I’ve written the following on the FB page of Jeffrey Sachs in response to his opinion piece in Common Dreams entitled A Mediator's Guide to Peace in Ukraine.
[Note: I quote him directly here but am not linking to his article precisely because to do so provides metaphorical oxygen to his ideas. Feel free to look it up, if you so choose.]
Jeffrey:
Regarding your article in Common Dreams entitled A Mediator's Guide to Peace in Ukraine let me say the following:
“Peace will come when the U.S. backs away from further NATO enlargement towards Russia’s borders…”
This ‘’sphere of influence’ idea betrays an ethically compromised and practically foolish position of privilege wherein Western powers (with you supposedly as their intellectual head) again aggrandize to themselves the right to walk away from those nations whose people long for democracy, and leave them in the clutches of a narcissistic despot. This is the same sort of ‘policy making’ embodied by Kissinger when he encouraged Pinochet.
“Peace will come when… Ukraine backs away from its attempts to retake Crimea…”
Again you betray a colonial mindset within which you seek to provide intellectual cover for those who feel entitled to push Ukrainians into abandoning their family members and fellow citizens because it is more convenient than holding to the clear principle that rewarding dictators, at the expense of democracy-seeking people, always results, over time, in worse conflicts and more suffering.
“Peace will come when… all parties agree to secure the sovereign borders of Ukraine under the UN Charter and backed by the guarantees of the UN Security Council and other nations.”
And here you propose essentially the same ‘solution’ as the The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances wherein the signatories committed only to “Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression…””, without so much as a nod to the tank-sized loophole that Russia holds a veto on the Security Council. This is the very same loophole that served as a signal to President Putin that the Western states were ambivalent toward protecting Ukraine, and he took this as encouragement for his invasion. Were the Ukrainians not the exceptional people that they are, Russia would now own the entire country. As you should well understand NATO is a defensive organization. Putin’s paranoia and disinformation about other nations wanting to join it should not be given intellectual oxygen.
In spite of your reference to “a world desperately in need of peace and cooperation” it is unconscionable, and frankly naïve, of you to espouse giving tangible encouragement to a narcissistic dictator’s fever dream of reconstituting the U.S.S.R. by abandoning great swaths of Ukraine, its people, and its resources to this bully. It will never be enough until he loses completely. Don’t hide behind your intellect. Your proposal is unethical and, if implemented, will lead to greater horrors.
Finally, your position that “The conflict then escalated” because “Ukraine then walked away from the negotiating table… and adopted the policy of refusing negotiations until Russia was driven out of Ukraine…” betrays a profound blind spot in your thinking. That you avoid recognizing Russia, and specifically Putin, as the sole escalator of this conflict serves no one… except Putin.