No War in Ukraine

Remarks delivered at a meeting with Ukrainian and Russian human rights defenders, hosted by Another Europe Is Possible 24 Jan 2022

Paul Mason
4 min readJan 24, 2022

I just spoke with Oleksandra Matviychuk, Dmitri Makarov, Alvaro Vasconcelos, Yuliya Yurchenko and Mary Kaldor about the threat of war in Ukraine. Here’s what I said:

Let’s be clear about what’s going on. What’s going on is not “US aggression”. You may say it was unwise for the USA to offer NATO membership to Georgia and Ukaraine in 2008. I would agree.

But the last three US presidents have shown no interest in confronting Russia. Trump was a Russian proxy. Today my inbox is full of statements from old, neocon right of USA criticising Biden for inaction, for his lack of commitment and slowness in defending Ukraine.

What this is is Russian aggression against Ukraine.

If Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine, his aim will not just be to demonstrate that might is right; that the right of Ukraine’s people to self-determination carries no value in the space of the former Soviet Union.

The aim will be to demonstrate a new kind of warfare. Just as General Franco demonstrated what the mass bombing of civilians looked like in the Spanish Civil War.

In a war between equal states, the aim from day one, hour one, is to disorganise government, atomise civil society and obliterate the difference between truth and lies. It is to send the population clamouring to the hospitals, the supermarkets, the morgues and town halls for information.

Because the internet will be switched off; GPS will be off; the cellphone network will be down. The aim is to leave the defeated populace incapable of exerting even the most basic claim to human rights.

So, before we consider the rights and wrongs, the just and unjust claims of the belligerents, let us first say this: war between Russia and Ukraine can be stopped.

Realism compels me to state that it must be stopped, even at the cost of diplomatic compromise, loss of face, and the demobilisation of military machines and private armies that have taken months to mobilise.

Only civil society can achieve this. Because we have no skin in the game of military elites, private mercenary companies, oligarchies and crime networks.

Peace movements generally have two windows of opportunity.

First, like now, in the moment that the mass of people suddenly realise an unthinkable conflict is imminent.

We have no power over the military machines; but have the power to mobilise thousands to demand peace; to show that peace is possible, and that war is a choice by the elites, and that they must be judged for taking that choice — both under international law and by history.

The second chance comes as the war ends, as people get sick of killing, industrial-scale lying, hunger, mass displacement. They ask: how can we stop this happening again?

Three times in the last century, humanity came up with comprehensive answers: via the League of Nations and Treaty of Versailles; via the UN and international human rights law in the 1940s; and in the Helsinki, SALT and other peace-building formats that emerged towards the end of the Cold War.

We must — even as we try to dissuade and deter Putin from invading Ukraine — design a future framework that can accommodate and contain the Russian Federation in a comprehensive and multilateral and, yes, rules based order.

I would love it if that new framework included a democratic Russia and a non-oligarchic Ukraine. But it might have to include these states as currently governed.

In pursuit of that, I want to make one concrete proposal that NATO, the USA and its various allies, can’t seem to get around to. I’ve been a strong supporter of NATO as a defensive alliance. I’ve been cancelled and vilified by the left’s Putin fan club for saying this — that NATO is a key part of the global security architecture, and that Britain must remain part of it.

But you cannot have a defensive alliance that keeps an “open door” to countries which — self-evidently — have not landed permanently in the camp of democratic stability.

Indeed, I would prefer NATO to have a door through which countries like Turkey and Hungary, that don’t meet this standard, can exit the alliance, not enter it.

Nobody can stop Ukraine’s desire to join, or partner with, the EU and NATO. I would encourage both. But the price of stability now may have to be a formalised delay.

A formalised delay, combined with capacity building in Ukraine’s civil society, and the buildup of its armed forces, seems to me the best way of averting conflict now.

Finally, if conflict happens, we need to realise the biggest implication .

It won’t shut down the threat of so-called “colour revolutions”, which Putin fears. If you invade Ukraine, overthrow the government, I can guarantee there will be another colour revolution in Ukraine. With 30% of adults signed up for civil defence it’s inevitable.

Any invasion will signal a decade of popular democratic movements — from Tiraspol to Odessa to Moscow to Almaty to Vladivostok and maybe even to Beijing.

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Paul Mason
Paul Mason

Written by Paul Mason

Journalist, writer and film-maker. Author of How To Stop Fascism.

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