Peggy Mason notes for a presentation at Carleton Univ on 22 March 2022 Thank you for inviting me. It is a pleasure to be here although I fervently wish

The UN Secretary-General has warned of a “hurricane of hunger” and the potential meltdown of the global food system as result of these unprecedented economic sanctions. [...] First and foremost, so long as the war continues, there is the ongoing danger of direct conflict between Russia and the USA and NATO which, in turn, carries the risk of nuclear war. [...] All the talk of limited nuclear war fighting dissolves in the face of the enormity of the threat of a war between nuclear armed adversaries. [...] And, in fact, this is the terminology that Putin used in his nuclear saber rattling early on in the conflict – referencing the controversial International Court of Justice (ICJ) exception to the illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons under international humanitarian law when the very existence of the state is at risk. [...] (also a provision of the unimplemented Minsk agreements) The nature of the guarantees for Ukrainian security, the willingness of the West to provide them, and their acceptability to Moscow remain unclear.