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On the eve of destruction? Yes, but whose destruction?
War is highly probable, but it is not inevitable.
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We are living in an extremely dangerous moment in history. We are also living in an extremely irrational time, at least when it comes to evaluating the mentality, conduct, and words of Western politicians and media in the face of disaster.
On the one hand, Western leaders, pundits, and military commanders clamor with predictions of war with Russia as being imminent. Yet on the other hand, there is an astounding dereliction to avert it. Diplomacy and understanding are boorishly shunned. Indeed, there is an absolutely irrational choice of escalation towards war, especially among European politicians.
Underlying this, of course, is an ideological supremacist belief, a contempt for Russia and other officially designated enemies (China, Iran, and so on), whereby the Western political class sees itself as superior, not as equals. That mentality makes for war and precludes diplomatic engagement and dialogue.
In any objective reading of the situation, there is little doubt that the danger of all-out world war is upon us. Incredibly, for the third time in just over a century, the planet is facing the specter of a massive international conflict. But on this occasion, the outcome would be nuclear conflagration with the extinction of life as we know it. This repeated destruction is a damning indictment of the Western system, its capitalist and imperialist engines for violence, domination and, inevitably, conflict. Surely, such a system should be abolished.
The Doomsday Clock, overseen by the independent Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, is at its closest point to midnight in all of 80 years of existence. The clock was inaugurated following the U.S. atomic horror attacks on Japan in 1945. It was meant to serve as a warning of the increasing risk of nuclear war. It is truly a frightening spectacle that today’s danger of global disaster surpasses the many perils that were encountered during the Cold War decades. Today’s tensions surpass even those of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when the United States and the Soviet Union edged towards a nuclear war.
Many Western scholars, legal experts, analysts, and seasoned diplomats have increasingly added their voices warning of the ultimate disaster. We pay respect to the sane voices of people like Alfred de Zayas, Jeffrey Sachs, Larry Johnson, and Scott Ritter, voices in the West that, unlike their political class, are passionately warning of the path to perdition the world is on and needs to urgently get off.
The warning words are flashing like a red light, yet Western leaders keep making decisions and issuing belligerent statements that are driving the world to the precipice.
This week, European politicians have again openly advocated attacking the Russian Federation by blockading Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski and NATO chief Mark Rutte (former Dutch premier) have echoed calls from other European politicians to effectively attack Kaliningrad, that is, to attack the Russian Federation. Russia’s nuclear doctrine explicitly states that such an assault compels it to use nuclear weapons in response.
So, why do NATO leaders keep pushing provocation? Such moves are merely an extension of the NATO proxy war in Ukraine. Their war is a failure. But the Western pro-war politicians cannot admit they are wrong. They are willing to incite a wider war rather than admit defeat and face the political repercussions from their own citizens.
Russia this week issued a grave warning, saying that any attack on Kaliningrad would result in Russian retaliation with nuclear weapons.
Instead of coming to their senses and sobering up, European politicians haughtily dismiss Russia’s warnings as a “bluff” or accuse Moscow of nuclear saber-rattling.
In a plenary address to the Valdai forum in Moscow on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin underlined the infernal precariousness.
“If it comes to a direct attack on the Russian Federation – in this case, Kaliningrad, although it could potentially involve other territories as well – the question of Russia using all the weapons at its disposal would inevitably and immediately arise. That is inevitable,” said Putin.
In an ominous assessment of the reckless direction, he noted:
“We must realise that the moment when nothing can be changed any longer may come very quickly and unexpectedly for everyone. The logic of escalating, increasingly harsh retaliatory measures leads to a fatal point of no return.”
The Russian leader is saying that the West’s relentless escalation in words and deeds is leading to an abyss. Incredibly, the Western politicians refuse to restrain themselves. “At the heart of this escalation lie arrogance and overconfidence… The spiral is tightening, and the devastating consequences are growing.”
This appalling dynamic is redolent of the prelude to the First and Second World Wars, when Western political establishments were insouciant about the impending doom.
But a Third World War is truly a point of no return.
“All the more so today, when the arsenals of the world’s leading powers contain weapons capable of destroying all life or, at the very least, reducing the Earth to a catastrophic state,” Putin said.
What is deplorable is the total propagandizing of public discussion in the West. Anyone who dares to speak about the objective historical causes that have given rise to the current tensions is censored or pilloried as a Russian stooge.
There are eminent voices of sanity in the West, as noted above. But they are systematically excluded from public discourse by the mainstream media and academia. The public has to rely on alternative media sources for information. That has, thankfully, energized critical views among citizens in ever greater numbers, who are questioning the whole warmongering policy of inordinate military spending and weapons for Ukraine to fight a futile war against Russia. Notably, this week German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and NATO’s Mark Rutte were heckled and booed when they appeared in public in Muenster, Germany.
Increasing numbers of people understand that we have been pushed to an existential crisis by Western governments (regimes) who took undemocratic, secret decisions to wage war against Russia years ago.
As former British diplomat Ian Proud pointed out in an excellent podcast this week while attending the Sochi forum, the rulers in London made a conscious decision to go to war with Russia as far back as 2014, when the West sponsored the fascist coup in Kiev.
Other Western figures, like former U.S. state planner Victoria Nuland and former NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, have also admitted in their own words that NATO deliberately weaponized Ukraine after 2014 for the purpose of confronting Russia. This was before the hostilities erupted in Ukraine in February 2o22.
Thus, the world has been pushed to a nuclear “extinction event” all because of Western policy to pursue confrontation with Russia, using Ukraine as a proxy.
War is highly probable, but it is not inevitable. Western politicians and media, through their arrogance and Russophobia, are certainly doing their worst to make it inevitable. But these criminal elements may not prevail.
There are international structures and laws; there is still diplomacy, albeit abused and trashed; perhaps more importantly, there is mass public opinion against the odious warmongers; and there is a burgeoning social and political uprising against the evidently bankrupt Western political system.
The political elite in the West who are pimping for war may seem dominant, owing to apparently dominant media narratives. But their power is vastly overrated against the huge public opposition to their criminal agenda.
History may rhyme, as with lead-ups to previous infamous wars. This time, however, a crucial difference is that there may be sufficient public awareness so as not to fall for the warmonger ruse of bailing out the rotten system.
We are on the eve of destruction, but there is every sound hope that rather than war, the destruction tomorrow could be that of the Western imperialist system, thereby giving way to a truly better, more just and peaceful world.
