Portside

The war in Ukraine has divided progressives like few other foreign policy issues in recent years. A Foreign Policy in Focus commentary by John Feffer posted on Portside criticized CODEPINK's position on the war in Ukraine. Here is our response.

Last week Portside ran John Feffer's column, which generated a number of likes and shares on Portside's Facebook page. We are are sharing two comments from readers Kevin Young and Charles Patrick Lynch. We asked John Feffer to respond to these.

A coherent U.S. policy would be based on a more cooperative posture towards the Russians not militarist expansionism which empowers militarists in both Russia and the U.S. While Putin’s militarism is quite dangerous, it is no more crazy than keeping a war going that kills thousands, risks nuclear accidents, and wastes precious resources.

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Russia should withdraw its troops, there should be a cease-fire, and negotiations. Writer David Bacon wrote this in response Michael Kazin's earlier piece, "Reject the Left Right Alliance Against Ukraine," after Finland's admission to NATO.

If U.S. leftists take seriously their commitment to self-rule and loathing of foreign aggression, they should shed their ambivalence about supporting Ukraine.

Geostrategically located, with profitable natural resources, the Arctic is rapidly becoming a militarized zone of power politics in the new cold war, contested by the US and Europe, Russia and China.

The real struggle must not be reduced to dichotomies that speak to people’s emotions, but rather found in the structural causes that allow a small segment of humanity to exploit and enrich itself on the backs of billions of “others,” and to self-attribute to itself a sense of moral superiority.

From time to time, Vladimir Putin or one of his cronies has hinted that the Russians, pressed to the wall, might use a “tactical” nuclear weapon in Ukraine. And Russian military leaders have reportedly been discussing just such a possibility.