lauds its freedom of speech and press. We encourage Western media to make use of this right in accurately and critically covering events in Ukraine.GPUS calls for cessation of unconditional military aid to Ukraine, lifting of counter-productive sanctions regimes, and initiation of genuine negotiations toward a ceasefire and sustainable peace framework! We implore the Biden Administration to use its position of influence to facilitate peace by encouraging peace talks and engaging with Russia to de-escalate tensions – not to fuel war by further arming Ukraine and prolonging a terrible conflict.

https://www.gp.org/ukraine_war

References

https://scheerpost.com/2022/04/09/former-nato-military-analyst-blows-the-whistle-on-wests-ukraine-invasion-narrative/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=former-nato-military-analyst-blows-the-whistle-on-wests-ukraine-invasion-narrative

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfHohl6gCJY

https://www.patreon.com/posts/truth-about-in-64765284

https://popularresistance.org/what-are-the-minsk-agreements-and-what-are-their-role-in-the-russia-ukraine-crisis/

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/perpetual_tyranny_endless_wars_are_the_enemy_of_freedom

https://antibellum679354512.wordpress.com/2022/02/03/donetsk-ukraine-moves-150000-troops-rocket-launchers-nato-arms-to-donbass-front-line/

https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-calling-regime-change-russia-this-time-it-isnt-gaffe-1694867

https://drjessesantiano.com/pentagon-bio-laboratories-in-ukraine/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/19/nuclear-weapons-pentagon-us-military-doctrine

The Green Party of the United States’ Peace Action Committee (GPAX) views the unfolding conflict in Ukraine with great concern. We emphatically urge the Biden Administration to use its influence to encourage the resumption of negotiations toward i) a ceasefire in the near-term; and ii) a plan and implementation framework for a sustainable peace. GPAX rejects the Administration’s present approach of frustrating negotiation prospects and perpetually arming Ukraine to weaken Russia through a lengthy war of attrition. This will result in more loss of life and devastation in Ukraine and risks a Russia-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) conflict with catastrophic escalation potential. Negotiation is the only way to end the suffering in Ukraine and head off a possible nuclear war!

GPAX is also concerned about the extraordinary United States sanctions against Russia, which include freezing of central bank assets; blocking Russian banks from the SWIFT international payments system; prohibition of investment in the Russian Federation; blocking of Russian debt payments; and encouragement of U.S. corporations to leave Russia. These sanctions are disrupting international trade, weakening the U.S. economy, and undermining confidence in the U.S. financial system. These ill-advised measures have failed to alter Russia’s conduct in the Ukraine war and have backfired by inflicting serious economic damage on America’s European allies. Aggravating international tensions through economic warfare will not bring peace to Ukraine.

 

Perhaps the most sinister development in America’s involvement in the war in Ukraine is the steady expansion of a propaganda campaign supporting the Zelensky government. Not only has the intensity of this effort been increasing, but there have been explicit statements from media and government sources attempting to normalize falsehood as a proper weapon of war. U.S. journalists now acknowledge that the Zelensky government is issuing propaganda as part of “information operations.”

“It’s a war — everything they do and say publicly is designed to help them win the war. Every public statement is an information operation, every interview, every Zelensky appearance broadcast is an information operation,” said another source familiar with western intelligence. “It doesn’t mean they’re wrong to do it in any way.”

U.S. propagandists, aware of the availability of accurate reports of events from independent Internet sources, are now boldly declaring that propaganda lies are justified in wartime. Since the U.S. is now engaged in a proxy war with Russia, actively arming Ukraine and applying damaging economic sanctions against Russia, the weaponization of anti-Russian propaganda is being defended as patriotic. Thus, the Russians are depicted as barbaric war criminals and American news on the war is dominated by stories of Russian atrocities that are often unsubstantiated Ukrainian claims. Meanwhile, documented atrocities committed by Ukrainians are ignored by the major U.S. media outlets.

The eager participation of U.S. mainstream media in this propaganda campaign is reminiscent of the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, during which doctored intelligence was uncritically accepted as justification for a disastrous military adventure that devastated a nation that had no connection to the 9/11 attacks. The current biased MSM coverage of the war in Ukraine is further undercutting the diminishing credibility of mainstream news sources.

The U.S. intelligence agencies, whose reputation was damaged by their failures in regime change wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, are now further injuring their reputations by abandoning objectivity in favor of a commitment to information war. A recent comment from a government source indicated how intelligence is now manipulated to support the information war against Russia:

“It doesn’t have to be solid intelligence when we talk about it,” a U.S. official said. “It’s more important to get out ahead of them — Putin specifically — before they do something. It’s preventative. We don’t always want to wait until the intelligence is 100 percent certainty that they are going to do something. We want to get out ahead to stop them.”

The CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies were established to provide accurate information to guide the policies of the government. By entering a gray zone where accurate information is mingled with engineered disinformation, the value of these organizations has become questionable. How can our nation trust “intelligence” that has been corrupted by political expediency?

The corrosive effects of official normalization of falsehood by a government is a serious problem. If lying is deemed a worthy patriotic defense of the nation, then when is it not justified? Should America lie about its economic statistics? Should our government lie about our national health and crime information? Where does the political justification for falsehood end? A major reason for the collapse of the Soviet Union was widespread public distrust of a government that lied about everything to preserve the regime.

The normalization of lying destroys social capital, the valuable store of trust among individuals and institutions. When citizens believe that everyone is lying to secure their own interests, trust diminishes, cooperation declines, and discord spreads. Corruption flourishes in low-trust societies, with damaging economic consequences, while high-trust societies tend to have superior economic performance. Americans in leadership positions would do well to consider an old maxim from Plato: But above all things, truth beareth away the victory.

As the Ukraine conflict expands into an economic war between the U.S. and Russia, it has become clear that U.S. foreign policy no longer serves the interests of the U.S. plutocracy. The following developments, engineered by Washington’s Neocons, will inflict increasing harm on the business interests of the United States:

• Freezing of the assets of the Russian central bank. More than $100 billion of Russian central bank assets held in U.S. financial institutions have been seized, resulting in permanent damage to trust in the safety of U.S. dollar deposits.
• Blocking Russian petroleum imports. Although the U.S. is less dependent on imports of Russian oil, there will be inflation of petroleum and commodity prices in the U.S., leading to reduced economic growth.
• Removing Russian financial institutions from the SWIFT electronic payments network. Russia, China, and India will resort to alternative electronic trading networks that will bypass SWIFT and reduce the role of the dollar in world trade.
• Encouraging dozens of U.S. corporations to abandon their Russian business operations. This action has nullified decades of U.S. investment in Russia and will likely lead to the permanent displacement of those businesses by competitors from other nations.

In 1953, a General Motors executive famously said that what was good for GM was good for America, indicating that there was no conflict between the goals of the U.S. government and U.S. business. Today, America’s Neocon ideologues are pursuing policies clearly detrimental to American business and damaging to the U.S. economy. How did this strange situation arise?

The Neocon project, originating with the collapse of the Soviet Union, was to forcibly spread liberal democracy worldwide, with the corresponding expansion of markets for U.S. global corporations. Launched as a response to the 9/11 attacks, the Neocon Global War on Terror was a military campaign aimed at imposing democracy and economic exploitation on the Mideast. After some initial success, this scheme turned into a costly series of stalemated and abandoned wars that spread ruin and chaos in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

Having been frustrated in military power projection, the Neocons have increasingly turned to economic warfare, imposing sanctions on unfriendly nations that cannot be cowed by threats of invasion. Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and Yemen have been subjected to crippling economic sanctions causing vast human suffering but yielding no geopolitical triumphs. Thus, it came as no surprise that Russia’s attack on Ukraine would trigger massive economic sanctions from the U.S. and its NATO/EU allies.

Unfortunately for the Western business community, impairing the Russian economy through financial and trade sanctions also harms the U.S. and European economies. The Europeans will suffer disproportionally because of their dependence on Russian energy imports, but the U.S. will also suffer because of commodity price inflation; damage to the role of the U.S. dollar; and distrust sown among trading partners. If the economic war expands to China, there will be much more economic damage.

America’s plutocrats are slowly awakening to the fact that in enabling the Neocons, they have created a monster that is now damaging their vital interests, but it is too late for them to tame this monster. Neocon ideology has fully permeated the U.S. political establishment and the media, and opposition to the Neocon economic warfare agenda is now branded as unpatriotic if not treasonous. It is now generally accepted in Washington that America has a right and a duty to bend all other nations to our will by any means necessary, whatever the cost.

The Neocons will not go gently into the night of their failed ideology. Their organizations, reputations, and livelihoods are at stake. They will cling to even the smallest possibility of a final triumph, doubling down at every opportunity rather than accepting defeat. Unlike the plutocrats, they have no financial capital at risk; only their careers are at stake. To this day, the advocates of the disastrous War on Terror regime change invasions are fully in control of U.S. foreign policy and are ratcheting up conflict with Russia and China.

History shows that once a nation becomes dominated by a pernicious ideology, its business community is powerless to change the course of foreign policy. This was the case in WWII Germany and Japan, as business leaders, who earlier supported expansionist militarism, watched helplessly as their assets were destroyed in losing wars. It remains to be seen whether the damage inflicted on the U.S. by the Neocons will be limited to years of economic decline or will extend to the catastrophe of a nuclear war. The American plutocracy sowed the wind by backing the Neocons, and it will now reap the whirlwind of Neocon foreign policy folly.

Haig Hovaness

Co-Chair, U.S. Green Party Peace Action Committee

The Green Party Peace Action Committee (GPAX) views the conflict in Ukraine as the tragic, yet inevitable, result of relentless effort by the U.S., NATO, and the European Union for global economic, political, and military dominance. Within this context, the current conflict stems from the 2014 US-backed coup of Ukraine’s democratically elected government – and in the determination of the U.S./EU/NATO to convert Ukraine, whose government recently stated its intention to acquire nuclear weapons, into a heavily militarized NATO member nation located on the border of the Russian Federation.

NATO’s expansion has been a pressing security concern for Russia since 1998, when the U.S. govt. inaugurated the formal process of growing NATO’s membership to include former nations of the Warsaw Pact – Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. NATO expansion into Eastern Europe has been carried out, not only in violation of a pledge – made by Secretary of State James A. Baker to then-Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 – that NATO would not expand one inch eastward with the end of the Cold War, but also in violation of subsequent treaties in which the U.S. and its allies committed to respect the security concerns of other countries, including the Russian Federation.

Today, as the conflict escalates, NATO’s aggressive expansion has become an existential threat to all oppressed and colonized people around the world. A similar effort to expand is occurring in Latin America with the use of Colombia and Brazil as U.S. proxies against Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba. Also, in the African continent, regime change is enacted through AFRICOM funding and training. For peace to arrive in these regions and in the world, NATO and AFRICOM must be dismantled.

For GPAX, peace is not merely the absence of conflict. Peace means a world liberated from militarism, nuclear proliferation, imperialism and unjust war, patriarchy, and white supremacy. The resurgence and celebration of Nazism in Ukraine, as well as in the West, demonstrates that the global consolidation of xenophobia and racism, especially white supremacy, is an integral part of imperialism.

For GPAX, peace also means: dismantling the military-industrial complex and all intelligence agencies that engage in covert warfare & that subject U.S. citizens to unconstitutional surveillance for “anti-government” views; nationalizing the oil & gas industries that realize windfall profits from contrived world shortages (i.e. oil/gas from Iran, Venezuela and Russia are restricted); abolishing illegal unilateral economic sanctions that kill and cause untold suffering to the people of targeted countries; and nationalizing the Federal Reserve system – that funnels stolen & frozen foreign assets to select member banks which misuse these illicit funds in the repurchasing market to realize extraordinary profit. Witness what’s happening with Afghanistan’s assets, more than 20 years after the U.S. first invaded.

The only way to end war is to end corporate profiteering!

Bloated “defense” budgets must be reinvested into education, health and childcare, housing, and a people centered Green New Deal. While we grieve for the current loss of life in Ukraine, we also mourn over 14,000 deaths in Eastern Ukraine caused over the last 8 years by the Ukrainian military armed heavily by the U.S. We also mourn hundreds of thousands of deaths in Somalia, Yemen, and in every nation suffering because of NATO provoked wars and armed conflicts. We offer our unwavering solidarity with all victims of imperialism.

To secure the interests of the Russian and Ukrainian people, there must be good faith negotiations between the Russian Federation, representatives of the peoples of Donbas, and the Ukraine. The EU and the U.S. must end their continuous shipments of arms and other “lethal aid” to Ukraine. The 2015 Minsk agreements, signed by both Ukraine and Russia and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, and approved by the UN Security Council in 2015, offer one formula for a diplomatic solution to the conflict that would satisfy the aspirations of the peoples of the Donbass for autonomy from the current Ukrainian government.

It was only after the Ukrainian government’s shelling of Eastern Ukraine, in violation of the Minsk agreement – which was confirmed by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) – that Russia, in mid-February, withdrew its support. The conflict in Ukraine has exposed the destructive effects of imperialism: war, racism, and militarism, which continually result in the unjust and anti-democratic redistribution & concentration of capital. Our demand for peace requires an end to U.S. imperialism and its implementation by NATO and other U.S. military alliances.

 

 

The most important and troubling fact of the current war in Ukraine is that the U.S. is on the brink of nuclear war with Russia. Our foreign policy establishment has maneuvered the U.S. into a position of direct confrontation with Russia, the most heavily armed nuclear power. The United States has the second largest nuclear armament. To support the Ukrainian government, the U.S. has effectively declared economic war on Russia, and we are supplying lethal military aid to Ukraine to be used on the battlefield against Russia. We are urging other countries, like Germany, to do the same. How did we get to this precarious situation?

Over the last two decades, U.S. foreign policy has been dominated by militaristic thinking. The use of military power through aggressive war and the threat of military action has been a means of asserting U.S. influence in international affairs. This approach has been unsuccessful, to say the least. Now the same policy makers who created the disasters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria are urging similar militaristic adventures directed against Russia and China. But Russia and China are not militarily weak and vulnerable states like the past victims of U.S. aggression. They are nuclear armed, and there is no defense against nuclear weapons. Once a nuclear war begins, the whole world will be impacted!

The American people are now asked to trust the judgment of a Washington power elite with a record of repeated disastrous miscalculation as it urges increasing hostility toward Russia and China. Errors of judgment in Iraq and Afghanistan led to death and destruction in distant lands, but similar errors in dealing with Russia and China could lead to the nuclear destruction of cities in the United States and around the world..

The Peace Action Committee of the Green Party of the U.S. calls for ending America’s militaristic foreign policy, beginning with advocacy of a negotiated settlement of the war in Ukraine. The U.S., which has enormous influence over the Zelensky government, and has interfered greatly in Ukraine’s affairs at least since the coup of 2014, is currently acting to prolong the armed struggle. Sacrificing the lives of thousands of Ukrainians in a futile struggle against an overwhelming invasion force is an irresponsible action. A neutral Ukraine can coexist peacefully with Russia, just as Finland and Austria have since the end of WWII.

Keeping the U.S. on the brink of nuclear war with Russia and China by sustaining and aggravating regional disputes risks world-wide catastrophe. We must prevent the U.S. policy of unending war fever from becoming a fatal affliction for all humankind.  All countries in the world deserve to live in peace and security.