Global Chaos and the Shadow of Nuclear War

Warmongering Israeli-Anglo-Saxon factions are distributing black propaganda in their eagerness to start a third world war — perhaps to provide themselves with a crafty way out of the profound financiers’ crisis they created. By contrast, President Putin has exercised great restraint in response to NATO’s increasing stranglehold on Russia’s borders. Now the leader of the nuclear superpower is sending unequivocal signals to the United States to not cross the Rubicon and unleash a nuclear Armageddon, and doing so through several high-ranking advocates with substantial influence in the West, among them Mikhail Gorbachev and Igor Ivanov.

The last president of the former USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, has dramatically accused the United States of dragging Russia into a new Cold War that could lead to an armed conflict. (http://goo.gl/N0Ji22)

Along similar lines, the neoliberal English-language newspaper The Moscow Times — a ferocious critic of Putin with links to the Russian ruling mafia — has published an article by Ivanov, in which the Russian foreign minister from 1998 to 2004 and current boss of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) believes that the crisis in Ukraine is more dangerous than the Cold War and urges political leaders to prevent a nuclear conflict: “In the absence of a political dialogue, with mutual mistrust reaching historical highs, the probability of unintended accidents, including those involving nuclear weapons, is getting more and more real.” (http://goo.gl/BCJeXP)

Ivanov discerningly dismisses the quantity of empty rhetoric declaiming a new Cold War: “No Cold War of the type we experienced in the second half of the 20th century can be repeated today […] in an entirely new reality that does not fit the old paradigms.” International relations, he says, were regulated by a certain order established after the Second World War, but today that old order has ceased to exist and a new one has not yet been established to the satisfaction of all the major players. And that, unquestionably, “is what makes our times so different from the Cold War.”

Ivanov points out that we all formally subscribe to the established norms of international law, but as the Ukraine crisis has demonstrated yet again, the old institutions are dramatically losing their efficiency and international law is becoming a victim of political interests.

Nor does the United States lack the odd intelligent voice of reason, though the massive black propaganda machine of the uninformed warmongers has them heavily marginalized. One is Theodore Postol, a nuclear arms expert and senior professor in Science, Technology and International Security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Postol vividly recalls how 20 years ago a chain of coincidences came close to provoking a nuclear crisis between the United States and Russia.

Besides making a disturbing revelation on the vulnerability of the human race to a nuclear warning error, Postol proposes three measures for avoiding Armageddon: 1) NATO’s military might must be used to deter, not provoke Russia into further negative actions; 2) The United States must rein in its dangerous and senseless efforts to modernize its nuclear force. The program currently gives the impression that the U.S. is preparing to fight and win a nuclear war with Russia; and 3) Russia must have access to specialized satellite sensor technologies. Both the United States and Europe have this technology and could supply it to Russia, which would help to correct the dangerous deficit and even the nuclear playing field.

Nobody can win a nuclear war that would guarantee the mutual destruction of Russia and the United States. Europe has no need to suffer the lethal consequences of its technological greed. A better plan would be to form a cooperative alliance with the United States and Russia, to which China and India should also be invited to join.

The nuclear superpowers have no option but to adjust to the new world order, which I believe to be a tripolar geostrategy formed by the United States, Russia and China.

Jen Psaki, spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department headed by John Kerry, rejected Gorbachev’s statements and said that the United States will continue to work together with Russia in several areas including Iran, Syria and the Ukraine conflict. (http://goo.gl/Uv9RrT)

Backtracking in what may be an attempt to reduce rising tensions, Viktor Muzhenko, Chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces, has said that Russian troops did not take part in fighting at Donetsk and Luhansk. (http://goo.gl/3Phs8z)

Pentagon sources are exhibiting growing concern with the interruption to military communication channels between NATO and Russia. Even the pugnacious Philip Breedlove, a general in the U.S. Air Force and NATO commander known for his outspoken threats against Russia, is now eager to reestablish contact with the Russian military and resume dialogue with current Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces General Valery Gerasimov. (http://goo.gl/Sh1q7U)

Amid so many cries of an approaching apocalypse, it is a relief to find that two former U.S. senators with considerable influence on nuclear strategy — Democrat Sam Nunn and Republican Richard Lugar — are calling for cooperation between the United States and Russia. They say that the United States and Russia must repair their partnership on nuclear security and step up to provide world leadership in a cooperative effort based on mutual interest rather than on bargaining chips. In this way, potentially catastrophic nuclear terrorism could be prevented. (http://goo.gl/1QuGHJ)

Geostrategists Brent Snowcroft, a Republican and a Mormon, and Democrat Zbigniew Brzezinski, recently testified before a Senate Armed Forces Committee meeting chaired by warmongering Senator John McCain. What was surprising in the Russophobe Brzezinski’s testimony was a significant watering down of his usual stance. He argued against the admission to NATO and ensuing Finlandization of Ukraine and called for the adoption of measures designed to prevent what he calls the universalization of the current conflict in Europe and a subsequent all-out standoff with Russia. On the Middle East, he spoke of the potential for creative compromises in Syria and the “elimination of the regional extremists.” (http://goo.gl/Zqs0Xo) Brezinski’s difficulty here is one of semantics: just who is defining extremism and from whose perspective?

The best outlook is that the last remaining links between Russia and the United States have not yet been broken, while China is taking up a cautious rearguard position.

Going beyond the doomsday clock metaphor — and in contrast to the relatively long-term effects of climate change — the nihilistic consequences of a nuclear war between the United States and Russia would be instantaneous.

We may be on the brink of the precipice, but there is still time to step back from the menacing global chaos scenario and lean toward a new U.S.-Sino-Russian tripolar world order for the 21st century.

Cassandra’s repeated warnings that Troy would be destroyed were shown to be true. Today the United States and Russia must ensure that similarly apocalyptic prophecies are not fulfilled.

Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine, was the scene of intense combat on Jan. 30, 2015, causing the deaths of several civilians. The picture shows the removal of a man killed by shrapnel. An attempt to reopen peace talks was aborted before talks began.