Are We Fighting Another Cold War?

Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned American intellectual and political commentator, spoke of the possibility of nuclear war in a recent interview with Russia Today. During the interview, which has been widely reported in the media, Chomsky acknowledged that the current international situation was creating conditions that could accidentally bring about nuclear war.

The historian and philosopher also recently observed that the United States should be considered the world’s number one terrorist state, on the basis that the CIA has spent its 67-year existence arming groups of insurgents throughout the world in the pursuit of American interests. The same policy generated the Islamic State — which the U.S. now claims to be fighting against — just as it did al-Qaida and a long list of other terrorist organizations in some 80 countries. The Islamic State group and its allies were purportedly recruited to assist in the overthrow of the Syrian government in Damascus.

The United States, the United Kingdom and other members of NATO make no bones about providing training and arms to new warriors of what they call the “moderate opposition.” These warriors are then released into Syrian territory to wage a destructive, unsuccessful and illegal “dirty war” against the Syrian government. Current U.N. agreements prescribe respect for the sovereignty of nations and nonintervention in the internal affairs of others, but these principles are being turned into mere empty rhetoric.

This risky policy of actively promoting and cultivating conflicts could give rise to volatile, out-of-control situations, just as Chomsky points out. It is worth bearing in mind that the state of Israel, with its nuclear arsenal, is run by a group of increasingly fanatical fundamentalists — a group that has long proved its power to influence political decisions in the United States. Over and above both Democrats and Republicans, it is the Israeli lobby that makes the decisions in America.

A study of a map of the region reveals that wars, of greater or lesser intensity, are going on in Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Turkey. Then there are the internal conflicts that threaten to intensify in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and the greater war that has ravaged Afghanistan and continues to do so.

The strategic peninsula of Crimea is very close to the Middle East. Now part of Russian territory once again, Crimea borders areas of Eastern Ukraine that have proclaimed their independence from the Kiev government. Here another dangerous armed conflict is being played out, generated by Washington’s policy of advancing NATO’s presence eastward and driving Russia into a corner. Military exercises and maneuvers like those carried out in Poland and the Baltic countries are a frequent occurrence.

For its part, Russia has just responded to NATO’s actions by announcing its intention to deploy strategic aircraft reconnaissance flights. The range of the flights is to include vast areas of the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico and South America.

Turkey is a member of NATO and has an air base housing nuclear arms deposits at Incirlik, relatively near Kobani, also known as Ayn Arab. Kurds and jihadis of the Islamic State group have been fighting for control of Ayn Arab for almost three months. The Turkish government does not make any secret of expansionist ambitions that recall Turkey’s imperial past. The Turkish government, led by a religious party, has encouraged the extremists and fanatics of the Islamic State group in the hope that they will eliminate the Syrian Kurds, who occupy the length of the border with Turkey and who have obtained a certain degree of autonomy from the Syrian government. This has served to exacerbate differences of opinion with the Iranians and the Iraqis, as well as provoke the dangerous displeasure of Russia.

With the disappearance of socialism in the USSR and Eastern Europe during the 1990s, Washington’s “Zio-cons” proclaimed themselves the winners of the Cold War, and came up with think tanks such as the Project for the New American Century. Among the central tenets of the project were domination of the Middle East in the widest territorial sense of the term (the Greater Middle East); gaining control of key oil and gas reserves in the region and checking the insurgence of any new powers that might pose a threat to Washington’s hegemonic interests; and maintaining a unipolar world in which the U.S. is free to act as it pleases, ignoring the role of the already debilitated United Nations.

Sponsoring dirty wars and agitating dangerous sectarian conflicts is what the United States does. Now and then it dresses up those conflicts, giving them appealing, spring-like names, and creates secondary complications with the imperialist ambitions of some of its allies. Seeing that the international community is moving toward a multipolar world, the United States, in its desperation, is becoming more dangerous. China has already overtaken the U.S. as the world’s leading economic power; a group of emerging powers has discovered common interests and joined forces in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa); Russia is making progress toward the recovery of its status as a major power to be reckoned with; and the days of America’s imperial policing of Latin America are over.

Cold War or not, America’s hegemonic ambitions encourage volatile situations that could spiral out of control as ignorant, opportunistic politicians make decisions that could turn into “hot wars” — with all that such a scenario implies for the human race.