I have certain reservations that prevent me from saying that I condone the Russian invasion of Ukraine but I cannot condemn it either. My reservations include a perception that Russia may have gone too far into Ukraine if its prime reason for going in was to protect the Russia speaking population in the Donbass who were under attack from Ukrainian militias. I am not however a military strategist and it might be that a wider action was necessary to forestall counterattack. As a matter of principle I condemn the initiation of any war but it is sometimes difficult to discern where a war truly started.

On the issue of NATO expansion that Chomsky discusses I think he is right. Russia has legitimate strategic concerns. It is laughable to think of the organisation whose actions destroyed Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya as peaceful and unthreatening.

Whatever led to the current situation and whatever the relative rights and wrongs it is necessary to unpack the humanitarian and strategic concerns of both sides and reach a solution that has the best humanitarian outcomes and such strategic outcomes that guarantee the security concerns of all sides.

You may ask why we should be discussing this issue given that we have no expertise in the matter. Well, we may have no expertise but we have a responsibility to ensure that our elected governments do not destroy the world or the lives of peoples within it, including ourselves. It should also be understood that that the ‘experts’ presented on our news media are biased in favour of the positions of our governmental establishments. We are economically impacted by the Ukraine conflict (the poorer more than the richer), the world is environmentally impacted. Things will get worse if they do not get better. We cannot trust the fools and scoundrels who govern us to make the best decisions. If we don’t get involved in dialogue, not on the side of Russia but on the side of Reason, then what we condone, by default, is continued war, continued unreason and the destruction of our planet.