By JOSÉ LUÍS FIORI*
The hands of the “world war clock” are moving faster and faster
1.
There is a widespread feeling that the war clock is speeding up, and an increasing number of people are talking about the imminence of a third world war, which would be nuclear.[I] and catastrophic for all humanity.[ii] There are recent developments in the international field that are undoubtedly pointing in this direction, starting with the advance of Russian troops into the territory of Donbass, together with the increasingly widespread conviction that there is no longer any way to reverse the defeat of Ukrainian troops, even with the arrival of new weapons that will be delivered to them by the United States and its main allies.
Even so, NATO remains determined to impose a strategic defeat on Russia, on the battlefield, as was clear in the final declaration of the 75th NATO Annual Meeting, held in Washington, between the 9th and 11th of July 2024. Moment in that NATO doubled its commitment to confrontation by announcing the future incorporation of Ukraine into the Organization, knowing that this represents an open declaration of war against Russia. And that is why everyone is currently looking with anxiety at some events that could precipitate this catastrophic outcome.
From this point of view, the recent public exposure on North American television of the physical fragility and mental decrepitude of the current North American president has added fuel to the fire with the anticipation of his possible defeat next November. A date that immediately became a deadline extremely dangerous for the high military command of the United States and NATO, and for all European Union rulers who want to radicalize their confrontation with Russia and fear the return of Donald Trump, with his old antipathy towards NATO and the North's own intervention. American in Ukraine.
Added to this are the statements made by the new British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, who was quick to assure his allies that he “is prepared to use nuclear weapons” and that he would not hesitate in taking the initiative to order an atomic attack, if this was in the British interest.[iii] A frightening statement on the part of a newly installed ruler, when it is known that the United States and England had decided, at the beginning of 2024, to install new American atomic weapons on English territory.[iv]
In this sense, attention is drawn to the speed with which the new British Foreign Minister, David Lammy, made his first official visit to Germany, where the most aggressive and “Russophobic” political and ideological leadership in Europe is concentrated, and where the the military spearhead of NATO's new “iron triangle” being installed, formed by the United States, England and Germany itself.
An "troika” which was reinforced by the re-election of German Ursula van der Leyen for another term as president of the European Commission, and by her personal choice of the new head of EU Foreign Policy, Kaja Kallas, former Prime Minister of Estonia – a kind of “Baltic appendix” of Germany, with a territory of 45 thousand km2 and only one million three hundred thousand inhabitants. One of the most aggressive and warmongering voices in Europe, currently, alongside the German Foreign Minister, Annabela Baerbock (who suffered a major defeat in the last European Parliament elections).
A trio, therefore, not very significant within Europe itself, but which has in common its radically favorable position, with very few votes, for the expansion of NATO's war against Russia. The same position advocated by the new Secretary General of NATO, the former Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, another warmonger whose candidacy was sponsored, from the beginning, by the same United States, England and Germany.
A new administration of the European Union and NATO, with unrepresentative figures who seem to have been chosen to form a kind of “puppet government” managed, ultimately, by the new triad that takes command of the war against Russia, especially after the collapse of Emmanuel Macron's French government. It is not surprising, therefore, that the recent NATO Annual Meeting vetoed any type of peace initiative in Ukraine involving Russian participation.
2.
This warmongering and irreducible position, especially in the case of the two Anglo-Saxon powers, dates back long before February 22, 2022, and played a decisive role in blocking the peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, in March 2022, in city of Istanbul; as well as in the attack and destruction of the two Baltic gas pipelines, North Stream 1 and 2, on September 26, 2022, responsible for supplying Russian gas to the economies of Germany and the rest of continental Europe.
Likewise, in the case of North American intolerance, its explanation comes from further back, when the United States formulated its “Grand Strategy” for the 1990st century, shortly after its victory in the Cold War. Between 1997 and XNUMX, Republicans[v] and the Democrats[vi] convergently defined the new global objective of the United States for the new century: to prevent the emergence of any power that would be capable of competing with or threatening American power, anywhere in the world.
A new global strategy that was largely responsible for the American decision to expand NATO, from the 90s onwards, towards Eastern Europe, with the intention of containing and preventing any attempt at Russia's resurgence or geopolitical revenge.
It was this same strategy that supported the decision of the United States and NATO to bomb Yugoslavia for 78 days, in 1999, without authorization from the United Nations Security Council. There began the “endless wars” of the United States and NATO in the Middle East, which have lasted 25 years. And, finally, it was in the name of this same global containment strategy that the United States began its operation to change government and rearm Ukraine in 2014.
The history of the “Maidan movement” and its political and military consequences is well known and does not need to be recalled. But there is a less known or remembered fact, essential to understanding the military urgency of the United States and its NATO allies: the speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin, delivered on the 1st. of March 2018, in front of the Duma, in Moscow, but addressed directly to all governments in the North Atlantic.[vii]
At that moment, Vladimir Putin informed the world that Russia had a new type of weaponry that established a true “technological abyss” between the military capacity of Russia and that of the United States, and in particular between its nuclear power and that of its neighbors in the United States. NATO. That was when Russia announced the production of its new RS-28 Sarmat ballistic missile, with unlimited range and the ability to change its trajectory; the Mach 20 hypersonic gliding wing system, called Avangard; cruise and aeroballistic missiles; and the Kinzhal aeroballistic missile – with a range of 2.000 kilometers, launched by Mig-31BM jets and which cannot be stopped by any existing defense system other than the Russian S-500 system itself. A salvo of five or six of these missiles is capable of destroying any aircraft carrier in the world.[viii]
A set of weapons, therefore, that according to several military analysts, established a new paradigm and a new conception of war, responsible for the scrapping of a large part of the existing arsenals, including the 10 aircraft carriers that have been the centerpiece of naval power until today. from United States. And if these analysts are right, it is not wrong to say that, from then on, Russia would have begun to overthrow the global military hegemony of the United States.
It is only a matter of time before the Russians manage to install their new weapons in a widespread manner, inside and outside Russian territory, and through their atomic submarine system. It is therefore necessary for the United States and NATO to rush to prevent the consolidation of the technological advantage acquired by their great adversary.
From our point of view, it was this new military reality that made the “West” initially bet on its economic power and financial sanctions to defeat Russia in the Ukrainian War.[ix] And it was the failure of this economic attack that forced the “Western powers” to formulate a new offensive strategy capable of preventing Russia from consolidating its military and atomic leadership within the hierarchy of world power.
3.
It is on this point that the hypothesis that has been formulated with increasing frequency is based, that the US and NATO have already planned a first strike atomic attack against Russian nuclear facilities. A hypothesis that would explain, in turn, the dimensions, depth and complexity of the latest Russian military exercises with their nuclear missiles and tactics that will be used in the event of a possible NATO attack, which would mean the end of Europe as we know it.[X]
There is no way to verify or prove these hypotheses in a safe way, for obvious reasons, but they are what explain why the hands of the “world war clock” are moving increasingly faster.
July 2024
* Jose Luis Fiori He is professor emeritus at UFRJ. Author, among other books, of Global power and the new geopolitics of nations (Boitempo) [https://amzn.to/3RgUPN3]
Originally published on no. 6 of the XNUMXst Century International Observatory Bulletin – NUBEA/UFRJ.
Notes
[I] Sachs, J. “NATO Pushes the Limits on Nuclear War.” In: Humanitas Institute, Unisinos, 3 Oct. 2022.
[ii] “The United Nations (UN) warned on Tuesday that the world is 'closer than at any time this century to a global catastrophe' (referring) 'to regular threats to resort to a nuclear attack in the war in Ukraine'". Observer, https/observador.p. August 29, 2023
[iii] “Security will always come first”, Keir Stamer, < https://www.bbc.com > articles >, 3 Jun. 2024.
[iv] “The US will return to stationing nuclear weapons in the United Kingdom, in the same place where the North American nuclear arsenal was placed during the Cold War.” The public, https://www.publico.pt > 27 Jan. 2024.
[v] The document, “Defense Planning Guidance”, was formulated by a group of Republican strategists created by George W. Bush, in 1991, and coordinated by his Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, with the aim of defining the US “Grand Strategy”. for the XNUMXst century. In this document, the proposal to ensure American “primacy” throughout the world in the XNUMXst century appears for the first time.
[vi] Zbigmiew Brzezinski's book published in 1997, “The Grand Cheesboard. American Primacy and the Geostrategic Imperatives” (New York: Basic Books), summarizes the strategic objectives of the expansionist project of the Democratic governments, including the occupation of Ukraine, which he advocated to be achieved by the United States by the year 2105, as in fact occurred.
[vii] “Putin reveals he has an invincible nuclear missile in his annual speech”, published in ANSA, on March 01st. 2018. At the time, the Russian president declared that “any use of nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies, whether small, medium or any other power, will be perceived as a nuclear attack. The response will be immediate and with all the obvious consequences.”
[viii] Martyanov, A., “Losing Military Supremacy. The Myopiua of American Planning” (Clarity Press, 2018). E-Book 978-0-99869947-6-4.
[ix] Fiori, JL “On the economic war between the G7 and Russia”. In: JL (Org). War, Energy and the New Map of World Power. Petrópolis: Editora Vozes/INEEO, 2023.
[X] Since Russian President Vladimir Putin has reiterated on several occasions that Russia would not use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and only in response to an attack on its territory.
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