'What's needed for sustainable peace will be an equal investment in the architecture of peace, and not just the president-to-president kind, but the people-to-people sort.' theLFshow
Practice in holding two things together at the same time: the need to stop this war and to work across national boundaries to prevent the next one.In the middle of a brutal assault, it's difficult to talk about demilitarization. And so, it was with trepidation that I recently convened a conversation about exactly that.
More warfare is certainly coming. Even if Russian forces draw back from Kyiv and negotiations reach a deal, the conflict has already seen massive growth in weapons spending by the EU and NATO, even by countries like Germany and Denmark who've been spending down for years. Russian spending is up, and the US leads the pack. The Biden administration’s proposed Pentagon budget for 2023 stands at $813 billion.
Gesturing to a book on his shelf, published by anti-war activists in 1913, Dmitri Makarov, zooming in from Russia, suggested that in today's interconnected world, we're much better equipped to communicate globally now than we ever were, and every local crisis has global implications.