What we shouldn’t do now is
inflame the situation further through saber-rattling and warmongering…
|
Whoever believes that a
symbolic tank parade on the alliance’s eastern border will bring security is
mistaken. ..
|
We are well-advised to not
create pretexts to renew an old confrontation…
|
(It would be) fatal to search
only for military solutions and a policy of deterrence.
|
.
|
German
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, commenting on
NATO’s recent military exercises in Poland and the Baltics.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s cry of distress is that of a man
watching a tidal wave of destruction gathering force, similar to ones that have
engulfed his country twice in the 20th Century.
His dread is not to be dismissed since it comes from a man who is in a position
to know what the U.S. is up to. His words reflect the fears of ever more
people across all of the Eurasia from France in the West to Japan in the East.
Under the euphemism of “containment,” the U.S. is relentlessly
advancing its new Cold War on Russia and China. Its instrument in the
West is NATO and in the East, Japan and whatever other worthies can be sharked
up.
It is a Cold War that grows increasingly hotter, with proxy wars
now raging in Eastern Ukraine and Syria and with confrontations in the South
China Sea. There is an ever-growing likelihood that these points of tension
will flare up into an all-out military conflict.
In the West, this conflict will begin in Eastern Europe and
Russia, but it will not stop there. All the European NATO countries
would be on the front lines. In the East, the conflict will take place in
the Western Pacific in the region of China’s coast and in the peninsulas and
island countries in the region, including Japan, the Philippines, and
Indochina.
In each case, the US will be an ocean away, “leading from
behind,” as Barack Obama would put it, or engaged in “offshore balancing” as
some foreign policy “experts” might term it.
No matter the “victors,” all of the Eurasia, from France in the
West to Japan in the East would be devastated. No matter the outcome, the
US could escape unscathed and “win” in this sense. And all Eurasian
nations would lose. It would be World War II redux.
One can get a sense of what this means in the case of economic
conflict by looking at the minimal economic warfare now being waged on Russia
in the form of sanctions. Those sanctions are hurting both Russia
and the rest of Europe. The US is untouched.
The same is also true for military conflict. Want to know
what it would look like? Look at Eastern Ukraine. All of the
Eurasia could come to resemble that sorry nation in the event of a military
conflict pitting the US and its allies against Russia and China.
Eurasia, be forewarned!
The goal of the US foreign policy elite would clearly be for
Russia and China to “lose,” but even if they “won,” they would be brought low,
leaving the US as the world’s greatest economic and military power as it was in
1945.
Europe is beginning to awaken to this. We have
Steinmeier’s plea above. But it is not only Germany that is worried. The
French Senate wants an end to the sanctions imposed on Russia. Business
people in many Western European countries, most notably in Germany and Italy,
European farmers who export to Russia and tourist entrepreneurs like those in
Turkey and Bulgaria also want an end to sanctions and military exercises.
Parties of the Right want an end to domination by NATO and Brussels, both
controlled by the US. The Brexit is just one rumbling of such discontent.
All these nations are growing increasingly aware of the fate
that awaits them if overt conflict erupts with Russia. The people of
Germany want none of it. Likewise, the people of Japan are stirring
against the US effort to goad Japan into fighting
China. All remember the devastation of WWII.
Let’s recall the casualty figures, i.e., deaths, among the
principal combatants of WWII:
·
Soviet Union- 27,000,000 (14% of the population);
·
China- 17,000,000 (3.5%);
·
Germany- 7,000,000 (8.5%);
·
Japan- 2,800,000 (4%).
By comparison, for the US, safely far offshore, the number was
419,000 (0.32%)!
And for a few other countries which “got in the way” of the
major adversaries:
·
Yugoslavia- 1,500,000 (9%)
·
Poland- 6,000,000 (17%)
·
French Indochina- 1,600,000 (6.11%)
·
Philippines- 527,000 (3.29%)
One wonders what the leaders of Poland or the Philippines or
some elements in Vietnam are thinking when they take a belligerent attitude to
Russia or China in order to please the US.
The problem with this US strategy is that it could easily spill
over into a nuclear conflict as nearly happened in the Cuban Missile
Crisis. Then the US too would be reduced to radioactive rubble. The
bet of the Western policy elite must be that Russia and China would not respond
to a conventional war with a nuclear response.
However, Vladimir Putin has made it clear that in any war with
the West, the US will feel the impact at once. The neocons and the rest
of the US foreign policy elite must be betting that Putin can do nothing
because he would not use nuclear weapons. So the destruction will be
confined to Europe and Asia.
But that assumption is a dangerous one. Nuclear weapons
might not be used. Russia and China might respond with a conventional weapons
attack on US cities. In WWII Germany was able to wreak considerable
devastation using conventional bombs on England delivered by airplanes and V2
rockets. Similarly, the US was able to do enormous damage to Germany and
to Japan with conventional weapons, especially fire bombing as in Tokyo and
Dresden. Today technology has advanced greatly, and US cities have nuclear
power plants nearby.
What is the likely outcome of
a conventional war waged against US cities? Do we wish to find out?
And once it begins where is the firewall against an all-out nuclear
exchange? Where are the neocons and the rest of the US foreign policy
elite taking us? Certainly, the damage will begin with Eurasia, but
Americans would do well to worry that great swarms of chickens might come home
to roost in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. This is not the 20thCentury.
For some, the scenarios above
might seem unduly alarmist. They might doubt that the US elite would be
capable of consciously unleashing such a vast bloodletting. For those, it
is useful to recall the words of President Harry S. Truman, who said in 1941,
when he was still a Senator and before the US had entered WWII:
“If we see that Germany is
winning the war, we ought to help Russia; and if that Russia is winning, we ought
to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible. . . .”
Is that not
what happened?
People of
Eurasia, beware.
A version of this article originally appeared on RT here.