The crisis in Ukraine should be resolved peacefully and the Russian concerns of threats to their security can be resolved in the manner, the Cuban Missile crisis was. If only Ukraine had retained their nuclear capability as a defence strategy and not bought NATO assurances and guarantees, today they could have avoided loss of lives. There is only one guarantee for the sovereignty of any nation and that is their own defense capability.

It is very unfortunate that the UN Charter and sovereignty of independent states, who are members of United Nations has been violated so often by powerful nuclear power states on one pretext or another. While regime change in sovereign countries should occur through domestic legal procedures, major Super Powers have been resorting to covert interventions and even through invasion, reviving the colonial heritage of redrawing internationally recognized state boundaries to achieve their strategic goals. We have seen such interventions in Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc., with colossal fatalities and displacement of millions of innocent citizens.

In 1962, President Kennedy cited the Monroe’s Doctrine (MD) to justify the US confrontation with the Soviet Union over the installation of ballistic missiles on a sovereign country Cuba, with their consent. What followed was a negotiated removal of these missiles by the Soviet Union with a quid-pro-quo removal of missiles installed in Turkey. CIA director Robert Gates defended the Contra operation in 1984 citing MD. While President Obama’s Secretary of State told Organization of American States in November 2013 that “era of the Monroe Doctrine is over”, the same was revived in August 2017 by President Trump when he talked of the possibility of military intervention in Venezuela. He again reiterated his commitment to MD, while addressing the 73rd UN General Assembly in 2018 to achieve what is their perception of strengthening democracy.

Malik Tariq Ali (Lahore)

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022