Dr. Strangelove is back
They say “War is too serious a thing to trust Generals with it”. Hearing the testimony of senior American General Breedlove to the US Senate, on February 25th, you have a very good example of the veracity of the statement.
It is simply ridiculous to say, as the General does, that Russia is representing an “existential threat” to the US and its allies.
But the ridiculous becomes extremely dangerous, when adopted by a representative of the most powerful military machine the world has ever seen.
In all History, words precede the wars and wars are the “continuation of politics” with other means, as Klauzevich put it. If you really face an “existential threat”, you have to use all available means against it. You may even attack it before it attacks you. So, when an important US General says to the Senate that US and its allies face an “existential threat” from Russia, he is not making a diagnosis. He is preparing a war with Russia.
It seems there is really an “existential threat” here, but it is threat directed to all world population and emanating from the way western establishment, including the US establishment, understands and analyzes the international situation.
The commentator is in a continuous dilemma with such sayings by American generals and senators. Discuss the ridiculous or comment the dangerous? Is it now serious, to say that Putin wants and exploits the chaos in the Middle East? Who else created chaos and anarchy in the Middle East, than the US government itself, intervening in Afghanistan and Iraq, or supporting, one way or another, the emergence of ISIS?
Even President Obama himself has acknowledged all that. It was even one of the reasons part of the US establishment and the voters supported and elected him, frightened as they were by the possible consequences the control of their state and government by the Neoconservatives could have. Neoconservatives had elaborated all these plans for the “American 21st century”, leading to the wars and the Chaos in the Middle East and Africa (already under export to Europe!).
By the way, Neoconservatives are always with us. In the same hearings the shadow of Robert Kaplan is ever present and the writer cited with respect. He is not a typical neoconservative, still he was one of the persons which were very important in preparing the Iraq war. He has gone public advancing the idea of a new “cold war” against China and he did not hide his hostility to Germany and Europe. He is advancing his idea of a return to a sort of “pagan power politics”, using various, not very coherent, historical references – anyway nobody knows the level of historical knowledge and understanding inside the establishment he is adressing. What both him and Huntington propose is, to put it simply, a return to a “civilization” based on pure violence. In reality the end of civilization!
To have an idea of Kaplan’s ideas see how he defends slavery http://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/03/neocon-robert-kagan-is-writing-in-defense-of-empire-empire-is-good-even-for-those-who-a-ruled-by-it-without-having-any-repr.html
and what kind of international policy, including a war against China, is proposing to the USA
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/062005_kaplan_clamor.shtml
Look now in the following videos how the Senator reads carefully Kaplan’s words from an article, with the same respect one would read the Bible. And hear also the General trying to prove that he has deeply understood this great theoretician.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?=5yDKZGgkUqk&app=desktop
https://www.youtube.com/watch?=XVuOAiKfdVw&app=desktop
But there is something even more dangerous than wanting and preparing for war with a nuclear superpower like Russia. And that is that Western “post-cold war” elites completely misinterpret the reasons behind the Soviet “collapse-suicide” and misread Russians, their motivations and their resolve. It is not the first time in History western elites commit this mistake, taking their wishes for reality. Napoleon and Hitler also did it in the past. But at their time, there were not nuclear arms. It seems we are already in the era described by Stanley Kubrick in his classic film
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
The only difference being we now lack Kennedy, De Gaulle and his country, Willy Brandt, Bertrand Russel, Albert Einstein and, most serious of all, the huge peace and anti-war movement in Europe and the US, that once existed.
