The world has been witnessing an unnecessary war in Europe for three weeks now after Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine on the fateful day of 24 February. Unfortunately, all attempts to reach a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine in the context of a negotiated diplomatic solution have so far failed.

On 12 March, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with both French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholtz. The two European leaders rightly called for a ceasefire, but according to official French sources the Russian president did not show any interest in declaring an immediate ceasefire. 

At the time this article was written, Turkey and Israel have been in touch with both Russia and Ukraine with the aim of stopping the fighting and the launching of peace talks. There is no doubt that the interests of both warring parties lie in agreeing, earlier rather than later, on a set of elements that would ensure their respective security interests.

Geography and history leave them no other choice. For one thing is sure: neither of them can endure the traumatic and destabilising developments that the war in Ukraine has imposed. If these developments go unchecked, one wonders what sad ending that will entail. The war in Ukraine with the international polarisation that it has produced will have no winners, either militarily or politically. An enduring peaceful settlement urgently requires sanity and reason.

Sixty years ago, the world stood on the brink of a nuclear war between the US and the former Soviet Union after the Americans discovered that the Soviets had successfully and secretly set up launching pads for missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads in Cuba.

The US historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr wrote in a well-known book, A Thousand Days, that then US president John F Kennedy had told him at height of the Cuban crisis that the US intelligence community had failed to anticipate the “Soviet attempt to transform Cuba into a nuclear base.” 

If the Soviets had succeeded in their plans, it would have meant the nuclearisation of Cuba with about 84 medium-range (around 1,000 miles) and intermediate range (1,500-2,000 miles) nuclear missiles “effective against the United States,” thus “doubling Soviet striking capacity” against the US, he said.

Kennedy wisely rejected the military option suggested by the Pentagon in response to the missile deployment and favoured a less confrontational plan, namely a blockade of Cuba.

In Ukraine, there are no missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons. However, a Ukraine that was in NATO would, from the Russian point of view, raise the stakes greatly in Moscow. This should not be taken to mean a justification of the Russian “special military operations” in Ukraine. Comparing the way the Kennedy administration averted a nuclear war in the early 1960s and the way the present US administration is dealing with the disastrous war in Ukraine goes to show the differences between two generation of leaders, not only in the US, but also across Europe, including in Russia itself.

Sixty years ago, the two superpowers and their respective allies made decisions and adopted measures to prevent an escalation of a confrontation that was one step away from the outbreak of a third world war, a nuclear one this time around and a war of mutual annihilation. By contrast, in the armed conflict in Ukraine the superpowers and their allies have been sucked into a destructive storm with no leadership in sight capable of charting a course of reason and restraint such that a war that could have been prevented does not escalate into a descent into the abyss.

Addressing the US people and the world at large, Kennedy said on 21 October 1962 that “no one can foresee precisely what course it will take [meaning the situation in Cuba] ... Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right – not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in the hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world… God willing, that goal will be achieved.”

The Kennedy years have been described by many as the years of “Camelot,” but most importantly they were an age of reason and great intellectual powers. It is sad that in our day and age the world is dismally lacking in reason and restraint.

The equation of peace and freedom is probably the most appropriate solution to the unnecessary war in Ukraine, a war that will have no winners regardless of how it ends.

I would like to conclude with a quotation from Schlesinger’s A Thousand Days to reflect on what the world has been witnessing over the last five months since Moscow massed its troops on the Ukrainian border, followed by the outbreak of hostilities and the never-ending succession of unprecedented sanctions on Russia.

“It was a staggering project, staggering in its recklessness, staggering in its misconception... Staggering in its rejection of the ground rules for coexistence among the superpowers,” Schlesinger wrote.

Let the guns fall silent in Ukraine and the search for peace and freedom away from a worn-out Cold War mentality begin. This is a prayer for the fallen on both sides, the Ukrainians and the Russians.

In his book Crusade in Europe, A Personal Account of World War II, former president Dwight Eisenhower devoted a  chapter on Russia. It is important to understand the historical background of Russian apprehensions concerning threats emanating from their western borders. He wrote, “The experience of Russia in World War II was a harsh one.The year 1941 saw the entire western portion of that country overrun by the Nazis. From the region of the Volga westward, almost everything was destroyed. When we flew into Russia in 1945 I did not see a house standing between the western borders and the area around Moscow.”

If some Western leaders have enough time to read about Russia and World War II, maybe they will change their minds concerning the eastward expansion of NATO and how such expansion is a direct threat to Russia’s security interests. They could always fall back on the way the Kennedy administration dealt with the Cuban crisis.

* The writer is former assistant foreign minister.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 17 March, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.