Just World Educational today releases copies of its new 32-page Report, “Ukraine: Stop the Carnage, Build the Peace!” This Report builds on the records of the eight webinars we held on the Ukraine Crisis back in March, in which JWE Board member Richard Falk and President Helena Cobban held probing conversations on different aspects of the Ukraine Crisis with 17 thoughtful and well-informed invited guests.
Click HERE to download a PDF of the full Report (1.2 MB), that you can read online or print at home. (Alternatively, you can buy copies of the printed report from Amazon for $5 each, HERE.)
At 2:30 pm ET on Tuesday, April 19, we’re holding a webinar in which Falk and Cobban will, along with several friends and colleagues, be giving our Report a formal launch. Please register in advance if you’d like to attend this webinar, which is free of charge to the learning public: Click HERE to do so.
Our new Report contains digests of the eight webinars that we held in March, along with a list of eight Policy Recommendations that members of the JWE Board felt grew out of those deliberations– though we realize that not all the participants in the webinar series will agree with all of them.
The first three of the Recommendations included in the Report are:
- Ukraine-wide ceasefire now!
- An embargo on arms shipments into Ukraine by all countries.
- Start negotiations now, involving all relevant parties, for a lasting peace arrangement for Ukraine, and commit to completion within six months.
You can read the whole list of Policy Recommendations here (PDF).
We are delighted that three other organizations have joined JWE to endorse our whole list of Policy Recommendations and have agreed to co-sponsor the Report. These organizations are:
- CODEPINK
- Environmentalists Against War
- World Beyond War
- Pax Christi USA
- Ban Killer Drones
- Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service
Just World Ed has already, earlier, released an Online Learning Hub that contains the full digital records (videos, audio, transcripts) of the March webinar series. Those records and this new Report are complementary: between them, they provide a rich fund of resources for discussions and education that we hope you’ll find useful in your community group, classroom, or congregation.
Among the distinctive features of the webinar series, and of this Report, are the following:
- We realized early on that a whole generation of citizens of NATO countries grew up in an era in which US/Western power in the world was hegemonic, and U.S. decisionmakers never needed to fear any debilitating military pushback, either nuclear or non-nuclear, from countries that they invaded or threatened– with the possible exception of North Korea. This year’s Ukraine Crisis is different, since it threatens to bring US/NATO forces into direct contact/conflict with Russia. Russia, the United States, and two other members of NATO are all recognized nuclear-weapons states, so any such conflict might swiftly escalate to what some experts term Omnicide, or Ecocide. Our webinar series (and the Report) therefore included consideration of the terrifying dynamics of “mutually assured destruction” and other facts of the Cold War era to which the world seems to be returning. We believe those materials should be of particular value to the under-45 generation.
- Among the guests of the webinar series were three residents of the Global South, since it is the peoples of those parts of the world who, because of the economic and climate-change sequelae of the crisis, will likely end up– along with Ukrainians and many Russian families– being among those most direly affected by it. We strongly believe that voices from the Global South need to be included in any deliberations on this crisis and the world-order issues that it raises.