The People’s Party holds that all wars are waged to enrich the wealthy and impoverish the poor. War has nothing to do with the interests of the people, be they in Ukraine, Russia, the United States, Germany, Belarus or any other country. The military-industrial complex, oil and gas multinationals, and the corporate media profit from war while Ukrainians and Russians are killed and forced from their homes, Americans and Europeans face higher energy prices and economic hardship, and the whole world faces the risk of nuclear armageddon.
We reject all war, military and economic, including the war in Ukraine and the militarization of Europe that has made it inevitable. The Warsaw Pact dissolved in 1991, with the promise of an end to the Cold War. But Bill Clinton and the administrations that followed squandered hopes of a peace dividend. Instead of disbanding NATO, the US and western allies nearly doubled its size and encircled Russia with military bases.
Devastating invasions from Germany and the West have killed 30 million Russians in the last century, which is why maintaining a buffer of neutral countries between it and potentially hostile powers has always been so important to Russia’s security. In the thirty years since the dissolution of the USSR, NATO has integrated most of Eastern Europe, including several former Soviet and Warsaw Pact states.
Dismantle NATO and the endless-war machine
To understand what NATO encirclement would look like against the US, imagine Russia forming a hostile military alliance in the Western Hemisphere with 30 countries and marching it right to our southern border in Mexico. The US would start a nuclear war to prevent such an existential threat. NATO should have been disbanded when the Warsaw Pact disbanded at the end of the Cold War. It serves no purpose now other than as an aggressor outside of the UN security framework.
To end the war in Ukraine, stand with its people, avert escalation and future wars, and create a more peaceful and collaborative world, we support getting to the origins and heart of the conflict and taking these actions when we are in government:
- Disband NATO and its military bases
- Recognize the UN as the global security authority
- Disband permanent membership and veto power on the UN Security Council
- Recognize Ukraine as an independent and militarily neutral country
- End all wars of aggression, regime-change wars and resource wars
- Ban funding and arming Nazis
- Ban Congress and government officials from war profiteering and insider trading
- Cut the US military budget in half and invest those resources into guaranteeing jobs, health care, housing and college at home
US wages decades of war in the Middle East
Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the US has sought to regime change and control governments in former Soviet states and spheres of influence, including Eastern Europe, the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Foreign policy analysts including Henry Kissinger and Joe Biden himself in 1997 said that NATO encirclement could lead to a counterattack from Russia.
The US and its corporate media cheerleaders have no moral authority to condemn Russia following two decades of their own regime change and resources wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya – wars that have killed a million people, injured and displaced countless more, and devastated the infrastructure and society of those countries. Libya, formerly one of the most prosperous African nations, was reduced to a failed state run by warlords after leader Muammar Gaddafi sought to form a United States of Africa with its own gold-backed currency. The US-backed Saudi war in Yemen has plunged the country into a horrifying famine with 17 million people food insecure.
Obama-Biden backed coup in Ukraine in 2014
In Ukraine, the Obama-Biden administration staged a coup in 2014, replacing a democratically-elected president who supported Russia with a puppet state supporting the US and Europe. Ukraine’s eight-year conflict and shelling of the separatist Donbas region has killed 14,000 people. The new government and military are run in part by Nazis and are some of the most corrupt on the continent. Like it did with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Syria, the US is funding and arming Nazis in Ukraine to fight Russia, with the enthusiastic support of the Biden administration and the Democrats. The US has also been caught running bioweapons labs in the country.
The same corporate media outlets that cover “Putin’s war” nonstop, without the slightest historical context, conveniently find no time to cover even larger humanitarian disasters of the US’s making. Last week the New York Times declared that “Russia’s war in Ukraine is especially dangerous after decades of relative peace worldwide.”
A resource war over crops and minerals
In addition to NATO encirclement, the war in Ukraine is a resource war. Russia supplies about 35 percent of Europe’s natural gas and the US natural gas industry wants to take over that market, a goal the Pentagon shares to “reduce Europe’s dependence on Russia.” Ukraine is also rich in natural minerals and arable land. It is one of the world’s largest bread baskets and food exporters, including staples like wheat and corn. The war has increased food prices and could lead to famine in countries that are heavily dependent on Ukraine, such as Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, and Turkey. Countries that are already some of the most food-insecure are expected to be the worst affected, including Bangladesh, Madagascar and Yemen.
US leaders are recklessly escalating and personally profiting
War profiteers in both parties have called to escalate the war with a no fly zone, an action so dangerous that NATO has ruled it out warning that it could lead to a “full-fledged war in Europe” and a nuclear war. That hasn’t stopped Biden from calling for regime change in Russia, declaring in Poland, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” Nor has it stopped a large bipartisan majority in Congress from sending $13 billion in weapons and aid to Ukraine while they canceled $15 billion in Covid aid for Americans. Some in the corporate media are openly hoping for a prolonged Russian occupation of Ukraine so that the US can back an insurgency that drains Russia’s resources. Members of Congress are personally profiting from insider trading off the war, giving them another incentive to escalate.
The People’s Party will end the Cold War and embrace a multipolar world
US bipartisan foreign policy and NATO’s continued existence, let alone expansion, show that in the minds of the Pentagon and Wall Street, the Cold War never really ended in 1991, it just entered a new phase. The US continued to view Russia as a major enemy and base its foreign policy around subjugating it. It never reduced military spending or delivered the promised peace dividends to Americans. From the moment the USSR broke apart, the US has engaged in a systematic campaign to turn former Soviet and Soviet-allied states into US satellite states, either by regime change, war, NATO induction, economic pressure, or diplomatic means.
This policy is backfiring as China, India and Russia work to develop alternative monetary systems rooted in their currencies, replacing the petrodollar’s status as the global reserve currency with a more multipolar set of currencies, moving us closer to a multipolar world. Deeper ties and economic collaboration on projects such as China’s Belt and Road initiative between Russia, China and India may be a lasting legacy of this war.
The People’s Party will finally end the defunct Cold War framework that still drives US foreign policy and embrace a multipolar and more collaborative world. We will dismantle NATO and its military bases. We will recognize Ukraine as an independent and militarily neutral state. We will end all US wars and recognize the UN and international law as the chief global security authority. We will slash the military budget in half and invest those resources into guaranteeing jobs, health care, housing and college right here in America – because all wars are waged to enrich the wealthy and impoverish the poor.