Nearly 60 years ago, leading military and intelligence officials of the USA saw only one viable pathway to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis: war with Russia and the use of “the bomb”. Mocked by Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant Doctor Strangelove and exposed by John Frankenheimer’s Seven Days in May (both released in 1964), the psychology of leading Cold Warriors in Washington was entirely shaped by the belief that a nuclear war with Russia was not only worth risking, but that such a war could somehow be won with minimal collateral damage to the “civilized democracies” on the good side of the iron curtain. Luckily during that crisis, there was one man who devoutly disagreed with this assessment.
President Kennedy surprised everyone by demonstrating that he would not bend to the pressures of the Joint Chiefs and instead chose the path of negotiation and concession rather than Armageddon.
Who would have thought that nearly 60 years later, the world would once again be brought back to the same precipice of nuclear annihilation… except this time with thousands more nuclear warheads peppering the face of the earth and without anyone similar to Kennedy occupying the seat of the Oval Office?
While acting viceroy of the Nuland-steered coup in Ukraine during regime change-ridden Obama era, Joe Biden not only personally benefited by the system of graft he oversaw alongside his disastrous son, but also turned a blind eye to the rise of unrepentant neo-Nazi forces in the post-Maidan Kiev. These forces took the form of racist right-wing groups like Right Sector, Azov Battalion, Svoboda and the Nationalist Socialist party of Ukraine. Leading Nazi-affiliated deputy ministers occupying seats of immense power for the first time in decades now had the full patronage of the USA and it was said that it were only a matter of time before full EU and NATO integration would happen.
While President Trump derailed some of this momentum by cancelling US military contracts with Kiev, and cutting financial support and cooperation with the Rules Based Orderistas of NATO intent on absorbing Ukraine and Georgia, this resistance was short lived.
With team Obama’s return to power in January 2021, the old script has been reactivated in force. In recent weeks, leading US officials have re-asserted their support for Ukraine’s joining NATO. Meanwhile, Biden’s passage of the US-Ukraine Strategic Partnership in September guaranteed a military pact worth billions of dollars to the US military industrial complex.
This brings us to Russia’s obvious concern expressed by Putin during the two-hour call with Biden on December 7. Is it any wonder that Putin demanded a written and legally binding agreement that NATO would not encroach one more inch upon Russia’s border and certainly not install any ballistic missiles in Ukraine? Sure, Anthony Blinken was quick to dismiss these concerns by stating NATO is a defense pact alone with no intention of ever doing anything offensive. But when the clamor for nuclear war with Russia is made by leading representatives of the western alliance, can you blame Putin for not being awash in trust?
Among the loudest of these modern day incarnations of Lyman Lemnitzer and Curtis Lemay, we have heard NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg threatening to move US nukes from Germany to an eastern European state closer to Russia’s border. We have heard German Defense minister Kramp-Karrenbauer state: “we must make it very clear to Russia that we are ready to use such measures as well, so that it would have an early deterrent effect.” On December 8, American Senator Roger Wicker joined in this end-times cheerleading squad saying: “We don’t rule out first-use nuclear action, we don’t think it will happen, but there are certain things in negotiations, if you are going to be tough, that you don’t take off the table.”
Even Admiral Charles Richard, the head of US Strategic Command stated earlier this year that “the U.S. military must shift its principal assumption from ‘nuclear employment is not possible’ to ‘nuclear employment is a very real possibility,”
Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard was one of the few voices of sanity who called out these warmongers, telling Tucker Carlson: “Let’s go and launch a nuclear attack that would start a war that would destroy the American people, our country and the world and oh, also, the Ukrainians so that we can save Ukraine’s democracy? I mean, it literally is insane.” She rightfully pointed out that “anyone who would propose or even consider what he is saying as an option must be insane, a sociopath or a sadist.”
So of course, Russia is more than a little concerned.
Has “evil Russia” actually expressed plans to invade Ukraine as so many voices among the western press have emphasized in recent weeks? Well considering that the source claiming 175,000 Russian troops have been assembled to attack Ukraine in early 2022 is an anonymous figure talking to the Washington Post, there is good reason to believe that this is claim is an illusion.
Russia is watching the growth of NATO, the forward basing of anti-ballistic weapons under its soft underbelly, NATO war games in the Black Sea and the systemic breaking of the Minsk Accords by Kiev and its leaders see where the wind is blowing.
So rather than burn more energy on a policy whose likely outcome would make Dr Strangelove squirm, why should the USA not start putting its priorities on fixing its own problems for once?
Trillions of dollars in infrastructure spending is needed to repair the rotting roads, rail, water and electrical systems across the USA.
The speculative bubbles set to rip the nation to shreds can only be dealt with by a serious re-organization of the major too-big-to-fail institutions and Glass Steagall bank separation. The crisis of drugs, unemployment, violence, suicide and despair can only be solved by returning to a future oriented policy of building things rather than simply lighting things on fire on behalf of an over-bloated military industrial complex as we have been doing relentlessly since the Vietnam war.
Wars with other nations… especially those in possession of nuclear warheads must be recognized as part of an obsolete age. Instead of provoking a war with either Russia or China, American patriots who don’t wish their children condemned to decades of radioactive fallout, must pick up the torch where it was dropped with the-murder of Kennedy nearly 6 decades ago. This means refocusing our values upon repairing the self-induced decay of the USA while reaching out to Russia as our partner and ally for the remaining decades of the 21st century and beyond.
By Matthew Ehret [originally published on the Washington Times]
Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , and Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow. He is author of the ‘Untold History of Canada’ book series and Clash of the Two Americas (which you can purchase by clicking those links). In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation .