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On February 24th, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. At Earth Future Action, we absolutely condemn this action. Vladimir Putin's decision to invade Ukraine will have the most dire consequences for both the Ukrainian and Russian people. This war is a very serious situation. It could threaten a nuclear confrontation between America and Russia and is already doing very serious harm to the US economy and the world economy.
Experts at the U.N. are stating the Ukraine crisis could also cause a global food shortage. There's a very realistic danger of millions dying in a global famine. Ukraine and Russia supply about 30% of the world's wheat and barley, one-fifth of the world's maize, and over half of its sunflower oil according to a UN report. The whole war could throw up to 1.7 billion people into "poverty, destitution and hunger" on a scale not seen in decades according to the UN. At least 107 economies are severely exposed to at least one of these dimensions.
The important thing now is to work on a plan for peace in Ukraine. It is time for a ceasefire to prevent anymore killing.
With the current climate crisis and Covid crisis, our world needs to come together. The war in Ukraine will only make it even more difficult to address the climate and pandemic. Which is why it needs to be brought to a quick end.
America spends more on war than the next seven nations combined and yet a million Americans have been killed by a foreign enemy—the Coronavirus pandemic. Is this real national security? We think not.
Covid is just a part of growing environmental problems that threaten all life on earth.
Clearly, we need a new concept of national security.
We would like to applaud President Joe Biden for rejoining the START Treaty and for making climate change a national security priority at the beginning of his administration. We would also like to thank President Joe Biden for rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement and for speaking out against sanctioning the Nordstream pipeline.
However, we will say that much more needs to be done. Especially if we are to thrwart increasing tensions between the world's two major nuclear super powers.
The current cost of the military competition with Russia and China makes it impossible to have the resources to focus on other life and death matters such as climate change, the Coronavirus and economic threats.
Furthermore, the current crisis in Ukraine creates a growing danger of a hot war or a nuclear war unless things are changed. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have recently placed the Doomsday Clock at 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it's ever been.
In terms of the relationship with Russia and China, a key point is that the current situation does not benefit anyone. It does not benefit Russia, the U.S., or China.
Our organization has been involved in non-violent conflict resolution for years. We have some ideas in this report for how to reduce tensions and to end the conflict in Ukraine so we can focus on larger priorities.
LINKS
Open Letter to Biden Calling for a Ceasefire in Ukraine (Earth Future Action)
It is critical now to take action to stop this crisis and to support the Ukrainian people. This is a personal issue for us since we have a number of Ukrainian friends.
National Security Petitions (Earth Future Action)
There is large public support for Biden changing his national security priorities.
Russia and Ukraine have outlined conditions for peace. And yet there are no negotiations being made on the part of the U.S. to push the situation toward peace.
Russia has said they are willing to negotiate. Ukraine has said they would consider some of Russia's terms. Ukraine's President, Zelenskyy also deserves credit for offering some constructive ideas to stop the crisis.
In the interest of saving lives, we believe that a ceasefire at this time would be the best option for all parties involved. Let's have an internationally supervised plebiscite to help the different regions of Ukraine decide their future. The Minsk Agreement helped end the war in the Donbass region of Ukraine. We do not see why international cooperation and compromise cannot be the solution once more at this time.
We also think America should enter back into the treaties it pulled out of, such as the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
Russia is unlike any other country on the planet. They are the one country that could wipe the United States off the face of the Earth in 45 minutes. Russia currently has the largest arsenal of nuclear warheads in the world. If there is a nuclear war, the consequences for the global environment would kill everybody else on the planet, not just the citizens of America and Russia.
There is no such thing as a controlled or limited nuclear war. Former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis once said: “I don’t think there’s any such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon. Any nuclear weapon used at any time is a strategic game changer.”
Experts at the U.N. are stating the Ukraine crisis could also cause a global food shortage. There's a very realistic danger of millions dying in a global famine. Ukraine and Russia supply about 30% of the world's wheat and barley, one-fifth of the world's maize, and over half of its sunflower oil according to a UN report. The whole war could throw up to 1.7 billion people into "poverty, destitution and hunger" on a scale not seen in decades according to the UN. At least 107 economies are severely exposed to at least one of these dimensions.
A HISTORY OF THE GROWING TENSIONS BETWEEN THE WEST AND UKRAINE
Clearly there is no excuse for the actions of Russia in Ukraine. However, it is important to understand the history of the situation if we are to establish an end to the war.
Since the end of the Cold War, the West and NATO betrayed their promise not to expand, and NATO today extends right up to the borders of Russia and is just an hour away from St. Petersburg. This is a very sensitive issue to Russia because they have been invaded twice in the last 100 years. And key battles in Russian history have taken place in areas such as Estonia. So the Russians have good reason to see the expansion of NATO as a direct threat.
Back in 2014, the very unstable state of Ukraine became even more unstable. The modern state of Ukraine is an ethnically and linguistically divided nation. The Russian-speaking folk in the East are not too fond of the Ukrainian speaking folk in the West and the feeling is mutual. In 2014, a series of violent rebellions toppled a legally elected government in Ukraine, and the Russians started to believe that the hostile anti-Russian government that came to power would threaten a vital Russian security asset, their naval base at Sevastopol in the Crimea.
THE NEED FOR A SPECIAL AMBASSADOR TO RUSSIA
To be specific, we encourage the Biden team to appoint a special ambassador to try to reduce dangerous tensions with Russia. We need a special ambassador who will have a commitment to a professional approach to resolving problems… not cheering on the dangerous, failed neoconservative policies such as those advocated by people like Michael McFaul, Bob Menendez, Victoria Nuland and Bob Kagan. From Iraq, to Syria, to Libya, to Yemen… the disaster of neoconservative ideas should be apparent to all sane people.
A PEACE PLAN FOR UKRAINE
A peace plan needs to be developed for Ukraine to end this mess.
We call on all reasonable people to support an internationally supervised plebiscite in Ukraine to help the different provinces to decide their own future. The situation in Ukraine is an ethnic conflict between ethnic Ukrainians and Russians. We have both Ukrainian and Russian friends. We need a road to a peaceful future for all. Why not give peace and democracy a try?
REJOIN KEY NUCLEAR TREATIES
America has also pulled out of several key nuclear agreements with Russia since the end of the Cold War.
As we stated above, rejoining the START Treaty was a good decision on the part of the Biden Administration. But more needs to be done.
The United States also needs to rejoin the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and Open Skies.
Under the former Trump Presidency, America launched economic attacks against companies such as Huawei in an attempt to destroy some of China's key technology assets. Former President Trump's threats against China have led to a troubling escalation in Chinese nuclear military spending. This was all very counterproductive from a trade point of view.
Unfortunately, many of Trump's sanctions have been continued by Biden.
And now the trade deficit is worse. In the long run, the Chinese are going to restructure their economy to be less dependent on the West. As a result, America will be weaker. China will be stronger.
At the same time, the Chinese have not been too realistic in their behavior in the South China Sea and other areas such as the seas near Japan. They are making territorial claims that are quite farfetched.
TIME TO WIND DOWN THE U.S. ECONOMIC WAR AGAINST CHINA
In the case of China, we need to have an adult discussion behind the scenes about the economic problems and put an end to direct acts of economic war such as the attempt to destroy Huawei. How would America feel if China tried to destroy Microsoft? Or Google? Would we just accept a foreign country trying to destroy U.S. corporations? No, we would not. So that all needs to be wound down.
Right now, President Joe Biden's situation frankly verges on hopeless because until the military spending situation can be brought down, the U.S. government is in a financial crisis that is not resolvable. So these things need to be adopted. We will add to our plans on this, but we wanted to put forth this report to clarify thinking on this subject.
We are all connected in the web of life. There is no America first, China First, India first or other nationalistic solution to global environmental problems.
As we mentioned above, we would like to applaud Team Biden for making climate change a national security priority and for rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement. But if we are spending trillions on forever wars, we cannot focus on the most serious threats that we face, such as environmental threats and disease.
Climate change and environmental threats are now one of the greatest threats to human life on the planet, and they are not being taken seriously either.
A particularly horrific affair is America's garbage crisis and the pollution of the ocean.
In regards to the ocean, it's difficult to begin to even cover the scale of the disaster. Overfishing is a total disaster. The destruction of the coral reefs is a total disaster. The acidification of the oceans due to climate change is a total disaster and perhaps most ominously of all, the poisoning of the oceans via the gigantic garbage islands that are all over the world. These contain huge amounts of plastic, which are turning into microplastic and killing and poisoning whole sections of the ocean's life. It is particularly horrifying that even in some of the deepest and most obscure parts of the oceans, like the Mariana Trench, plastic has been found. The plastic is a direct threat to all life.
WHAT SHOULD BE DONE ABOUT THE CRISIS IN THE OCEAN?
The first thing that should be done for the United States is to have U.S. intelligence agencies start monitoring the situation. Specifically, U.S. intelligence agencies should start monitoring the world's fishing fleets, particularly the Chinese fishing fleets to see if they're doing what they claim they are doing. The intelligence agencies should also monitor the plastic islands to see what the scale of those things are and where the plastic is coming from, and which countries are generating the plastic. We should also monitor the coral reefs.
An all out campaign should be launched to clean up the garbage islands. This will require billions of dollars. The outflow of plastic from major countries needs to be curbed and drastic action needs to be taken about this. For example, if a particular river is seen as generating a huge amount of plastic, something needs to be done to prevent the plastic from getting into the ocean. This will require international cooperation because some countries may not be able to afford to pay for the actions that are needed to prevent the plastic from getting into the oceans. There needs to be a far larger creation of wildlife reserves where nature can replenish itself. An overall particular problem in our view is the lack of information about what's going on and the dependence on commercial interests for that information. This needs to end. Governments need to take charge of this. Specifically, the American government needs to do more to monitor this and not simply rely on what a country like China might or might not say.
The national security and foreign policy decision making parts of the U.S. government need to be restructured to deal with this. In other words, there should be an oceans task force on the National Security Council and there should be an Oceans Department in the state Department.
In the end, we need a much stricter set of international treaties, and equally important, if not more important, a system to enforce those treaties if we are to avoid having the oceans destroyed.
We also need to set up a functional recycling system. Since recycling in America is a disaster. Especially after China started refusing to take our trash in 2018. And because of the Coronavirus, much more plastic waste is being generated. The government may have to make some tough decisions: tax increases or spending cuts in other areas. We don't have the specifics or all the answers here. But it's important to acknowledge that this is a crisis that needs to be addressed, because it is part of the greater, overall environmental crisis on this planet.
A MOMENT OF TRUTH
In this report, we're not saying we have all the answers. But our key point is that it's time to fight real problems. In particular, the crisis in Ukraine needs to end.
We need to come together as a planet to fight real problems. If not, these problems are going to unleash a wave of disaster that we may not survive.
One million Americans are already dead from Covid 19 because of wrong national security priorities. Overseas, millions have been killed. Many millions more have had their lives ruined because America has followed imperial delusions peddled by the Neo-conservatives like Bob Kagan.
The time for major change is now.
Health care for all Americans should be at the top of the agenda. Health care should be a right as it is in every major nation. The distortion of national priorities by the delusions of liberal imperialism must end. Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen. The slaughter needs to end abroad, and it needs to end at home.
So in our current time there is a moment of truth. Talk about making climate change a matter of "national security" will be just that, talk, unless real changes in national security priorities are made. In the worst case scenario, these new conflicts will eliminate all life on the planet if they lead to a nuclear war.
There is a huge human rights crisis in our world today. It's here in America. Hundreds of thousands of people did not need to die. They got killed by wrong national security priorities. It's time for President Biden to change those priorities.
LINKS
Open Letter to Biden Calling for a Ceasefire in Ukraine (Earth Future Action)
It is critical now to take action to stop this crisis and to support the Ukrainian people. This is a personal issue for us since we have a number of Ukrainian friends.
Ukraine Fact Sheet (Earth Future Action)
The important thing now is to look at the facts and begin to work on a plan for peace in Ukraine.
The Cost of Sanctions (Earth Future Action)
The current war in Ukraine will lead to a global famine that the U.N. says could kill millions.
How to Help the People of Ukraine (Earth Future Action)
Some resources for helping the Ukrainian people.
National Security Petitions (Earth Future Action)
We link to a number of petitions showing huge public and bipartisan support for changes in U.S. national security priorities, along with an end to forever wars.
The most dangerous situation humanity has ever faced (Jerry Brown, CNN, 1-27-21)
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have announced that the hands of the iconic Doomsday Clock remain at 100 seconds to midnight -- as close to the end of humanity as the clock has ever been. While there are some encouraging signs now emerging, we continue to teeter at the brink of apocalypse and moving the Clock away from midnight would provide false hope at a time when urgent action is needed.
Putting Hypersonic Missiles on a Virginia-Class Attack Submarine Could Start World War III (National Interest, 2-9-21)
An adversary observing a missile launch from an American (cruise missile submarines) SSGN might mistake it for a nuclear first strike. “These missiles shouldn’t be launched from anything resembling a (Ballistic missile submarine) SSBN,” Robert Farley, a University of Kentucky political scientist, noted on his blog.
The U.S. Navy has confirmed that the Block V version of its Virginia-class attack submarines will be the first vessels in the fleet to carry a new hypersonic missile the service is developing.