World War III? Or a bad, expensive joke?
Russia has declared a nuclear test alert. The Ukraine crisis is beginning to become very scary.
When the old Soviet Union broke up, I and other moderates called for the former Moscow-dominated states of East Europe to become neutral. Otherwise, East-West conflict would, I warned, be inevitable (see my book ‘War at the Top of the World’).
Instead, the rabidly anti-Russian US war party drove NATO east to the former Soviet borders, making a major confrontation near certain.
We are there today, playing Russian roulette with nuclear weapons.
Washington is beating the war drums and sounds borderline hysterical, warning ‘the Russians are coming.’ Moscow scoffs at the whole business, saying President Joe Biden is trying to divert attention from the big economic and political mess in the US.
Nothing like a jolly little war to distract public opinion at a time when rightwing forces are fast gaining ground in the US and now, of all places, in placid Canada.
The trucker’s blockade that shut down the Canada-US border cost Ottawa billions in lost trade, seriously damaged the image of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and showed that less than 100 ZZ Top look-alike truckers could hold Canada to ransom.
It was also a vivid rehearsal for what the hard right may have in store for November elections. The mob assault on the Capitol on 6 January was only a trial run.
Meanwhile, back in darkest Ukraine, pro- and anti-government factions are trading occasional shells while the US government in Washington claims war is imminent.
The facts on the ground do not support such alarmism. Russia may have up to 150,000 troops positioned around Ukraine (similar to the same strategic advantage that Germany enjoyed over Poland in 1939) but all these units are so far positioned inside Russia. Most of the NATO troops rushed to the east are from outside their home territory.
Crimea and Ukraine were ruled by the Ottoman Empire, and then Crimean Tatars, until annexed by Russia’s Catherine the Great in 1783. They remained an integral part of the Russian Empire until the 1920’s, and, after a brief bout of independence after WWI, until the Communist era.
But one must remember that in the 1930’s, Josef Stalin and his ‘Jewish Himmler,’ Lazar Kaganovitch, murdered some six million Ukrainians by starvation or shootings in an effort to eradicate Ukrainian nationalism and independent farming. This was likely the worst atrocity in Europe until 1944 – done by the key US/British wartime ally. Small wonder the invading Germans in WWII were initially greeted as liberators.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, an ally of billionaire George Soros, now claims that Moscow will stage a false flag operation to justify invading Ukraine. It’s true, Russia just about invented such ploys in the 1919-1920 period when Moscow’s secret police rounded up and crushed the anti-communist opposition. KGB has always loved such deft operations.
But who is Blinken to make such allegations? British media revealed that George W. Bush and UK PM Tony Blair discussed painting US aircraft in UN colors, then buzzing Iraqi anti-aircraft units to provoke a false flag attack on the UN, justifying a US-British attack against Iraq. In fact, the entire Iraq invasion was based on a farrago of lies, double-dealing and torture.
Right on cue, former US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (born Nudelman), remerges to press for war against Russia. She spent US$5 billion engineering the overthrow of Ukraine’s former elected government which leaned towards Moscow.
As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
Eric S. Margolis [send him mail] is the author of War at the Top of the World and the new book, American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World. See his website.
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