OXFORD, Miss. – During a casual visit to the University of Mississippi library this week, I happened across a couple of books by and about Art Young, the revolutionary turn-of-the-century artist whose cartoons dramatized the issues of his day in publications such as the Chicago Inter-Ocean, New York American, The Liberator, and the socialist monthly The Masses.
Born of modest means in Illinois, Young (1866-1943) championed the poor and downtrodden, and he was so virulently anti-war that he and others at The Masses were charged under the Espionage Act with conspiracy to obstruct enlistment during World War I. The trial ended in a hung jury.
With wars raging in Ukraine, the Middle East, and elsewhere, the world needs an Art Young today. With U.S. backing, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu continues his genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Israel’s war machine has also targeted Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.
(A drawing of war by Art Young)
As for the war in Ukraine, U.S. President Trump broke with his warmongering predecessor Joe Biden when he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska in an effort to map out a viable peace plan. The Russians are clearly winning the war and unlikely to make significant concessions, but Putin’s arrival in Anchorage signaled a willingness at least to hear what the other side has to offer.
Trump had hardly said goodbye to Putin before he had to meet with Ukrainian strongman Volodymir Zelensky and the leaders of France, England, Germany, and Italy in the White House to calm their rattled post-Anchorage nerves. How small those leaders looked in their White House photo-ops.
These European leaders, including their counterparts at NATO and the European Union, simply want more war. They could care less about the continued massive loss of Ukrainian lives. They fear the end of the war may only bring about a disinvestment of the United States from Europe, their greatest fear of all.
Zelensky wants the continued funding that war brings. How much of it goes into his and his buddies’ pockets? Plus he dares not offend the neo-Nazis that are the power behind the scenes in Ukraine with concessions to the Russians, such as allowing Russia to absorb the Donbas in eastern Ukraine or Crimea (all of which it already largely controls militarily).
The warmongers in Congress, the State Department, and within Trump’s own administration want Russia defeated so they can move on to war with China. A war with Iran in the meantime would be delicious. U.S. Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., is the unofficial chief warmonger among them. His predecessor in Congress, the late U.S. Rep. Mendel Rivers, as chair of the House Armed Services Committee, is said to have laden the city of Charleston with so much military that it threatened to sink the city into the ocean.
Mainstream media—the New York Times, the Washington Post, television networks, and their European counterparts—want what their Deep State friends and former Ivy League classmates want: War and more war if it promises to weaken Russia and continue their exalted status quo at home.
Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize, such as the one his despised political enemy Barack Obama won. He campaigned as a peace candidate and boasts of already ending several smaller wars across the globe. However, Trump exhibits little understanding of true diplomacy or of the history that led to the wars in Ukraine--or the Middle East for that matter. His forte remains “the art of the deal,” the skills he learned wheeling and dealing on Wall Street.
(To the right, a drawing by Art Young of Jesus the Peacemaker)
Putin, the most capable and mature leader on the world stage today, wants a neutral Ukraine that poses no security threat to Russia. He wants fair treatment of the Russian-speaking population eastern Ukraine, and before the war would have settled with a real and committed promise to make those goals realities. However, too many have since died simply today to settle for the oft-broken promises of the past.
Putin has no desire to extend Russian power into Europe. He doesn’t even want all of Ukraine. If he did, why did he earlier sign on to the peace deals in Istanbul and Minsk that Ukraine agreed to but later broke?
Trump has pushed for a Putin-Zelensky meeting. However, Putin does not consider Zelensky to be a legitimate leader of Ukraine since his legal term ended long ago and he has used the war to continue his reign (much like Netanyahu in Israel). Talk of security guarantees in Ukraine as a way to peace has circulated in Washington and across European capitals. However, the Russians will never allow NATO or other European troops in Ukraine as that would undermine the very reasons for the war itself.
Ukraine is going to have to surrender much of its eastern provinces and Crimea to Russia. It is going to have to give up ever joining NATO. It’s going to have to allow limits on its future military capabilities, and it is going to have to get rid of Volodymr Zelensky. The West is simply going to have to accept all this even if it finally requires a total military defeat for Ukraine.
Such are the costs of war. In his art long ago, Art Young showed us the evil of war, its futility, its costs. Two world wars and countless smaller-but-still-deadly wars later, world leaders have yet to listen.
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