Tag Archives: Nuclear war

Washington’s Energetic Generals and the Emphasis on Preparation for Nuclear War, by Brian Cloughley

Posted on February 17, 2021 | Leave a comment

Substitute “Global Annihilation” for “Nuclear War,” because that’s where nuclear war will inevitably lead. It’s incredibly frightening if the generals don’t understand that. From Brian Cloughley at strategic-culture.org:

The Pentagon’s energetic generals are beating their war drums and the President has as yet done nothing to rein them in, Brian Cloughley writes.

Some senior generals and admirals in and around Washington have been very busy recently, and their activities, while aggressive, have not been associated with directing current combat operations. Rather, they have been directed at attempting to influence the Administration of newly-elected President Joe Biden to restructure military forces, expand the nuclear arsenal and magnify specific warfighting capabilities. All of this is what might be expected of those whose business and dispositions are aimed at organising destruction and death, but the manner in which their aspirations are expressed are not consistent with what is expected of military personnel in a democracy.

The U.S. Department of Defence is now headed by a Biden-appointed retired general who has not voided the directive concerning “Political Activities by Members of the Armed Forces” which notes that “members on active duty should not engage in partisan political activity.”

This long-standing instruction was last reiterated in 2008 but it cannot be said that generals and admirals have followed its letter or spirit, and the present echelons of senior officers appear determined to flout it by wide publication of their personal points of view concerning the military posture of their country. This, by any interpretation, is “partisan political activity.” No government should tolerate meddling by the military.

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The Only Thing Worse Than The World Dying Would Be If It Died Unseen And Unappreciated, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on July 3, 2019 | Leave a comment

Even with the very real threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over our heads, take time to appreciate that which needs to be appreciated. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

ABC News put an article out the other day titled “Was Tulsi Gabbard’s nuclear war warning during Democratic debate hyperbole, or all too real?“, which makes a surprisingly reasonable appraisal of just how close we all are to losing everything all at once.

It’s a mainstream media piece, so of course it ends with a couple of think tank denizens claiming that Gabbard’s dire warnings during the debate are hysterical nonsense, but the first half of the article quotes authorities on nuclear disarmament confirming that we may very well be as close to nuclear annihilation as we were at the height of the last cold war.

Gabbard’s claim during the Democratic debate that we are at greater risk of nuclear war than at any time in history is entirely reasonable given the relentless escalations against Russia that this administration has been mounting, and is a perspective shared by experts like leading US-Russia relations authority Stephen Cohen.

In the face of mounting escalations, continuing US military expansionism, and flirtation with the possibility of hot war around the world, the possibility of a nuclear warhead being deployed by either side in the chaos and confusion due to malfunction or miscommunication grows ever greater. The increasingly desperate flailings of a weakening empire could set everything off in an instant. It is entirely possible that, when all is said and done, getting this very real danger into mainstream attention will end up having been Gabbard’s single most important contribution to the American political conversation.

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Russia Expert’s 2017 Prophecy About The Nuclear Threat Of Russiagate Is Coming True, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on June 17, 2019 | Leave a comment

What happens if the president doesn’t have wiggle room to negotiate by stepping back, and stepping forward means nuclear war? From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

The New York Times has published an anonymously sourced report titled “U.S. Escalates Online Attacks on Russia’s Power Grid” about the “placement of potentially crippling malware inside the Russian system at a depth and with an aggressiveness that had never been tried before” which could potentially “plunge Russia into darkness or cripple its military,” with one anonymous official reporting that “We are doing things at a scale that we never contemplated a few years ago.”

Obviously this is yet another serious escalation in the continually mounting series of steps that have been taken into a new cold war between the planet’s two nuclear superpowers. Had a report been leaked to Russian media from anonymous Kremlin officials that Moscow was escalating its cyber-aggressions against America’s energy grid, this would doubtless be labeled an act of war by the political/media class of the US and its allies with demands for immediate retaliation.

To put this in perspective, The New York Times reported last year that the Pentagon was pushing for the US Nuclear Posture Review to include the strategy of retaliating against serious Russian cyberattacks on American power grids with nuclear weapons.

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Nuclear War in South Asia? by Eric Margolis

Posted on February 24, 2019 | Leave a comment

An expert on the subject says that nuclear war between Indian and Pakistan is not out of the question. From Eric Margolis at lewrockwell.com:

While Americans were obsessing over a third-rate actor’s fake claims of a racial assault, old foes India and Pakistan were rattling their nuclear weapons in a very dangerous crisis over Kashmir.  But hardly anyone noticed that nuclear war could break out in South Asia.

India and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed, have fought four wars over divided Kashmir since 1947, the lovely mountain state of forests and lakes whose population is predominantly Muslim.  India controls two thirds of Kashmir; Pakistan and China the rest. This bitter dispute, one of the world’s oldest confrontations, has defied all attempts to resolve it.

The United Nations called on India to hold a plebiscite to determine Kashmir’s future, but Delhi ignored this demand, knowing it would probably lose the vote.

Muslim Kashmiris have been in armed revolt against harsh Indian occupation since the 1980’s.  Some 70,000 civilians, mostly Muslims, have died to date.  Today, India stations a million soldiers and paramilitary forces in Kashmir to repress popular demands by Muslim Kashmiris for either union with neighboring Pakistan or an independent Kashmiri state.

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The Increasing Likelihood Of Nuclear War Should Straighten Out All Our Priorities, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on February 6, 2018 | 1 comment

A possible nuclear war dwarfs all other concerns. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

A Russian pilot has been killed by US-armed terrorists in Syria. The Ron Paul Institute‘s Daniel McAdams writes the following about this new development:

“The scenario where a US-backed, US-supplied jihadist group in Syria uses US weapons to shoot down a Russian plane and then murders the pilot on the ground should be seen as a near-nightmare escalation, drawing the US and Russia terrifyingly closer to direct conflict.”

McAdams is not fearmongering; he is stating a plainly obvious fact. The Trump administration has just announced that it is restructuring its nuclear weapons policy to take a more aggressive stance toward Russia than that which was held by the previous administration. This is coming after this administration’s decision to arm Ukraine against Russia, a move Obama refused to take for fear of escalating tensions with Moscow, as well as its decision to continue to occupy Syria in order to effect regime change, along with numerous other escalations. The Council on Foreign Relations, which is without exaggeration as close to the voice of the US establishment as you can possibly get, is now openly admitting that the “United States is currently in a second Cold War with Russia.”

In a recent interview with The Real News, leading US-Russian relations expert Stephen Cohen repeated his ongoing warning that “this new Cold War is much more dangerous, much more likely to end in Hot War, than was the 40-year of Cold War, which we barely survived.” In a previous interview with the same outlet, Cohen elaborated more extensively:

“We are in new cold war that is much more dangerous than the last cold war for various reasons. One is that the new cold war today, as we talk, includes three fronts. U.S.-Russian fronts, they’re fought with hot war. That’s Syria. That’s the reckless NATO military build-up on Russia’s western boarders, which has resulted in a situation today that ordinarily artillery, not missiles, ordinary artillery, can hit Russia’s second city of Saint Petersburg. Just think about that and the instability. And the third front is Ukraine.”

To continue reading: The Increasing Likelihood Of Nuclear War Should Straighten Out All Our Priorities

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Avoiding Nuclear War Is Our First Priority, by Paul Craig Roberts

Posted on December 9, 2017 | 4 comments

Believe or not, there are people in the US government who would dispute the title statement. From Paul Craig Roberts at paulcraigroberts.com:

Michel Chossudovsky, a distinguished professor in Canada, directs the Centre for Research on Globalization and the website Global Research, a font of important information unavailable from the presstitute Western media. In this article he tells us that if we do not focus on peace instead of war, we are all going to die: https://www.globalresearch.ca/what-you-need-to-know-about-north-korea-and-the-dangers-of-nuclear-war/5615328

Professor Chossudovsky makes an important point, made to me some years ago by my colleague Zbigniew Brzezinski and recently by former Secretary of Defense William Perry (see: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/12/05/walking-into-armageddon/ ). Professor Chossudovsky reminds us to “bear in mind that mistakes are often what determine the course of world history.” A US attack on North Korea would be a mistake that could precipitate a nuclear war.

There is no doubt that Chossudovsky is correct.

Additionally, the continued demonization of Russia, China, and Iran could precipitate a nuclear war. In other words, we are surrounded by very real threats created by Washington that receive no attention from Western governments and the presstitute media. As I wrote on December 5, we are “walking into Armageddon.” https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/12/05/walking-into-armageddon/

Professor Chossudovsky has amassed a huge amount of information that makes clear the vast difference between the level-headed era of JFK/Khrushchev and the insanity of the post-Reagan era of the re-start of hostilities for the sake of the power and profit of the US military/security complex and the neoconservatives’ ideology of US world hegemony.

I am unsure that the peoples of the Western world can without violence against their governments do anything to prevent nuclear war, because the Western politicians are in the pay of the military/security complex and the financial and corporate interest groups that benefit from US hegemony. American hegemony produces profits, and for the sake of these profits Western leaders will risk the fate of the world.

To continue reading: Avoiding Nuclear War Is Our First Priority

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Trump’s Scary Nuclear Doctrine, by Alastair Crooke

Posted on October 12, 2017 | Leave a comment

The scariest part of Trump’s nuclear doctrine is that nobody knows what it is, perhaps not even Trump. From Alastair Crooke at consortiumnews.com:

Pleasing Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and terrifying almost everybody else, President Trump is threatening nuclear war against North Korea and, by implication, war with Iran, as ex-British diplomat Alastair Crooke explains.

There are acres of print analyzing “will he, or won’t he” in respect to President Trump taking military action in North Korea. And equally, volumes on what Trump may intend to do in respect of Iran: Is he engaged primarily in rhetorical “theatre” to please his base, and earn press plaudits; or is he girding up for attrition (hot or cold) against Iran?

Illustration by Chesley Bonestell of nuclear bombs detonating over New York City, entitled “Hiroshima U.S.A.” Colliers, Aug. 5, 1950.

The unanswered question is: does President Trump regard North Korea and Iran as somehow connected (albeit that Iran has no nuclear weapons, and no nuclear weapons program)? Certainly one person – one who talks to the Trump family a lot – does think the two are directly linked.

Jeffrey Sachs, who listened to Trump’s speech at the United Nations, in which the President said he was ready to “totally destroy” North Korea, tells us about the audience reaction: “Well, you could hear shuffling, chuckles, amazement, gasps, a few applause. There was Netanyahu enthusiastically applauding. It was a very odd scene. I am still a bit shaken by it.”

Of course, for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some neoconservatives, a U.S. attack on the Korean nuclear program sets a wonderful precedent for Iran – for now or for the future.

We just do not know. Trump’s former career as a reality TV host has left him with a predilection for teasing and hype (“just tune in again next week, to learn more”). What is increasingly plain is that those on the inside – such as the Chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee – are equally unsure whether President Trump is about to unleash “World War III” – or not.

To continue reading: Trump’s Scary Nuclear Doctrine

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US Says ‘Yes’ to Nuke Tests, ‘No’ to a Nuke Ban Treaty

Posted on May 9, 2017 | Leave a comment

The US government has not, and probably never will, abjured the first use of nuclear weapons. From John LaForge at antiwar.com:

Twice in seven days the United States shot nuclear-capable long-range missiles toward the Marshall Islands, but the same government refused in March to join negotiations for a new treaty banning nuclear weapons.

Tests conducted April 26 and May 3 from Vandenberg Air Force Base launched modernized Minuteman-3 ballistic missiles, and the US Air Force said in a statement that such tests ensure “the United States’ ability to maintain a strong, credible nuclear deterrent as a key element of US national security…”

In late March, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley explained why the US would boycott the “treaty ban” negotiations that began March 27 at the UN in New York City. Haley said about nuclear weapons, “[W]e can’t honestly say that we can protect our people by allowing the bad actors to have them, and those of us that are good, trying to keep peace and safety not to have them.” North Korean president Kim Jong-un could have said the same thing about his seven nuclear warheads, especially in view of US bombs and missiles currently falling on seven countries – Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya – and engagement in massive war games off the Korean peninsula.

Ambassador Haley managed to avoid being two-faced on one level. Joining the ban treaty talks would have been openly hypocritical while her colleagues in the war department were preparing both new nuclear weapons production and a series of test launches. Another April test, at the Tonopah bombing range in Nevada, dropped a so-called “B61-12” the newest US H-bomb now in development and scheduled to go into production after 2022.

Jackie Cabasso, of the Western States Legal Foundation, explained April 20, “In 1997… President Bill Clinton signed Presidential Directive-60, reaffirming the threatened first use of nuclear weapons as the ‘cornerstone’ of US national security.… President Obama left office with the US poised to spend $1 trillion over the next 30 years to maintain and modernize its nuclear bombs and warheads…. Over the past couple of years, the US has conducted a series of drop tests of the newly modified B61-12 gravity bomb…. Each new bomb will cost more than twice its weight in solid gold.” Of the 480 B61s slated to become B61-12s, about 180 are scheduled to be placed at six NATO bases in Europe.

US military: “We are prepared to use nuclear weapons”

To continue reading: US Says ‘Yes’ to Nuke Tests, ‘No’ to a Nuke Ban Treaty

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Sauron Rules in Washington, by Paul Craig Roberts

Posted on May 6, 2017 | 2 comments

Paul Craig Roberts makes the case that an insane band of US planners actually think the US could win a nuclear war. From Roberts at paulcraigroberts.com:

“The problem is that the world has listened to Americans for far too bloody long.”  — Dr. Julian Osborne, from the 2000 film version of Nevil Shute’s 1957 book, On the Beach

A reader asked why neoconservatives push toward nuclear war when there can be no winners. If all die, what is the point?

The answer is that the neoconservatives believe that the US can win at minimum and perhaps zero damage.

Their insane plan is as follows: Washington will ring Russia and China with anti-ballistic missile bases in order to provide a shield against a retaliatory strike from Russia and China. Moreover, these US anti-ABM bases also can deploy nuclear attack missiles unknown to Russia and China, thus reducing the warning time to five minutes, leaving Washington’s victims little or no time in which to make a decision.

The neoconservatives think that Washington’s first strike will so badly damage the Russian and Chinese retaliatory capabilities that both governments will surrender rather than launch a response. The Russian and Chinese leaderships would conclude that their diminished forces leave little chance that many of their ICBMs will be able to get past Washington’s ABM shield, leaving the US largely intact. A feeble retaliation by Russia and China would simply invite a second wave US nuclear attack that would obliterate Russian and Chinese cities, killing millions and leaving both countries in ruins.

In short, the American warmongers are betting that the Russian and Chinese leaderships would submit rather than risk total destruction.

There is no question that neoconservatives are sufficiently evil to launch a preemptive nuclear attack, but possibly the plan aims to put Russia and China into a situation in which their leaders conclude that the deck is stacked against them and, therefore, they must accept Washington’s hegemony.

To continue reading: Sauron Rules in Washington

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East Vs. West Division Is About The Dollar – Not Nuclear War, by Brandon Smith

Posted on October 20, 2016 | 1 comment

According to Brandon Smith, the US dollar no longer being the world’s reserve currency is more likely than nuclear war, and the fallout will be severe. From Smith at alt-market.com:

The interesting thing about working in alternative economics is that inevitably you will become the designated buzzkill. You may be presenting the facts on the ground and the reality behind the numbers, but most of what you have to report will not be pleasant. Alternative economists are doomed to be labeled “doom and gloomers.” And that’s okay…

The truth is what it is, and sometimes it hurts people obsessed with undue positivism and bull market naivety. However, as bad as we seem to be when it comes to a negative outlook, we do not necessarily present the most ugly options on the table.

There is an undeniable trend by some within the liberty movement to assume a Mad Max-style end game to our ever expanding house of cards. That is to say, they see the only plausible outcome being apocalyptic in nature, and nuclear holocaust fits well within this viewpoint. In many cases, the argument is sometimes presented that WWIII is in the best interests of global elites seeking a catalyst for their so-called “new world order.”

This is not to say that I don’t think WWIII is a possibility; it certainly is. But I remain rather skeptical of the usefulness of nuclear war for the elites. Primarily because everything they openly claim they hope to accomplish can be accomplished without nukes.

The narrative of a coming conflict between the East and the West has been boiling steadily as the U.S. election nears its end. Even the mainstream media is insinuating the potential for shots fired. Some believe the results of the election will determine the odds of war. I hold a different position. It seems to me that the rhetoric of East vs. West and nuclear exchange is being exploited as a distraction away from a different but almost equally catastrophic end game — the death of the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency.

First, let’s be clear; nuclear war does little to serve elitist interests. Consider the fact that globalists have been working diligently since 9/11 to install a vast electronic surveillance infrastructure in major cities around the world. This includes a pervasive video surveillance presence, biometric data collection, facial recognition, voice fingerprinting, etc. This is not only occurring in the U.S. and Europe, but in China and Russia. Vladimir Putin signed the Orwellian “Yarovaya Package” into law in June in Russia putting into motion an electronic surveillance apparatus directly on par with any measures exploited by the NSA. Perhaps ironically, even Edward Snowden, currently living in Russia under asylum, criticized the amendments.

The point is, an elaborate and costly digital control grid is being built all around us. It makes very little sense for the elites to achieve such a level of full spectrum awareness and then flush it down the tubes in a 1.2 megaton blink of a eye. Keep in mind that a nuclear exchange also includes the targeting of military satellites — everything surveillance worthy will most likely be thoroughly toasted.

To continue reading: East Vs. West Division Is About The Dollar – Not Nuclear War

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