By Dimitris Konstantakopoulos
June 3, 2024
Napoleon campaigned in Russia and was crushed. The Western powers heavily intervened in Russia against the Bolsheviks (1918-21), only to face humiliation and see their own troops revolt. Hitler’s Germany attacked Russia and was destroyed.
Their glory is apparently envied now by Biden, Scholz, Macron, Stoltenberg, von der Leyen etc., perhaps the most decadent coterie of “leaders” of the West in its whole history. Of very low intellectual quality, those persons probably they have just a very vague idea, if they have, of European history, which makes easier for them to repeat it.
The only problem is that we now possess nuclear weapons and a whole host of other technological means that did not exist before 1945. This is why the new campaign risks becoming not just the Waterloo of the West, but the Waterloo of humanity, unless humanity is mobilized in a massive and dynamic way to prevent its destruction.
We explained in a previous article https://www.defenddemocracy.press/towards-a-global-nuclear-war/ why the latest decisions of the United States and NATO dramatically increase the possibility of a global nuclear war since, as we explained, they overturn the most basic principles of “nuclear stability” established in the past by the US and the USSR. Even if we don’t go immediately to global nuclear war Russia and the NATO are two technologically very advanced countries. They can transform into hell the planet even before they go nuclear.
This is more than just a personal viewpoint. The President of the United States himself, Joe Biden, said repeatedly the same. From the very beginning of the war in Ukraine, he has refused to provide Ukraine with long-range weapons capable of striking deep into Russian territory, arguing that we want to help Ukraine, but not to provoke ‘World War III’. The argument that we should not provoke World War III was ever-present in White House deliberations on Ukraine policy (https://archive.fo/gUOvq) until the President surrendered to the “War Party” within the collective West and the US government. So either Biden doesn’t know what he says and what he does, which is very dangerous when the decisions concern the very survival of humanity, or he knows what he says and, for reasons he himself knows, he chooses to take the risk of World War III, that is, the destruction of humanity.
I understand that my writing may be hard for the reader to take at face value. Having followed somewhat systematically for many years the issues of nuclear arms control and East-West relations, I have highlighted in my articles the path that has gradually led us to where we are, and warned about the risks of establishing new US bases in my own country, where even the explosion of a ‘small’ tactical nuclear device can lead to a radiation disaster. One of the main US bases is in Alexandroupolis, in Northeastern Greece, and most of the time in Greece the winds are Northeastern. Thus, the radiation from Alexandroupolis can fast go to the Attica agglomeration, where half of the Greek population are living. No one responded to me with arguments, but I was met with a great deal of skepticism and criticism, for my supposed doomsday mentality. Confirmation does not bring me any joy and I am still praying that I won’t be confirmed any more.
The thing seems completely logical and completely absurd at the same time. The biggest barrier to understanding reality is the constraints of our imagination, as the great French geneticist Albert Jacquard once wrote. Most people have a mechanism for denying reality if we feel it exceeds us, the same as ostriches have. Unable to bear the stress of danger, or not knowing how to deal with it, we prefer not to see it. But the nightmare is here, it is in the external reality. And the only way to avoid it is to mobilise states and societies.
Rapid escalation
In the three days since I wrote my previous article on the risk of nuclear war https://www.defenddemocracy.press/towards-a-global-nuclear-war/, a series of news reports have confirmed our conclusion that we are heading towards the most serious nuclear crisis in our history.
After Biden’s decision to allow the use of US weapons against targets on Russian territory, within three days, the French are preparing to send troops to Ukraine, the Germans are discussing the possibility of recruiting 900,000 reservists, the Dutch and the Danes say they have no problem if the F16s they give to Ukraine strike inside Russia. But these aircraft can carry nuclear weapons. In other words, the Russians will be under constant threat and uncertainty that they could be subject to a nuclear attack.
Increasing uncertainty can cause nuclear war by mistake, while facilitating a provocation. The existence of such weapons in Ukraine, where Zelensky now seems to be fully controlled not only by the West in general, but by the extremist “Party of War” within it, makes any provocation much easier, i.e. destabilizes the most crucial factor of nuclear stability.
It’s like a poker game where the opponents are constantly moving up in stakes. US weapons have already carried out deadly attacks in Belgorod, Russia. Russia, as Putin himself said, responded by carrying out an attack in the direction of Kharkiv.
So what do they think in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin? That they will keep escalating the intervention in Ukraine and Moscow will not respond? Or do they want it to respond, they want escalation, taking things to a nuclear conflict without taking themselves the responsibility of it?
The Russians, for their part, released a map of the bases where the United States has stored nuclear weapons in Europe and Putin made a special reference to small European states whose leaders do not understand what they are getting themselves into. Most European media did not even report this news.
What do you think? Where exactly is this whole thing going?
European states: Fatal and spineless puppets
The vast majority of European political personnel, directly dependent on NATO and the US services, as it seems, and of a low moral and intellectual level, are powerless to challenge decisions and plans that threaten to lead Europe and humanity to their end.
An honourable exception is the Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán http://www.defenddemocracy.press/71683-2/, whom many may not like for other issues, but who had the courage to clearly oppose the war plans and is now threatened from Brussels, the seat of a supposedly democratic and increasingly totalitarian, European Union, with the exclusion of Hungarians from all posts in the EU. There is also, of course, the left-wing Slovak Prime Minister Fico, even more radical in his criticism of NATO policy, but someone made sure he was sent to hospital.
Orban said that he has never witnessed such irresponsibility in his life as he has seen in Europe’s involvement in Ukraine, without even an assessment of the costs and means needed to achieve its objective goals. NATO is becoming a directly involved party in Ukraine and the chances of avoiding this are limited. He said that he is not prepared, however, to allow Brussels and Berlin to decide that they should send Hungarian soldiers to Ukraine and lead his country back into war against Russia, as Hitler did.
Another European statesman, the President of Bulgaria has warned that NATO’s policy is bringing us to Nuclear Armageddon (https://www.defenddemocracy.press/bulgarian-president-nato-is-bringing-us-to-nuclear-armageddon/)
The “European Army”
Last month, the leader of the European People’s Party (EPP), Weber said that he wants the introduction of compulsory service and the creation of a European Army, which would not be subject to the constraints of control by national governments. In other words, Brussels will directly send European soldiers to Ukraine without asking anyone.
At the same time, the idea of a “military Schengen” is being discussed, i.e. NATO troops being able to move into EU territory without consulting governments.
European leaders do not understand that what they are doing is probably a prelude to the third world war and they think of nuclear bombs as a “tactical deterrent tool”, not as something that will actually be used, but what may not seem likely at the start of a war could occur by its conclusion, as the Hungarian Prime Minister pointed out.
The central question
The Americans may hope that, even if a nuclear conflict occurs, it will be under control and confined to European territory. But such calculations are utterly foolish. If humanity crosses the threshold of using nuclear weapons, whether tactical or strategic, it will be extremely difficult to control and contain, even to keep it on European soil. Most likely, once mankind crosses the nuclear threshold, it will be the end of mankind.
Ultimately, the question that political forces and societies in the West have to answer is this: Do we want to risk the very existence of humanity, clearly not for the sake of Ukraine or democracy, but to uphold the dominance of an ultra tiny minority over the planet and our own nations?
Is it not time to start thinking again like Roosevelt, the two Kennedys, De Gaulle, Willy Brandt, Olaf Palme, Aldo Moro, Andreas Papandreou? Where they all working for Moscow as agents? Is it not time for the people to mobilise?
Because, as Nikita Khrushchev and John Kennedy said, those who survive a nuclear war, the living, will envy those who have died.
