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Sunday, February 9, 2025

World Needs a New Atlantic Charter

“…Without attempting to draw final and formal peace aims, or war aims, it was necessary to give all peoples, and especially the oppressed and conquered peoples, a simple, rough-and-ready wartime statement of the goal toward which the British Commonwealth and the United States mean to make their way, and thus make a way for others to march with them on a road which will certainly be painful and may be long” — declared Winston Churchill in his August 24, 1941 radio address on the results of the first US-British military summit.

During his meeting with US President Roosevelt aboard the USS Augusta off Newfoundland, they discussed the need for a Joint Declaration, that later became widely known as the Atlantic Charter, and on August 14, 1941, agreed that:

First, their countries did not seek expansion, territorial or otherwise;

Secondly, they did not want any territorial changes without the freely expressed desire of the peoples affected by these changes;

Third, they respected the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they wished to live, and thus, they wanted to see the restoration of sovereign rights and self-government to those peoples who have been deprived of them by force;

Fourthly, they would endeavor, with due respect for the commitments they have made, to ensure that all nations, great and small, victorious and defeated, had free access to the trade and raw materials throughout the world necessary for their economic prosperity;

Fifthly, they wanted to achieve the fullest possible economic cooperation among all countries in order to ensure better working conditions, economic progress and social security for all;

Sixthly, after the final destruction of Nazi tyranny, they hoped to see the establishment of a peace that would allow all countries to live their safely within their borders, free from fear and poverty;

Seventh, such peace would allow all people to safely cross the open seas and oceans;

Eighth, they believed that all countries of the world, for both pragmatic and moral reasons, should renounce the use of force. Since future peace could not be preserved if countries that threatened or could threaten aggression beyond their borders continued to use land, sea, and air weapons, they believed that until a broader and more sustainable system of common security was established, such countries had to be disarmed. At the same time, they would help peace-loving nations to get rid of the burden of armaments and encourage them to take measures to that end.

Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, author of the thorough History of Diplomacy from 1919 to the Present, summarized the meeting between the American and British leaders and the preceding US attempts to strengthen the US-British ties as follows: “So, even before Pearl Harbor, the United States had openly abandoned its policy of neutrality. They assisted England in all areas. President Roosevelt concluded that American democracy should not retreat before the risk of war.”

Sadly, even after February 2022, the world has yet to hear from the West a statement of equal value and strategic significance. It is truly unfortunate that the leaders of the Western world have been so far unable to clearly and explicitly proclaim their goals in countering Moscow’s aggression that undermines European and global security, which is precisely what those who care about the fate of democracy expect from them. This certainly includes Ukrainians, who daily resist the barbaric invasion of Putin’s totalitarian regime that has now lost its legitimacy even in the eyes of those who until recently, despite the actual dismantling of the constitutional order and the outright destruction of universally accepted rights and freedoms, considered him the legitimate head of Russia.

Meanwhile, those who often point to Russia’s might and talk about the difficulty, if not futility, of the efforts to bring the Kremlin usurper to justice should be reminded that in 1941, Nazi Germany controlled the economy of most of Europe, freely received the necessary strategic materials from abroad, and was generally at the very peak of its military and political power.

By contrast, despite the shameful fact that some still continue to cooperate with that blatant violator of the UN Charter, Putin’s Russia is in a much weaker position today. While the facade seems to be strong and stable, with the GDP growing on military spending, the very rigidity of the one-man-rule system carries the inherent potential for self-destruction

Russia’s real ability to wage a truly long-term war of attrition should not be overestimated. Monitoring of the available data shows that the aggressor state has serious problems such as insufficient provision of its armed forces with modern weapons and the overall poor state of military education and training. The industrial and investment sectors of economy are stagnating. As a result of falling tax revenues, almost half of Russia’s regions are facing budgetary problems. Its richest and most predictable export markets have been lost. Limited access to new technologies and modern industrial equipment poses a major challenge. Accidents at numerous critical infrastructure facilities are becoming a regular occurrence.

The Kremlin’s master is leading Russia towards a real demographic catastrophe — the trends, in particular, in the first quarter of this year alone, are clearly negative with deaths (479,300) exceeding births (300,300) by a remarkable 179, 600. And these figures still do not include a significant share of military casualties that the authorities are carefully concealing. At the same time, the country is experiencing an extremely acute labor shortage of 4.8 million people, according to official figures. Today, the main deterrent to the aggressor’s economy is the shortage of personnel, particularly in industry and agriculture. The country lacks doctors, engineers, agronomists, drivers, construction workers, skilled workers, and even service staff, while the ineffective attempts to replace them with external migrants result in growing ethnic tensions.

It is in this context that the recent so-called “Ukraine peace proposals” voiced by the Russian dictator during his May 24 visit to Minsk should be viewed. The Russian Federation is clearly accumulating an array of various war-related difficulties, and hopes to get rid of the most painful sanctions, while avoiding another mass mobilization that would certainly cause discontent among the population and exacerbate the already piling problems.

In other words, we in Ukraine and our friends in many countries should now put an even more systemic and powerful pressure — with the use of modern Western weapons — on Russia’s vulnerabilities to weaken its ability to wage the war, and ensure real security for our country. A good strategy to follow would be the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s constant strikes at the aggressor’s refineries, which has already led to a 20% drop in gasoline and 11% drop in diesel production compared to December 2023.

Some may ask how else the above thesis of the British Prime Minister relate to the present and what oppressed nations we are talking about now. The answer would certainly include Belarusians and other peoples whose national democratic liberation is the key to the vanishing from the geopolitical scene of the aggressive monster currently stretching across Eurasia. And the guide to action is contained in Churchill’s same speech: “We must give them hope. We must give them the conviction that their suffering and their resistances will not be in vain.”

In other words, the free world should give a second wind to the Captive Nations Week, that since 1959, has been proclaimed annually, usually in July, by almost every U.S. president.

That should be our common task now, while our strategic goal must be a concrete clearly spelled out plan of how to achieve a truly lasting peace throughout Eurasia, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Those are the signals that the world expects from this year’s 50th anniversary G7 leaders meeting on June 13-15 in Italy, and the 75th anniversary NATO summit on July 9-11 in Washington, D.C.

There is no doubt that the time for a new Atlantic Charter has arrived.


Oleh Bielokolos, Director, Center for National Resilience Studies

Our mission is to formulate and promote the Ukrainian vision of national resilience: the interconnection with democratic values, human rights, international cooperation, regional and global security.

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