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The Ukraine-Russian conflict should be resolved peacefully. If only Ukraine had retained its nuclear capability as a defence strategy and not bought Nato’s assurances and guarantees, it could have avoided the current situation. There is only one guarantee for the sovereignty of any nation, and that is strengthening its defence capability. It is unfortunate that the UN Charter and sovereignty of independent states – even those which are members of the UN – have been violated so often by powerful states. While regime change in sovereign countries should occur through domestic legal procedures, the world’s superpowers have resorted to covert interventions and even invasions to cause regime changes to achieve their strategic goals. We have seen such interventions in Iraq, Syria and Libya with colossal fatalities and the displacement of millions of citizens.

It seems that the current issue can be resolved in the same manner the Cuban missile crisis was addressed. In 1962, former US president Kennedy used the Monroe Doctrine to justify the US confrontation with the Soviet Union over the installation of ballistic missiles on a sovereign country, Cuba. And even though Obama’s secretary of state claimed that the “era of the Monroe Doctrine is over” in 2013, Donald Trump used it in August 2017 when discussing a possible military intervention in Venezuela.

Malik Tariq Ali

Lahore