Since it began raging on 24 February 2022 with the entry of Russian military personnel into Ukraine, the war has proceeded in a manner that ought to have been evident from the start: in the destruction of more and more of Ukraine. Cities in what is still a lovely country with charming people would continue to become what Gaza is today, piles of uninhabitable rubble. Unbelievable but true, several presumed strategic geniuses in the West forecast the end of the Putin era and the meltdown of Russia, both longstanding if unstated objectives of NATO. Trump has been more realistic about Ukraine than Biden. Since 2021, Donald J.
Trump was made by the Biden administration to face a choice between prison and the White House, and not surprisingly, he has opted for the latter. He has run a supercharged campaign that finally nudged the Democratic Party elite to replace Biden with Kamala Harris at the eleventh hour. Should she get elected as the 47th President of the US, Harris would be well advised to pull back from Biden Administration efforts to send Trump to prison. That passion has been a defining feature of the Biden administration. Continuing with the prosecution of Trump would inflame political fault lines within US society, and keep Trump and the campaign to get him released from possible jail time on the front pages. It may sound cynical, but it may be a good idea for President of Israel, Isaac Herzog to pardon Prime Minister Netanyahu of all the criminal acts he has been accused of committing or possibly had committed before his latest stint as the Prime Minister of Israel.
Such a move may help to ensure that Netanyahu winds down the war in Gaza and does not expand it to Lebanon and Iran, thereby setting off a much bigger powder keg than Gaza has become. At the same time, the UNSC and the UNGA need to pass binding resolutions asking all member states to recognize the right of Israel to exist. It is less than a pathway to peace when the inauguration of the President of Iran should reverberate with calls for the “death to Israel”. Should the clerics in Iran look at the difference in quality of life between their own citizens and those of nearby countries which recognize the right of Israel to exist, they would understand why their own people want the clerics to abandon to return to religion from politics. The misery that has been endured by the people of Iran since the clerical regime got power in 1979 is substantially because of the “Death to Israel” efforts of the clerical leadership.
Just as the governing clerics in Iran are calling for the extinguishing of the Jewish state, Ukraine has long had had a segment of the population which sought a meltdown of the Russian state into chaos. Such a prejudice is despite many of the CPSU General Secretaries who ran the USSR in the 20th century being not Russian but Ukrainian. Since 2014, Russophobes have run Ukraine, and nurse the ambition of melting down the Russian state with help from western countries. They seriously believe that such a fantasy is possible, just as some in power in a few countries believe that Israel can be removed from the map.
As a consequence, especially since 2022, Ukraine has been plunged into misery. More and more policymakers in the West are beginning to understand that buying into the Russophobic delusions of the ruling elite in Kiev is a bad idea, and are veering around to the view that a Korea-style armistice on the basis of freezing the status quo is the only way out of the Ukraine disaster. It would also be an act of mercy for not just Ukrainians but the rest of the world, which is paying a steep price for the war. After the 5 November US Presidential election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi could play the same role that Jawaharlal Nehru played in ending the Korean conflict in the early 1950s, when he was at the peak of his capabilities. PM Modi knows Biden, Harris and Trump well, and could first talk to President Putin to do what Modi has called for since the Russia-Ukraine war started, which was to end the war before Kiev drags NATO into the war by provoking the Kremlin to retaliate against the way NATO members are supplying Ukraine with arms to keep the war going. In the case of Netanyahu, a pardon may get him off his present course of seeking a regional conflict that would bring in the US. This would be achieved through Israel crossing a Red Line in attacking Lebanon and Iran. Thereby Netanyahu would drag the world into a catastrophic war involving Russia, China and NATO. Netanyahu needs to understand that the way towards regime change in Tehran is not through military means by external powers, but by the people of Iran themselves rising against the clerics the way they acted against the Shah and his rule in 1979 and have shown signs of repeating since the killing of Mahsa Amini by the clerical regime in 2022.