by Dimitris Konstantakopoulos
Not since the Cuban crisis of 1962 has humanity come so close to the possibility of a World War as today, in conditions that bear quite a few analogies to what was happening on the eve of World War I and II. According to The Washington Post, things are even worse. We are at the most dangerous point in history since World War II.
In writing it the newspaper inadvertlently betrays Western adventurism. Because today humanity does not have even the ” luxury ” of a World War to solve its problems, a “luxury ” it had until 1945. But if The Washington Post were to write this, it would risk shifting the debate from the alleged Russian invasion of the Ukraine to the possibility of destroying the planet. And this is the last thing a newspaper which has become the flagship of the Western “War Party” wants to do.
Of course one hopes that a peaceful way out of the Ukrainian crisis will be found even at the last hour, and we cannot rule it out, but at the moment we are writing about what we are witnessing empirically, namely the constant accumulation of explosive materials in the Ukrainian crisis, which is bringing us to a point where neither side will be able to retreat without being considered defeated. (This article was written before Russian announcements of a withdrawl from Belarus). But there is also a deeper and more general reason, a creeping logic jostling with war: If the West does not a clash with Russia, China and Iran, how it will be able to maintain its world domination?
The answer of the hawks to this question is war and chaos. The most extremist among them would also push for a complete delinking of China and from Russia. On the other hand, both Biden and the Europeans do not seem to have the strength, the system and the disposition to clash in a decisive and systematic way with a party of war that does not have the slightest desire to recognise that we are no longer in 1989-91, that is to understand that America and the West as a whole cannot dominate the world and act accordingly. They behave like the Bourbons, who have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. The party of war is overrepresented even in Biden’s administration, while its opponents do not know how to counter it without overthrowing all the anti-Russian and anti-Chinese ideology accepted as granted by all the western establishment for so many years.
Biden fears that if he looks “soft” with Russia he will lose the election. However, if he goes too “hard” he will blow to smithereens all his own attempted reforms, which are now faltering in important sectors (ecology and economy), having come too late and too timidly to face the enormous power of world financial capital and of the US military-industrial complex.
Germany and France can stop the Americans, and in doing it they could lay the foundations of an independent continet, vector of progress worlwide, but it doesn’t seem likely they will. They don’t want the war, but they don’t want also any serious break with the US. They are thus in danger of seeing Washington ignoring them, and organising a provocation as Nuland did back in 2014. She waited for the three European foreign ministers who had made an agreement on a peaceful resolution of the crisis to leave Kiev and, as soon as they left, the machine guns spoke.
Those who remember history can also find analogies between the current situation and how the operation in the Bay of Pigs took place, without Kennedy having decided to launch it, or with the “incident” in the Gulf of Tonking, when an alleged attack by the North Vietnamese against American ships, which never took place in reality, led to the bombing of North Vietnam.
The “Russian invasion”
For some time now, the Western media have been accusing Russia every day of preparing to invade the Ukraine. But they do not cite the slightest evidence to substantiate this accusation, other than statements by unnamed US intelligence officials. The only representative of these agencies to speak by name was the CIA chief William Burns himself, who said, some time ago, that his agencies have not reached a conclusion that Putin intends to invade Ukraine and has since been silent! How can we take seriously all this rhetoric about the iminent Russian invasion from a power which has assured us of the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of this country or of the alleged chemical attacks by Assad, which never took place?
Also, if Russian military drills inside Russia are a provocation, what are the gigantic grills of more than 30 nations around Russia last summer, the biggest in NATO’s history?
Western media report rarely and dismissively the Russian denials and almost never explain why Moscow would make such an invasion, except for some antics such as the” argument ” of American media that Putin cannot tolerate democratic states in his neighbourhood (the democratic state Putin cannot tolerate is supposed to be the Ukraine, a state very friendly to armed neo-Nazis). The media mention the gatherings and exercises of Russian and Belorusian troops inside Russia and Belarus, but never the gatherings of even stronger Ukrainian forces outside Donbas, the purely Russian regions of the Ukraine. The armed forces which seem to have integrated all the low-life of Ukrainian society, including the neo-Nazi mercenaries of the Azov militia (responsible, according to some reports, for the murder of two Greeks in Mariupol yesterday).
The Americans say that a Russian invasion of the Ukraine is imminent, but they did not inform the president of the Ukraine himself on what they are basing this assessment, as a result of which Zelensky has been asking the US every day to stop a war hysteria which is ruining his country financially. Until yesterday, when he came out speaking about an imminent Russian invasion, we suppose under US pressure. As demonstrated by the statements of the Ukrainian ambassador in London and former Deputy Foreign Minister, even if they subsequently forced him to revoke them, Kiev would be ready to give up its pursuit of becoming a member of NATO – but of course the US and NATO do not want to permit the Ukrainians such a choice. The question here is not the right of the Ukraine to adhere to NATO, but rather the right of NATO to oocupy the Ukraine.
Behind Western hysteria
We see no reason for Putin to order a Russian invasion and the western media themselves have not provided us with any serious reason why Russia would invade the Ukraine. Then why all this hysteria? The most probable reason is that strong forces inside the Western deep state are preparing a provocation in Eastern Ukraine, around the Donbass. By intensifying the everyday propaganda about the imminent Russian invasion, whatever will happen tomorrow in the Ukraine, for example an Ukrainian attack on the Donbass and the subsequent resistance of the Russians, will be presented as a Russian invasion.
In reality, extremist forces in the West would very much like a Russian “invasion” of the Ukraine, and a way to provoke it is to launch an Ukrainian attack against the Donbass. We have some indications that this is the aim, if not of Biden himself, of important forces inside the US. This could explain the closure of the US embassy in Kiev, the removal from the Ukraine of US and British troops and the removal of western observers from the OSCE mission (so that they will not have to testify on what will happen). An equally strong example is provided by an article of David Ignatius in The Washington Post two days ago.
A Vietnam in the heart of Europe?
David Ignatius is considered the “emminence grise” of the US special services, and for some he is a kind of “succesor” to Zbignew Brzezinski – although he did not draw the conclusions the latter has drawn before his death (he wrote that the “window of opportunity” for American omnipotence, which existed after 1989-91, was lost). Ignatius is considering in his article dragging Russia into a generalised war in the Ukraine, similar to that of the Soviets and Americans in Afghanistan or Americans in Iraq.
If the article betrays a possible targeting, it is of course based on a completely misleading comparison. The Ukraine is not Iraq or Afghanistan. It is a country in the centre of Europe, absolutely vital for Russia. As for the Donbass itself, it remains a part of the very heart of Russia. A war in the Ukraine will shape all the world situation, much more than the wars in the Middle East. One of the central aims of those who work for such a war is the complete destruction of the relations between Europe and Russia, and maintaining control of the continent by the United States.
A major war in the Ukraine, even if it does not lead to a direct military confrontation between Russia and NATO, which means a global nuclear war and the destruction of humanity, will lead to deregulation of the entire international environment, from Latin America to the Middle East and from Africa to the China Sea and a huge energy and economic crisis. It will also probably lead to attempts to impose open or covert dictatorships on Western countries themselves. Even if we manage not to kill each other by nuclear fire, our species will die from the consequences of climate change and all the other problems that need very great international cooperation to address them and not new cold or hot wars.
They respond to decline with war
Will may ask whether it is possible that the Americans do not see all that? We put this question to an American friend. Here is his answer: “As someone who has occasion to sit in on meetings of the great and the wise at the Council on Foreign Relations, let me assure you, I do not overstate the mental incapacity, lack of real information and self-delusion of the DC foreign policy set…As for the public discourse you can find serious inaccuracies… It’s quite a contrast with the records of NSC deliberations in the early 1960s under Kennedy, when every word or turn of phrase was interrogated for unintended meanings”.
But history has repeatedly proved that such political and state personnel appear in history when a disaster is being prepared, and its appearance is the way to head to a disaster. Some people around the globe believe that the Americans have fallen into decline and for this reason they will do nothing to protect their dominant position in the world. But in fact the opposite is the case. Just because they perceive that they are in decline, they are looking for a way to stem it. And in such conditions there is more of a temptation to do something really crazy.
Strategically, the danger of war cannot be met unless a new vision of the world is proposed, a vision which will take into account the vital needs of Mankind and the interests of people in both the North and the South, the East and the West of the planet. Unfortunately such a vision does not exist for the time being, either in the West or in its opponents. What exists is the senile stubbornness of powerful economic and geopolitical forces, which play even with the idea of destroying the world so as not to lose their privileges, and who have bought off our politicians – including many who appear as supposedly radical – and have stupefied our societies. In contrast to what was happening during the Vietnam and the Algerian wars, or with Euromissiles or before the invasion of Iraq, very few people are demonstrating in the West against the prospect of a catastrophic war in Europe. Now we are demonstrating against wearing masks!
