Letters - 25 March 2022
From Ukraine to Protect the NHS
Ukraine
One cannot refrain from taking sides in the present conflict. The reaction of most papers is to call for greater expenditure on arms, but as we know this is likely simply to make matters worse.
What can we do to prevent a full-scale nuclear conflict? At the least we can refrain from incendiary language. President Vladimir Putin gave a speech reported on the midday radio news a fortnight or so ago, in which he stated that he was provoked into actual hostilities in Ukraine by the inflammatory invective of our own foreign secretary, Liz Truss.
Few of us would be convinced by such an exculpation, and the BBC cut reference to this speech in subsequent bulletins, but the speech did illustrate Putin’s felt need to excuse his own conduct. A spark of conscience perhaps?
Do we not seek to find that of God in everyone? If so, we should be looking for a way out of the conflict and not simply damning president Putin. The aim must be to find a way to stop the killing and persuade Russian forces to leave Ukraine.
From Vladimir Putin’s point of view, Russia has always been under threat from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation yet, as shown by the present situation, NATO is incapable of exerting real power for fear of initiating an actual nuclear war. It is a ‘paper tiger’.
But NATO remains a valuable bargaining counter. No one is naïve enough to suggest immediate disarmament, but if a neutral power were to suggest a peace settlement in which NATO were now to be officially disbanded, president Putin might agree to an immediate withdrawal of forces from Ukraine and its borders. President Putin would declare the formal ending of NATO to be a great victory and the agony of the people of Ukraine would end forthwith.
The rest of the world might breathe again and look forward to peace, renewed trade and mutual co-operation.
Malcolm Elliott
Flags
I am dismayed by two latest covers of the Friend. On 4 March a hand was depicted in the colours of the Ukrainian flag. This week (11 March) we see a young person waving a Ukrainian flag on a beach.
These images are haunting and can easily be read as supporting one side in this nasty war. This war is being fuelled by arms sent to one side by our government. I really hope that Friends are not being swept into taking ‘sides’. Many of us are appalled by petty nationalism of all kinds and do not appreciate partisan flag waving on the cover of a Quaker publication.
As conflict escalates it is particularly important to resist the propaganda from and ideology of ‘our’ side and maintain our non-violent principles.
I look forward to a front over showing a similarly graphic image which illustrates our true position that ‘we do utterly deny, with all outward wars, and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence whatsoever, and this is our testimony to the whole world’ (Quaker faith & practice 24.04).
Pete Duckworth
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