USA Pres­i­dent Joe Biden got Con­gress to agree on sig­nif­i­cant funds for Ukraine. So, ad­vanced weapons will flow to that coun­try for de­fence and one as­sumes, of­fence as well. What is re­al­ly more de­sir­able, though, is Rus­sia at the peace ta­ble talk­ing to Ukraine as a sov­er­eign coun­try, bor­der­ing both Eu­rope and Rus­sia, about Rus­sia’s se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns, and non-ag­gres­sion by both Rus­sia and Eu­rope to­wards each oth­er. Al­so, with the Unit­ed States, Rus­sia, Eu­rope and Chi­na sit­ting down to­geth­er, to es­tab­lish the lim­its of mil­i­tary ag­gres­sion and provo­ca­tion by Rus­sia and to work out bound­aries of be­hav­iour to­wards both ex-So­vi­et coun­tries and tra­di­tion­al Eu­rope, in ex­change for Rus­sia’s need for a guar­an­tee of its own se­cu­ri­ty. Ukraine and Tai­wan are not un­con­nect­ed.

Chi­na is the sec­ond pow­er in the world to­day. Rus­sia has lost that sec­ond place, and Chi­na needs to keep friend­ly re­la­tions with Rus­sia. But Chi­na al­so needs to en­sure con­tin­u­ing peace with the USA and vice ver­sa. It will be a good ex­am­ple that can bring peace with pros­per­i­ty to our world. Rus­sia lost a lot by un­leash­ing war.

The US Pres­i­dent al­so se­cured mon­ey from Con­gress for Is­rael to de­fend her­self against Iran and her proxy ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions, but al­so to keep drop­ping bombs on Gaza to elim­i­nate Hamas ter­ror­ists. Ex­cept that, how­ev­er you frame it, phase it or count it, more Gaza civil­ians, in­clud­ing women, chil­dren and ba­bies, than Hamas ter­ror­ists are be­ing killed in every strike.

The hor­ror of this is on­ly com­pound­ed by drop­ping tonnes of food to hun­gry Gazans so that they might eat be­fore they are bombed to obliv­ion. What is the point?

Re­al­ly need­ed here, is last­ing peace in the Mid­dle East and a peace and mu­tu­al pro­tec­tion arrange­ment be­tween Is­rael and Pales­tine. The word Pales­tine is ab­sent from the dis­cus­sion of Mid­dle East con­flict these days.

Un­less Pales­tine and Is­rael agree to live in peace with each oth­er (and that will re­quire Pales­tine keep­ing ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions out and Is­rael re­fut­ing ex­trem­ist ide­olo­gies and elim­i­nat­ing their in­flu­ence on Is­raeli pol­i­cy), there can be no two-state so­lu­tion. And Pales­tine needs a gov­ern­ment to de­vel­op a coun­try, not one that plays games with ter­ror­ists and is woe­ful­ly cor­rupt.

A two-state so­lu­tion is on­ly pos­si­ble now, if there is ab­solute­ly no room avail­able for mu­tu­al an­ni­hi­la­tion con­sid­er­a­tions by any en­ti­ty in the Mid­dle East. A com­mit­ment by Is­rael and the Arab states to mu­tu­al pro­tec­tion to guar­an­tee two states liv­ing side by side in peace is the ab­solute first re­quire­ment.

This must be done with the over­sight of USA, Chi­na, Eu­rope, Rus­sia and Turkey—all of whom have al­lies and in­ter­ests, across the Mid­dle East­ern re­gion. Then a coali­tion for peace, mu­tu­al co­op­er­a­tion and mu­tu­al and gen­er­al pros­per­i­ty of the re­gion should be agreed. War, ter­ror­ism, con­tin­u­ing con­flict and the ab­sence of a pros­per­i­ty-for-all plan, is part of what keeps the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple in the wealthy Mid­dle East poor. Mid­dle East peace is fun­da­men­tal to world peace.

Mon­ey was al­so al­lo­cat­ed by the US Con­gress for Tai­wan and the In­do-Chi­na re­gion, so that some kind of equi­lib­ri­um can be main­tained in that part of the world. But Chi­na and the USA must sit down to­geth­er and work things out to en­sure peace and sta­bil­i­ty. What­ev­er the re­gion, any­thing that hap­pens be­tween USA and Chi­na is glob­al in scope and im­pact and in pos­si­bil­i­ties for hor­ror or cre­ativ­i­ty.

And mon­ey was al­lo­cat­ed to deal with bor­der cross­ings to the USA by refugees, asy­lum seek­ers and il­le­gal im­mi­grants, which has ap­proached over­whelm­ing pro­por­tions be­cause it has now be­come big busi­ness for hu­man traf­fick­ers. What is need­ed here is a rad­i­cal change of US pol­i­cy to­wards the hemi­sphere for trade, in­vest­ment, de­vel­op­ment and move­ment of peo­ple across hemi­spher­ic bor­ders.

Al­so need­ed is a rad­i­cal shift in diplo­ma­cy. USA and Cu­ba need to bury the hatch­et and key hemi­spher­ic coun­tries and or­gan­i­sa­tions need to fo­cus on hemi­spher­ic de­vel­op­men­tal chal­lenges and a peace­ful pros­per­ous hemi­sphere. The West­ern Hemi­sphere needs a pros­per­i­ty-for-all plan too. It is the most un­equal re­gion in the world.

To avoid in­sur­rec­tion erup­tions, mass mi­gra­tion, in­creas­ing in­equal­i­ty, and in­evitably, room for dic­ta­tor­ship and geopo­lit­i­cal provo­ca­tion, com­pre­hen­sive, col­lec­tive, hemi­spher­ic de­vel­op­men­tal ac­tion is need­ed now for mass pros­per­i­ty.