While the Biden Administration is sending more troops and weapons to inflame the conflict in Ukraine, and Congress is pouring more fuel on the fire, the American people are on a totally different track.
“The United States has no vital interests at stake in Ukraine and continuing to take actions that increase the risk of a confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia is therefore not necessary for our security.”
A December 2021 poll found that a plurality of Americans in both political parties prefer to resolve differences over Ukraine through diplomacy. Another December poll, conducted by the conservative Koch Institute, found that 49 percent of Americans would oppose going to war with Russia should it invade Ukraine, with only 27 percent favoring U.S. military involvement.
The Koch Institute concluded that “the United States has no vital interests at stake in Ukraine and continuing to take actions that increase the risk of a confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia is therefore not necessary for our security. After more than two decades of endless war abroad, it is not surprising there is wariness among the American people for yet another war that wouldn’t make us safer or more prosperous.”
The most anti-war popular voice on the right is arguably Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has been lashing out against the hawks in both parties, aligning with anti-interventionist libertarians.
On the left, the anti-war sentiment was in full force on February 5, when more than seventy-five protests took place across the nation, denouncing an increase in the military budget while we have so many burning needs at home.
Most Republicans in Congress are criticizing President Joe Biden for not being tough enough (or for focusing on Russia instead of China), and most Democrats are afraid to oppose a Democratic president or to be smeared as Putin apologists. Both parties have bills calling for draconian sanctions on Russia and expedited “lethal aid” to Ukraine. Republicans are advocating for $450 million in new military shipments, while Democrats are recommending $500 million.
Representatives Pramila Jayapal of Washington State and Barbara Lee of California, both of whom are leaders of the Progressive Caucus, have called for negotiations and de-escalation. But others in the Caucus, including Representatives David Cicilline of Rhode Island and Andy Levin of Michigan, are co-sponsors of the anti-Russia bill, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi is fast-tracking the bill to expedite weapons shipments to Ukraine.
Sending more weapons and imposing heavy-handed sanctions can only ratchet up the resurgent Cold War against Russia, with all of its attendant costs to U.S. society: lavish military spending displacing desperately needed social spending, geopolitical divisions undermining international cooperation for a better future, and increased risks of a nuclear war that could end life on Earth as we know it.
But, for those looking for real solutions, we have good news.
Negotiations regarding Ukraine are not limited to President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s failed efforts to browbeat the Russians. There is another already existing diplomatic track for peace in Ukraine: a well-established process called the Minsk Protocol, led by France and Germany and supervised by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
If the U.S. government wants to play a constructive role in Ukraine, it should end the heavy-handed U.S. intervention.
The civil war in Eastern Ukraine broke out in early 2014 after the people of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces unilaterally declared independence from Ukraine as the Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR) People’s Republics, in response to the U.S.-backed coup in Kiev in February 2014. The post-coup government formed new “National Guard” units to assault the breakaway region, but the separatists fought back and held their territory, with some covert support from Russia. Diplomatic efforts were launched to resolve the conflict.
The original Minsk Protocol was signed by the “Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine” (Russia, Ukraine, and the OSCE) in September 2014. It reduced violence but failed to end the war. France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine also held a meeting in Normandy in June 2014, and this group became known as the “Normandy Contact Group” or the “Normandy Format.”
All of these parties continued to meet and negotiate, together with the leaders of the self-declared DPR and LPR in Eastern Ukraine, and they eventually signed the Minsk II agreement on February 12, 2015. The terms were similar to the original Minsk Protocol, but more detailed and with more buy-in from the DPR and LPR.
The Minsk II agreement was unanimously approved by the U.N. Security Council in Resolution 2202 on February 17, 2015. The United States voted in favor of the resolution, and fifty-seven Americans are currently serving as ceasefire monitors with the OSCE in Ukraine.
Key elements of the 2015 Minsk II Agreement include:
- an immediate bilateral ceasefire between Ukrainian government forces and DPR and LPR forces;
- the withdrawal of heavy weapons from a thirty-kilometer-wide buffer zone along the line of control between government and separatist forces;
- elections in the secessionist DPR and LPR, to be monitored by the OSCE;
- constitutional reforms to grant greater autonomy to the separatist-held areas within a reunified but less centralized Ukraine.
The ceasefire and buffer zone have held well enough for seven years to prevent a return to full-scale civil war, but organizing elections in Donbas that both sides will recognize has proved more difficult.
The DPR and LPR postponed elections several times between 2015 and 2018. They held primary elections in 2016 and a general election in November 2018, but neither Ukraine, the United States, nor the European Union recognized the results, claiming the election was not conducted in compliance with the Minsk Protocol.
For its part, Ukraine has not made the agreed-upon constitutional changes to grant greater autonomy to the separatist regions. And the separatists have not allowed the central government to retake control of the international border between Donbas and Russia, as specified in the agreement.
Increased U.S. military and diplomatic support since 2019 has encouraged President Volodymyr Zelensky to pull back from Ukraine’s commitments under the Minsk Protocol and to reassert unconditional Ukrainian sovereignty over Crimea and Donbas. This has raised credible fears of a new escalation of the civil war, and U.S. support for Zelensky’s more aggressive posture has undermined the existing Minsk-Normandy diplomatic process.
The current crisis should be a wake-up call to all involved that the Minsk-Normandy process remains the only viable framework for a peaceful resolution in Ukraine.
Restoring U.S. support for the Minsk Protocol and the Normandy Format would also help to decouple Ukraine’s already thorny and complex internal problems from the larger geopolitical problem of NATO expansion, which must primarily be resolved by the United States, Russia, and NATO.
In 2008, then-U.S. Ambassador to Moscow (and now CIA Director) William Burns warned the government that dangling the prospect of NATO membership for Ukraine could lead to civil war and present Russia with a crisis on its border in which it could be forced to intervene.
In a cable published by WikiLeaks, Burns wrote, “Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.”
Since Burns’s warning in 2008, successive U.S. administrations have plunged headlong into the crisis he predicted. Members of Congress, especially members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, can play a leading role in restoring sanity to U.S. policy on Ukraine by championing a moratorium on Ukraine’s membership in NATO and a reinvigoration of the Minsk Protocol.
If the U.S. government wants to play a constructive role in Ukraine, it should genuinely support this already existing framework for a solution to the crisis, and end the heavy-handed U.S. intervention that has only undermined and delayed its implementation. And U.S. elected officials should start listening to their own constituents, who have absolutely no interest in going to war with Russia.