In his opinion piece (From Gaza to Ukraine, peace always seems just out of reach – and the reason isn’t only political, 20 July), Simon Tisdall says “ending major conflicts, and easing the suffering of millions, is a moral imperative that demands a determined collective response from all concerned. That way lies peace. That way lies salvation”.
If that is really the case then all hope is lost. There already is a “determined collective response” from all concerned, which is a pledge to fight to the bitter end, whatever the cost to their victims in lives or suffering.
For Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu, freedom from moral constraints, incorporating manifestly immoral behaviour and open contempt for international law, is an existential necessity.
To expect either of them to abandon the territorial ambitions on which they have staked their political futures lies somewhere between naivety and sheer wishful thinking. Given that, all talk of “moral imperatives”, without enforceable international law when their noble aspirations are breached, is no more than impotent bleating from the sidelines.
The treaty to establish the international criminal court in 1998 failed to sign up China, India or the Gulf states. Indeed the map of those countries that have ratified the ICC looks suspiciously like the former Commonwealth, with the addition of South America. More significant are those countries who signed up to the treaty, but which have refused to ratify it, for various stated reasons, but ineluctably because their current politicians need immunity from its rulings – the former superpowers US and Russia, and Israel.
None of their leaders could survive in office if they were made internationally accountable to enforceable laws with a clear moral basis. Sadly but paradoxically, the only people with the political and military clout to bring the war criminals to justice in the name of morality turn out to be the ones perpetuating the war crimes.
Alex Watson
Stroud, Gloucestershire
• Simon Tisdall rightly argues that peace remains elusive not just due to geopolitics, but a collapse in global moral consensus. Yet we must ask: has that consensus ever truly been global – or has it been curated through western lenses?
Britain recently announced an inquiry into violent policing at Orgreave in 1984 and the subsequent collapsed prosecution of 95 miners, but still refuses to apologise for Jallianwala Bagh, where hundreds of unarmed Indians were massacred under imperial command in 1919. Where is the moral clarity?
Tisdall speaks of the “rules-based international order”. But when Donald Trump bombed Iranian nuclear sites – installations once fostered by Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace programme – where were the rules? Would the same be done to Pakistan or China? The west routinely turns a blind eye when its allies commit horrors.
Yes, Russians ignore Ukraine. But did the UK not join the US in Iraq, a war based on phantom weapons of mass destruction? Have we ever truly atoned for the destruction of Falluja, or the millions displaced in Afghanistan?
I agree that peace demands moral revitalisation. But that renewal must begin at home: in Washington, London, Paris. A world that arms first and negotiates never cannot preach morality. Diplomacy has been replaced by drone strikes, and summits by air raids. The UN has become a mute witness, bypassed by the very powers that once built it.
Until we stop dividing the world into “worthy victims” and “collateral damage”, there will be no peace. There is no lesser life. And there is no moral order unless it applies to all. Let truth precede justice. And only then will peace follow.
Ravishankar Kalyanasundaram
Chennai, India
• Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
