Ben & Jerry’s thinks NATO should chill a little over Ukraine – Quartz

The Russian army may be poised to annex Ukraine, but Americas most activist ice cream manufacturer thinks US troops should stay at home instead of heading to Eastern Europe to fight.

In a tweet, the official Ben & Jerrys account called on US president Joe Biden to de-escalate tensions and work for peace rather than prepare for war. You cannot, the account insisted, simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

Biden, for his part, met with German chancellor Olaf Scholz at the White House on Feb. 7, reportedly telling him the US and Germany are in lockstep over Ukraine. And Anthony Blinken, US secretary of state, said there would be real and profound consequences should Russia choose to continue aggression.

It was not the message Ben & Jerrys was hoping for.

The tweet was completely in character for the company. Though Ben & Jerryhas been owned for more than 20 years by Unilever, it was started by two Vermont ice cream makers who were unafraid to be activists. In fact, the Ben & Jerrys brand has a steady record of advocating that the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) reduce their presence in Europe.

In 1998, when NATO was expanding into Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, Ben & Jerrys thought it was crazy. In an interview with the New York Times, Ben Cohenone of the brands titular founderstried to find an ice cream industry analogy for NATO pushing toward Russias borders:

Our biggest competitor is Haagen-Dazs. So it would be as if one day Haagen-Dazs announced that after all these years of competing with us, it had decided to go out of the ice cream business and instead would sell only hot dogs. And then one day Haagen-Dazs Hot Dogs comes to Ben & Jerrys and says, We would like to be partners with you and sell your ice cream in our hot dog shops. But we said to them: No, we wont let you sell our ice cream. We still want to drive Haagen-Dazs out of business, even though youre not in the ice cream business anymore, because we remember you were once in the ice cream business. And furthermore, were going to spend $2 billion to kill your hot dog business to make sure youll never sell ice cream again.'

A nonprofit called Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, founded by Cohen, took out a full-page advertisement in the New York Times that same year, accusing US defense contractors of lobbying hard for a NATO expansion that was really a $60 billion boondoggle. Other ads revealed the ice cream companys (unintentionally ironic) worry that alienating Russia would start a new Cold War.

Ben & Jerrys stance against military aggression of any kind first became visible in 1988, when Cohen founded 1% For Peace, a campaign that aimed to divert 1% of the US defense budget into peace-promoting activities and projects.

The company built a reputation for other kinds of activism as well, including championing same-sex marriage, pulling out of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and calling for the resignation and impeachment of Donald Trump after the Capitol riot in January 2021.

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Ben & Jerry's thinks NATO should chill a little over Ukraine - Quartz