OMNI
NUCLEAR WAR DANGER ANTHOLOGY #1
Collected by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and
Ecology
https://omnicenter.org/donate/
Also see other OMNI anthologies on
nuclear war, including:
Hiroshima/Nagasaki
WWIII
NWD: India and Pakistan
NWD: North Korea
Ukraine War
Nuclear Abolition
CONTENTS OF NUCLEAR WAR DANGER ANTHOLOGY #1
Doomsday
Clock
Ukrainian
War and Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight.
John Mecklin, why we’re 90 seconds on the Clock.
Martin Armstrong on Likelihood of Nuclear War.
Lucero Oyarzun, ICAN. No more excuses.
Missed
Opportunities, Close Calls
Siegfried Hecker, missed chances with North Korea.
Cuban Missile Crisis: Three Articles
Resistance
MLK’s Rejection of Militarism
Critique of US Bellicose National Security Strategy.
Ron Ridenour. Sharing Nuclear Secrets.
Warnings Intensify
Chris Hedges
Ali Abunimah. “The growing risk of nuclear armageddon cannot be ignored.”
FranÒ«ois Diaz Maurin. “No Place to Hide.”
JOHN PILGER. “ANOTHER HIROSHIMA IS COMING — UNLESS WE
STOP IT NOW.”
TEXTS
PRESENT
URGENCY
NUCLEAR RISK
A time of unprecedented danger: It
is 90 seconds to midnight.
This
year, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists moves the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward, largely
(though not exclusively) because of the mounting dangers of the war in
Ukraine. The Clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to
global catastrophe it has ever been.
The war in Ukraine may enter a second horrifying year, with both sides
convinced they can win. Ukraine’s sovereignty and broader European security
arrangements that have largely held since the end of World War II are at stake.
Also, Russia’s war on Ukraine has raised profound questions about how states
interact, eroding norms of international conduct that underpin successful
responses to a variety of global risks.
And worst of all, Russia’s thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons remind
the world that escalation of the conflict—by accident, intention, or
miscalculation—is a terrible risk. The possibility that the conflict could spin
out of anyone’s control remains high.
Continue reading the full 2023
Doomsday Clock statement.
Visit our website now to watch the
2023 Doomsday Clock announcement.
John Mecklin explains why we’re
just 90 seconds from midnight.
BAS (2-20-23).
In this Santa Barbara Independent interview,
Bulletin editor-in-chief John Mecklin discusses this year's
Doomsday Clock announcement, if the Clock can be turned back, and the
Russian government's response to the new time on the Clock. Read more.
“Infographic:
Is global war on the horizon?” Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) (2-20-23). Data journalist Martin Armstrong's latest infographic
in Statista draws
on inspiration from the Doomsday Clock and the opinion of over 4,000 risk
experts to reflect the likelihood of global war. Read more.
“90
seconds to midnight. No more excuses”.
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10:05 AM (1 hour ago)
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DDear Dick --
Moments ago, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist set the Doomsday Clock to 90
seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been. We are at the most
dangerous moment in time since the Doomsday Clock was launched in 1947. So this year’s Clock announcement must not be followed by the usual
hand wringing, resignation and excuses, but urgent action to avoid nuclear
war.
Today, many people will be looking for information about the size of the
danger we’re facing and how to get involved in stopping it. Will
you help them find us? You can share this post on your preferred social media with just a few clicks, Or copy
paste this link directly to your social media and messaging apps: icanw.org/take_action_now
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It’s 90 seconds to midnight! The
@BulletinAtomic #DoomsdayClock is sounding a global alarm that we can’t
afford to ignore any longer. But there’s a plan to protect humanity from
nuclear war. Demand real action to end nuclear weapons. #nuclearban Tweet Now
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Let’s be clear: This dangerous moment
hasn’t come about by accident, the nine nuclear armed states and the
supporters of nuclear weapons have knowingly put us in this grave danger.
The world renowned scientists and experts at the Bulletin are sounding the alarm because "Russia’s thinly
veiled threats to use nuclear weapons remind the world that escalation of
the conflict—by accident, intention, or miscalculation—is a terrible risk.
The possibility that the conflict could spin out of anyone’s control remains
high.”
So now, we need to demand these states
start discussing how they will disarm, now. The UN Treaty on
the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons provides a framework for new
negotiations. Now, we need everyone on board.
The Doomsday Clock is more than just a measure of risk, it is a call to action. We hope you will
help us make sure everyone hears that call.
Thank you,
Lucero Oyarzun
Digital Campaign Coordinator
ICANs work
It’s time to end nuclear weapons.
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CLOSE CALLS AND PAST EMERGENCIES
North Korea. “Interview: Siegfried Hecker on 20 years of missed chances to deal with
North Korea's nuclear program.” Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists (2-20-23).
In this interview with Bulletin editor-in-chief John Mecklin, former Los Alamos National
Laboratory director Siegfried Hecker
explains how three US presidential administrations failed to take
advantage of North Korea's apparent willingness to accept a new
relationship with the US. Read more.
Cuban Missile Crisis: Three Articles
Jeremy Kuzmarov “You should thank this Russian Naval Officer that you and your
loved ones are alive today.” “Let’s hope there are more Vasily Arkhipovs out there today—we need them now more than ever. “
[Gasedal.wordpress.com] CovertAction
Magazine (December 15, 2022).
Movements, Strategy,
WarAmericas,
Cuba,
Europe,
Russia,
Soviet
Union (USSR), United
StatesNewswireCuban
Missile Crisis, Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF),
President John F. Kennedy, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), Vasily
Arkhipov
Vasily Arkhipov
[Source: warhistoryonline.com]
On October 27, 1962, Soviet naval officer Vasily Arkhipov helped prevent the outbreak of World War III and saved humanity from nuclear
catastrophe.
A minesweeper during
the Pacific War, Arkhipov was the commander of a diesel submarine that had been
sent by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to escort merchant ships bound for
Cuba, which were equipped with a torpedo boat armed with a nuclear warhead.
On October 14, 1962, a
U.S. spy plane flying over Cuba had revealed that the Soviet Union was building
ramps for the installation of missiles with nuclear warheads, in retaliation
for the United States deploying missiles with nuclear warheads capable of
striking the Soviet Union in Italy, at Gioia del Colle (Apulia in southern
Italy), and in Turkey.
President Kennedy’s imposition of a naval blockade after the spy
plane discovery triggered the 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis, during which time
the submarine that Arkhipov commanded was being pursued by U.S. destroyers which,
using depth charges, were trying to force Arkhipov’s submarine to the surface. [MORE
click on opening text]
Another Grave Moment of Danger
Defense Secretary
Robert S. McNamara was not mincing his words when he said years after the
events that “We came very, very close [to nuclear war during the Cuban missile
crisis,] closer than we knew at the time.”
Arthur Schlesinger,
Jr., characterized the period of the Cuban Missile Crisis as “not only the most
dangerous moment of the Cold War [but] the most dangerous moment in human
history.”
That moment of danger
unfortunately appears just as sharp today.
RESISTANCE TO NUCLEAR WAR
“Dr. King’s
Refusal to Accept ‘a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear
destruction.’”
On Jan. 12,
to honor and celebrate the legacy and courage of Dr. King in championing a
nuclear-free world, Defuse Nuclear War (DNW) hosted a livestream featuring the
Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis, Pastor Michael McBride, Judith LeBlanc, Daniel
Ellsberg, Khury Petersen-Smith, David Swanson, Norman Solomon, former Ohio
Senator Nina Turner, and India Walton. Watch the recording here. A
focus of this event was Dr. King’s statement during his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize
speech: “I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must
spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear
destruction.” During the event DNW issued a call to action and is offering
people online organizing tools for sending messages and photos of loved
ones and others, whose futures are at stake, to the White House and members of
Congress.
A Critique of the Latest US Bellicose National Security Strategy.
The Editors . The Monthly Review (December 2022, Volume 74,
Number 7). (Dec
01, 2022)
For the entire article go to https://monthlyreview.org/2022/12/01/mr-074-07-2022-11_0/?mc_cid=031c1f8fa3&mc_eid=ab2f7bf95e
In this most recent National Security Strategy for
the United States, ideology is thus once again at the forefront, though
articulated not in terms of capitalism versus communism,
as it was in the Old Cold War, but rather democracy versus autocracy,
defining the New Cold War. The leaders of the autocratic camp, as designated by
Washington, are the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Russia, followed by
“smaller autocratic powers” such as North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and
Nicaragua (11, 41). These nations are accused of either actively carrying out
or otherwise supporting war, imperialism, “genocide,” human rights violations,
and the disruption of free markets, with the objective of overturning the
“rules-based international order” put in place through decades of unrivaled
U.S. hegemony over the world economy (8). Established institutions and
norms—such as U.S.-dominated military alliances around the globe, the existing
oil-price regime, dollar hegemony, and the “force multiplier” of the global
financial system represented by the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank—are all under assault (20).
The autocracies are
said to have the goal of making “the world safe for aggression and repression.”
Meanwhile, Washington, that shining city on the hill, is the leader not only of
the world’s formal democracies, but also of all those “other” nations that,
although not in any sense democracies, support the U.S.-dominated, rules-based
international order and thus are given honorary democratic status (18).
In its 2021 Interim National Security
Strategic Guidance, the principal opponent of the United States on
the world stage was referred to as China. However, in
its 2022 report—under the cover of continued acceptance of the One China policy
(which recognizes One China but with two governing systems)—the major U.S.
enemy is now characterized throughout the report as the PRC, as opposed to China as a whole (including Taiwan).
In this way, the Biden administration is able to underscore its military
support of Taiwan while strongly implying that Taipei represents the
appropriate governance structure for all of China (a viewpoint hearkening back
to former Cold War policy, when “Red China” was the enemy). The new National Security Strategy stresses the “profound
differences” that Washington has “with the Chinese Communist Party” and,
indeed, its entire “system,” and makes no secret of its burning desire for
regime change in the PRC (25).
In Biden’s words, the PRC alone has both “the intention and,
increasingly, the capacity to reshape the international order” in ways that go
against the U.S.-dominated, rules-based order (3). The new National Security Strategy openly (and falsely)
accuses China of “genocide” and of being a would-be international aggressor
(24). The PRC, by virtue of its governing system under the Chinese Communist
Party, is designated as a “non-market actor” in all of its transactions,
promoting “repression at home and coercion abroad,” transgressing accepted
economic rules, and “exporting an illiberal model of international order” (3,
8, 14, 34). For the Biden administration, the principal U.S. strategic goal is,
then, to “out-compete” China. But the new National Security Strategy makes
it clear that this is to be primarily by military means, forcing the PRC to
divert its resources in that direction and squeezing it by means of the more
than 400 U.S. military bases that almost completely surround it, along with the
expansion of the Quad and AUKUS alliances backed by Global NATO. The
Biden National Security Strategy thus calls for a
further militarization of the Indo-Pacific, and those countries on “the front
lines” of “the PRC’s coercion” (23–24; John Pilger, “Atomic Bombings at 75,” Consortium News, August 3, 2020).
The 2022 U.S. National Security Strategy is
even more ferocious when it comes to Russia. According to the Congressional
Research Office of the U.S. government, Washington has carried out 251 military
interventions (not including numerous counterinsurgency operations) on five
continents since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 (Ben Norton, “U.S. Launched 251 Military Interventions Since 1991, and 469 Since 1798,” Multipolarista, September 13, 2022).
Nevertheless, the new National Security Strategy suggests
that it is Russia that is at the forefront of “imperialist foreign policy” in
the world today. This charge is based on (1) Russia’s military operation,
opposite to that of the United States, in Syria; and (2) on Russia’s intervention
in Ukraine on its own Western border, in opposition to the U.S. proxy war there
(25). In order to bolster its case, Biden’s National Security Council excludes
from the report any reference whatsoever to the U.S.-directed Euromaidan coup
in Ukraine in 2014, or to the civil war that immediately followed between Kiev
(supported by the U.S./NATO) and the Russian-speaking populations in the East
and South of the country (supported by Russia). Instead, readers are presented
with the fiction that the war started with “Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine.”
The report then labels the 2022 war as emanating from “Russia’s further
invasion of Ukraine” (25, 36, 39, 44). Not a single sentence is included on
direct U.S./NATO involvement in the war or on its role in provoking it, even to
the point of excluding any explicit mention of the massive U.S./NATO arms
shipments to Ukraine. Nor is there any reference to NATO enlargement since
1997. With this near-complete erasure of history, the charge that the 2022
Russian intervention was “unprovoked” and “imperialist” assumes a fantastic
form that should embarrass even the most strident U.S. war hawks.
The 2022 report of
Biden’s National Security Council explicitly states that “we do not seek a new
Cold War” (9). Yet, the actual document seeks to justify exactly that, while
giving impetus to a new nuclear arms race (9). The explicit goal of the new
U.S. imperial grand strategy is to defeat both the PRC and Russia by exerting
controls over the “external environment” of both, squeezing them from without
by means of economic/financial sanctions and growing military pressure (9). The
PRC is seen as the bigger threat overall, while Russia has to be crushed first.
With respect to the United States itself, the 2022 National Security Strategy argues for an
elimination of the barriers between U.S. foreign/military policy and domestic
policy, which need to be “integrated,” effectively militarizing/securitizing
the entire society, and particularly the technological and communication sectors
(11). The object is to harness the entire country for the New Cold War
struggle. Indeed, the National Security Council highlights the need to create a
new “defense ecosystem,” which appears to be an all-encompassing Pentagon capitalism conceived as an organic entity
with a life of its own (20).
What all of this indicates is that Washington is currently
engaged in waging a New Cold War in the twenty-first century, justified as a
struggle of democracy against autocracy—one that threatens to be far more dangerous
than its twentieth-century counterpart (See John Bellamy Foster, John Ross, and
Deborah Veneziale, The United States Is Waging a New Cold War [Tricontinental, September 13, 2022;
also forthcoming from Monthly Review Press as Washington’s New Cold War]).
It is scarcely surprising, then, that, at the very moment that
the 2022 National Security Strategy was due to be released,
Biden was raising before a group of wealthy political donors the specter of
nuclear “Armageddon,” arising out of the further escalation of the U.S./NATO
proxy war in Ukraine (David North, “Biden Warns: Prepare for Nuclear Armageddon,” World Socialist Website, October 7, 2022).
As Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse once queried: “Does not the threat of an
atomic catastrophe that could wipe out the human race serve to protect the very
forces which perpetuate this danger?” (Marcuse, One
Dimensional Man [Boston: Beacon, 1964), ix). What is
desperately needed in this situation is a massive revival of the global peace
movement aimed at steering the world away from exterminism and directed toward
the creation of a new society based on substantive equality and ecological
sustainability for the sake of the entire chain of human generations. There is
no time to wait.
SHARING NUCLEAR
SECRETS
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Can An American
Scientist Who Smuggled Critical Nuclear Secrets to the Russians After World
War II Be Considered a “Good Guy”? New Film Says Yes.
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CovertAction Magazine via gmail.mcsv.net
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11:16 AM (2 hours ago)
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to me
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CovertAction Magazine
Exposing Covert Action Since 1978
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Can An American Scientist
Who Smuggled Critical Nuclear Secrets to the Russians After World War
II Be Considered a “Good Guy”? New Film Says Yes.
By Ron Ridenour on Dec 02, 2022
11:51 am
Controversial New Documentary Reveals How A Teenage
Army Physicist Named Ted Hall Saved The Russian People From A
Treacherous U.S. Sneak Attack In 1950-51—And May Well Have Prevented
A Global Nuclear Holocaust
The provocative documentary “A
Compassionate Spy” tells the amazing but almost unknown
story of a “near-genius” 16 year-old Harvard junior physics major who
was drafted to help develop an atom bomb at America’s ultra-secret
Manhattan Project.
At 18, after graduating from
Harvard, Ted was the youngest physicist to work on the atomic bombs
at Los Alamos, New Mexico. He worked with uranium and the implosion
system for the plutonium bomb used in the Trinity test on July 16,
1945, one month before that bomb type killed tens of thousands of
civilians at Nagasaki.
Between the bombings at Hiroshima,
August 6, and Nagasaki, August 9, somewhere around 200,000 civilians
were killed, and a similar number died within some months afterwards
from radiation sickness and injuries.
The film also illustrates why and
how Ted shared his knowledge with the Soviets: to prevent a post-war
U.S. perhaps heading toward fascism and/or world domination
intoxicated by having a nuclear monopoly. He foresaw correctly
because, by 1946, Wall Street bankers and weapons industrialists had
convinced President Harry Truman, as the film shows, to produce 400
more atomic bombs to attack the Soviet Union in 1950-51, kill
millions of its people, and take over its huge land and natural
resources. […]
Read in browser »
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Listen to this
Article: "Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb"
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The Chris Hedges Report 10-28-22
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Narrated by Eunice Wong
Subscribed
Bombs Away - by Mr. Fish (picture omitted)
I have covered enough wars to know that once
you open that Pandora’s box, the many evils that pour out are beyond anyone’s
control. War accelerates the whirlwind of industrial killing. The longer any
war continues, the closer and closer each side comes to
self-annihilation. Unless it is
stopped, the proxy war between Russia and the U.S. in Ukraine all but
guarantees direct confrontation with Russia and, with it, the very real
possibility of nuclear war.
Joe
Biden, who doesn’t always seem to be quite sure where he is or what he is
supposed to be saying, is being propped up in the I-am-a-bigger-man-than-you
contest with Vladimir Putin by a coterie of rabid warmongers who have
orchestrated over 20 years of military fiascos. They are salivating at
the prospect of taking on Russia, and then, if there is any habitation left
on the globe, China. Trapped in the polarizing mindset of the Cold War —
where any effort to de-escalate conflicts through diplomacy is considered appeasement,
a perfidious Munich moment — they smugly push the human species closer and
closer toward obliteration. Unfortunately for us, one of these true believers
is Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“Putin is saying he is not bluffing. Well,
he cannot afford bluffing, and it has to be clear that the people supporting
Ukraine and the European Union and the Member States, and the United States
and NATO are not bluffing neither,” EU foreign policy chief Josep
Borrell warned. “Any
nuclear attack against Ukraine will create an answer, not a nuclear answer
but such a powerful answer from the military side that the Russian Army will
be annihilated.”
Annihilated. Are these people insane?
You know we are in trouble when Donald Trump
is the voice of reason.
“We must demand the immediate negotiation of
a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine, or we will end up in world war three”
the former president said. “And there
will be nothing left of our planet — all because stupid people didn't have a
clue ... They don't understand what they’re dealing with, the power of
nuclear.”
I dealt with many of these ideologues
— David Petraeus, Elliot Abrams, Robert Kagan, Victoria Nuland — as a foreign
correspondent for The New York Times. Once you strip away their chest full of
medals or fancy degrees, you find shallow men and women, craven careerists
who obsequiously serve the war industry that ensures their promotions, pays
the budgets of their think tanks and showers them with money as board members
of military contractors. They are the pimps of war. If
you reported on them, as I did, you would not sleep well at night. They are
vain enough and stupid enough to blow up the world long before we go extinct
because of the climate crisis, which they have also dutifully accelerated.
If, as Joe Biden says, Putin is
“not joking” about using nuclear weapons and we risk nuclear
“Armageddon,” why isn’t Biden on the phone to Putin? Why doesn’t he follow
the example of John F. Kennedy, who repeatedly communicated with Nikita
Khrushchev to negotiate an end to the Cuban missile crisis? Kennedy, who
unlike Biden served in the military, knew the obtuseness of generals. He had the
good sense to ignore Curtis LeMay, the Air Force Chief of Staff and head of
the Strategic Air Command, as well as the model for General Jack D. Ripper in
“Dr. Strangelove,” who urged Kennedy
to bomb the Cuban missile bases, an act that would have probably ignited a
nuclear war. Biden is not made of the same stuff.
Subscribed
Why is Washington sending $50 billion in
arms and assistance to sustain the conflict in Ukraine and promising billions
more for “as long as it takes”? Why did Washington and Whitehall dissuade Vladimir
Zelensky, a former stand-up comic who
has been magically transformed by these war lovers into the new Winston
Churchill, from pursuing negotiations
with Moscow, set up by
Turkey? Why do they believe that militarily humiliating Putin, whom they are
also determined to remove from power, won’t lead him to do the unthinkable in
a final act of
desperation?
Moscow strongly implied it
would use nuclear weapons in response to a “threat” to its “territorial
integrity,” and the pimps of war shouted down anyone who expressed concern
that we all might go up in mushroom clouds, labeling them traitors who are
weakening Ukrainian and Western resolve. Giddy at the battlefield losses
suffered by Russia, they poke the Russian bear with ever greater ferocity.
The Pentagon helped plan Ukraine’s
latest counteroffensive, and the CIA passes on battlefield
intelligence. We are slipping, as we did in Vietnam, from advising, arming,
funding and supporting, into fighting.
None of this is helped by Zelensky’s
suggestion that, to deter the use of nuclear weapons by Russia, NATO should
launch “preventive strikes.”
“Waiting for the nuclear strikes first and
then to say ‘what’s going to happen to them.’ No! There is a need to review
the way the pressure is being exerted. So there is a need to review this
procedure,” he said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the
remarks, which Zelensky tried to roll back, were “nothing else than a call to
start a world war.”
The West has been baiting Moscow
for decades. I reported from Eastern Europe at the end of the Cold War. I
watched these militarists set out to build what they called a unipolar world
— a world where they alone ruled. First, they broke promises not
to expand NATO beyond the borders of a unified Germany. Then they broke promises not
to “permanently station substantial combat forces” in the new NATO member
countries in Eastern and Central Europe. Then they broke promises
not to station missile systems along Russia’s border. Then they broke promises not
to interfere in the internal affairs of border states such as Ukraine, orchestrating the
2014 coup that ousted the elected government
of Victor Yanukovich, replacing it with an anti-Russian — fascist aligned —
government, which, in turn, led to an 8-year-long civil war, as the
Russian populated regions in the east sought independence from
Kiev. They armed Ukraine with NATO weapons and trained 100,000 Ukrainian
soldiers after the coup. Then they recruited neutral
Finland and Sweden into NATO. Now the U.S. is being asked to send
advanced long-range missile systems to Ukraine, which Russia says would
make the U.S. “a direct party to the conflict.” But blinded by hubris and
lacking any understanding of geopolitics, they push us, like the hapless
generals in the Austro-Hungarian empire, towards catastrophe.
We call for total victory. Russia annexes
four Ukrainian provinces. We help Ukraine
bomb the Kerch Bridge. Russia rains missiles down on Ukrainian cities.
We give Ukraine
sophisticated air defense systems. We gloat over Russian losses. Russia
introduces conscription. Now Russia carries out drone
and cruise missile attacks on power, sewage and water treatment plants.
Where does it end?
“Is the United States, for example, trying
to help bring an end to this conflict, through a settlement that would allow
for a sovereign Ukraine and some kind of relationship between the United
States and Russia?” a New York Times editorial asks.
“Or is the United States now trying to weaken Russia permanently? Has the
administration’s goal shifted to destabilizing Putin or having him removed?
Does the United States intend to hold Putin accountable as a war criminal? Or
is the goal to try to avoid a wider war — and if so, how does crowing about
providing U.S. intelligence to kill Russians and sink one of their ships
achieve this?”
No one has any answers.
The Times editorial ridicules the folly of
attempting to recapture all of Ukrainian territory, especially those
territories populated by ethnic Russians.
“A decisive military victory for Ukraine
over Russia, in which Ukraine regains all the territory Russia has seized
since 2014, is not a realistic goal,” it reads. “Though Russia’s planning and
fighting have been surprisingly sloppy, Russia remains too strong, and Mr.
Putin has invested too much personal prestige in the invasion to back down.”
But common sense, along with realistic
military objectives and an equitable peace, is overpowered by the
intoxication of war.
On October 17, NATO countries began a
two-week-long exercise in Europe, called Steadfast
Noon, in which 60 aircraft, including fighter jets and long-range bombers
flown in from Minot Air Base in North Dakota are simulating dropping
thermonuclear bombs on European targets. This exercise happens annually. But
the timing is nevertheless ominous. The U.S. has some 150 “tactical” nuclear
warheads stationed in
Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey.
Ukraine will be a long and costly war of
attrition, one that will leave much of Ukraine in ruins and hundreds of
thousands of families convulsed by lifelong grief. If NATO prevails and Putin
feels his hold on power is in jeopardy, what will stop him from lashing out
in desperation? Russia has the world's largest arsenal of tactical nukes,
weapons that can kill tens
of thousands if used on a city. It also possesses nearly
6,000 nuclear warheads. Putin does not want to end up, like his Serbian
allies Slobodan Milošević and Ratko Mladić, as a convicted war criminal in
the Hague. Nor does he want to go the way of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.
What will stop him from upping the ante if he feels cornered?
There is something grimly cavalier about how
political, military and intelligence chiefs, including CIA Director William
Burns, a former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow, agree about the danger of
humiliating and defeating Putin and the specter of nuclear war.
“Given the potential desperation of
President Putin and the Russian leadership, given the setbacks that they've
faced so far, militarily, none of us can take lightly the threat posed by a
potential resort to tactical nuclear weapons or low-yield nuclear weapons,”
Burns said in
remarks at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.
Former CIA Director Leon Panetta, who also
served as Defense Secretary under President Barack Obama, wrote this
month that U.S. intelligence agencies believe the odds of the war in Ukraine
spiraling into a nuclear war are as high as one in four.
The Director of National Intelligence, Avril
Haines, echoed this warning, telling the
Senate Armed Services Committee in May that if Putin believed there was an
existential threat to Russia, he could resort to nuclear weapons.
“We do think that [Putin’s perception of an
existential threat] could be the case in the event that he perceives that he
is losing the war in Ukraine, and that NATO in effect is either intervening
or about to intervene in that context, which would obviously contribute to a
perception that he is about to lose the war in Ukraine,” Haines said.
“As this war and its consequences slowly
weaken Russian conventional strength…Russia likely will increasingly rely on
its nuclear deterrent to
signal the West and project strength to its internal and external audiences,”
Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier wrote in the Defense Intelligence Agency’s threat
assessment submitted to
the same Armed Services Committee at the end of April.
Given these assessments, why don’t Burns,
Panetta, Haines and Berrier, urgently advocate diplomacy with Russia to
de-escalate the nuclear threat?
This war should never have happened. The
U.S. was well aware it
was provoking Russia. But it was drunk on its own power, especially as it
emerged as the world’s sole superpower at the end of the Cold War, and
besides, there were billions in profits to be made in arms sales to new NATO
members.
In 2008, when Burns was serving as the
Ambassador to Moscow, he wrote to
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the
brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more
than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers
in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I
have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a
direct challenge to Russian interests.”
Sixty-six U.N. members, most from the global
south, have called for
diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine, as required by the U.N. Charter. But few
of the big power players are listening.
If you think nuclear war can’t happen, pay a
visit to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These Japanese cities had no military value.
They were wiped out because most of the rest of Japan’s urban centers had
already been destroyed by saturation bombing campaigns directed by LeMay. The
U.S. knew Japan was crippled and ready to surrender, but it wanted to
send a message to the Soviet Union that with its new atomic weapons it was
going to dominate the world.
We saw how that turned out.
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Ali Abunimah. “The growing risk of nuclear armageddon cannot be ignored.”
The Electronic
Intifada . October 26, 2022. (more
by The Electronic Intifada) | (Posted Oct
28, 2022). WarEurope, Russia, UkraineNewswireRussia-Ukraine War
Ukraine is losing the
war and time is on Russia’s side.
You wouldn’t know it
from the cheerleading propaganda that has filled Western media for months, but
this is a fair conclusion from looking at the fundamentals.
That’s what I told
Rania Khalek when I appeared on her BreakThrough News show Dispatches last
week to talk about what remains an extremely dangerous crisis.
You can watch it
above.
FranÒ«ois Diaz Maurin. “No Place to Hide. How a Nuclear War Would Kill You and Almost
Everyone Else.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. October 20, 2022. https://thebulletin.org/2022/10/nowhere-to-hide-how-a-nuclear-war-would-kill-you-and-almost-everyone-else/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=ThursdayNewsletter10202022&utm_content=NuclearRisk_NowhereToHide_10202022
In a nuclear war, hundreds to thousands of
detonations would occur within minutes, resulting in tens to hundreds of
millions of people dead or injured in a few days. But a few years after, global
climatic changes caused by the many nuclear explosions could be responsible for
the death of more than half of the human population on Earth. Read more.
JOHN PILGER.
“ANOTHER HIROSHIMA IS COMING — UNLESS WE STOP IT NOW.” Consortium News. August 7,
2022. Popular Resistance. Educate!
Hiroshima 77.
Hiroshima and
Nagasaki were acts of premeditated mass murder unleashing a weapon of intrinsic
criminality. It was justified by lies that form the bedrock of 21st century
U.S. war propaganda, casting a new enemy, and target – China.
https://popularresistance.org/john-pilger-another-hiroshima-is-coming-unless-we-stop-it-now/
. . .Today, an unprecedented campaign of
propaganda is shooing us all off like rabbits. We are not meant to
question the daily torrent of anti-Chinese
rhetoric, which is rapidly overtaking the torrent of anti-Russia rhetoric. Anything Chinese is bad, anathema, a threat:
Wuhan …. Huawei. How confusing it is when “our” most reviled leader says so.
The current phase
of this campaign began not with Trump but with Barack Obama, who in 2011 flew to Australia to declare the greatest
build-up of U.S. naval forces in the Asia-Pacific region since World War Two.
Suddenly, China was a “threat”. This was nonsense, of course. What was
threatened was America’s unchallenged
psychopathic view of itself as the richest, the most successful, the most
“indispensable” nation.
What was never in
dispute was its prowess as a bully — with more than 30 members of the United
Nations suffering American sanctions of some kind and a trail of the blood
running through defenceless countries bombed, their governments overthrown,
their elections interfered with, their resources plundered.
Obama’s declaration became known as the “pivot to Asia”. One of its principal
advocates was his Secretary of State, Hillary
Clinton, who, as WikiLeaks revealed, wanted to rename the
Pacific Ocean “the American Sea”.
Whereas Clinton
never concealed her warmongering, Obama was a maestro of marketing. “I state
clearly and with conviction,” said the new president in 2009, “that America’s
commitment is to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear
weapons.”
Obama increased spending on nuclear warheads faster than any
president since the end of the Cold War. A
“usable” nuclear weapon was developed. Known as the B61 Model 12, it means,
according to General James Cartwright, former vice-chair of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, that “going smaller [makes its use] more thinkable”.
The target is China. Today, more than 400 American military bases
almost encircle China with missiles, bombers, warships and nuclear weapons. From Australia
north through the Pacific to South-East Asia, Japan and Korea and across
Eurasia to Afghanistan and India, the bases form, as one U.S. strategist told
me, “the perfect noose”.
The Unthinkable
A study by the
RAND Corporation – which, since Vietnam, has planned America’s wars – is
entitled War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable.
Commissioned by the U.S. Army, the authors evoke the infamous catch cry of its
chief Cold War strategist, Herman Kahn – “thinking the unthinkable”. Kahn’s
book, On Thermonuclear War, elaborated a plan for a “winnable”
nuclear war.
Kahn’s apocalyptic
view is shared by Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, an evangelical
fanatic who believes in the “rapture of the End”. He is perhaps the most
dangerous man alive. “I was CIA director,” he boasted, “We lied, we cheated, we
stole. It was like we had entire training courses.” Pompeo’s obsession is
China.
The endgame of
Pompeo’s extremism is rarely if ever discussed in the Anglo-American media,
where the myths and fabrications about China are standard fare, as were the
lies about Iraq. A virulent racism is the sub-text of this propaganda.
Classified “yellow” even though they were white, the Chinese are the only
ethnic group to have been banned by an “exclusion act” from entering the United
States, because they were Chinese. Popular culture declared them sinister,
untrustworthy, “sneaky”, depraved, diseased, immoral.
An Australian
magazine, The Bulletin, was devoted to promoting fear of the
“yellow peril” as if all of Asia was about to fall down on the whites-only
colony by the force of gravity.
As the historian
Martin Powers writes, acknowledging China’s modernism, its secular morality and
“contributions to liberal thought threatened European face, so it became
necessary to suppress China’s role in the Enlightenment debate …. For
centuries, China’s threat to the myth of Western superiority has made it an
easy target for race-baiting.”
In the Sydney
Morning Herald, tireless China-basher Peter Hartcher described those who
spread Chinese influence in Australia as “rats, flies, mosquitoes and
sparrows”. Hartcher, who favourably quotes the American demagogue Steve Bannon,
likes to interpret the “dreams” of the current Chinese elite, to which he is
apparently privy. These are inspired by yearnings for the “Mandate of Heaven”
of 2,000 years ago. Ad nausea.
To combat this
“mandate”, the Australian government of Scott Morrison has committed one of the
most secure countries on earth, whose major trading partner is China, to
hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American missiles that can be fired
at China.
The trickledown is
already evident. In a country historically scarred by violent racism towards
Asians, Australians of Chinese descent have formed a vigilante group to protect
delivery riders. Phone videos show a delivery rider punched in the face and a
Chinese couple racially abused in a supermarket. Between April and June, there were
almost 400 racist attacks on Asian-Australians.
“We are not your
enemy,” a high-ranking strategist in China told me, “but if you [in the West]
decide we are, we must prepare without delay.” China’s arsenal is small
compared with America’s, but it is growing fast, especially the development of
maritime missiles designed to destroy fleets of ships.
“For the first
time,” wrote Gregory Kulacki of the Union of Concerned Scientists, “China is
discussing putting its nuclear missiles on high alert so that they can be
launched quickly on warning of an attack… This would be a significant and
dangerous change in Chinese policy…”
In Washington, I
met Amitai Etzioni, distinguished professor of international affairs at George
Washington University, who wrote that a “blinding attack on China” was planned,
“with strikes that could be mistakenly perceived [by the Chinese] as
pre-emptive attempts to take out its nuclear weapons, thus cornering them into
a terrible use-it-or-lose-it dilemma [that would] lead to nuclear war.”
In 2019, the U.S. staged its biggest
single military exercise since the Cold War, much of it in high secrecy. An
armada of ships and long-range bombers rehearsed an “Air-Sea Battle Concept for
China” – ASB – blocking sea lanes in the Straits of Malacca and cutting off
China’s access to oil, gas and other raw materials from the Middle East and
Africa.
It is fear of such
a blockade that has seen China develop its Belt and Road Initiative along the
old Silk Road to Europe and urgently build strategic airstrips on disputed
reefs and islets in the Spratly Islands.
In Shanghai, I met
Lijia Zhang, a Beijing journalist and novelist, typical of a new class of
outspoken mavericks. Her best-selling book has the ironic title Socialism
Is Great! Having grown up in the chaotic, brutal Cultural Revolution,
she has travelled and lived in the U.S. and Europe. “Many Americans imagine,”
she said, “that Chinese people live a miserable, repressed life with no freedom
whatsoever. The [idea of] the yellow peril has never left them… They have no
idea there are some 500 million people being lifted out of poverty, and some
would say it’s 600 million.”
Modern China’s epic achievements, its defeat of mass poverty, and
the pride and contentment of its people (measured forensically by American
pollsters such as Pew) are wilfully unknown or misunderstood in the West. This
alone is a commentary on the lamentable state of Western journalism and the
abandonment of honest reporting.
China’s repressive dark side and what we like to call its “authoritarianism”
are the facade we are allowed to see almost exclusively. It is as if we are fed
unending tales of the evil super-villain Dr. Fu Manchu. And it is time we asked
why: before it is too late to stop the next Hiroshima.
END NUCLEAR WAR DANGER ANTHOLOGY #1
