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Xi Jinping to the Rescue?
Is Beijing’s Ukraine/Russia peace plan a good-faith effort or a cynical ploy?
Two roads diverged in a wood: One led to nuclear armageddon, the other to relative peace of the type we Westerners have learned to enjoy over the past decades.
Which road will humanity choose?
And which leaders will we follow to get there? As the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces marks its year anniversary, new cooperation seems to have blossomed between Russia, China, and Iran over the past few years in particular.
While the invasion of Ukraine started last year, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine actually began over a decade ago. The Ukrainians had already lost thousands of lives in the conflict when Russian President Vladimir Putin put the next step of his plan of forcible annexation into action.
With the recent news that Russia has responded to U.S. and E.U. efforts to arm and support Ukraine with plans to suspend Moscow’s participation in the New START nuclear disarmament treaty, the U.S. foreign policy picture is darkening further.
Aside from a scant few bright spots — Israeli/Palestinian peace talks? Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords? — the outlook has appeared grim. That decades of process on nuclear disarmament have just gone down the tubes is not good news.