World 'More Dangerous' than in Cuban Missile Crisis - But it’s NATO’s Doing, Not Moscow, Experts Say
23:25 GMT 07.10.2022 (Updated: 20:57 GMT 19.10.2022)
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On Thursday, US President Joe Biden told attendees at a Democratic Party fundraiser that Russian President Vladimir Putin had raised “the prospect of Armageddon” for the first time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, adding that Putin is “not joking when he talks about the use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons.”
Biden’s comments continue a false line of attack by Western leaders and the press, which paint Putin’s comments on September 21 about its willingness to defend its territory as having been threats against other nations.
“If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will without doubt use all available means to protect Russia and our people - this is not a bluff,” Putin said, adding that “those trying to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the tables can turn on them.”
Putin said he was referring to both the incessant shelling of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, Europe’s largest nuclear plant, by the Ukrainian military, but also to threats to "decolonize" Russia by balkanizing the federation's numerous ethnic republics into tiny independent countries.
Indeed, in the days since, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on the West to carry out “preventive strikes, preventive action” against Russia instead of “waiting for the nuclear strikes first.”
Bruce Gagnon, director of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, told Sputnik on Friday that in fact, the situation is “even more dangerous than 1962” - but not because of Moscow.
“During the Cuban Missile crisis, President [John F.] Kennedy was at least able to reject the advice of his top generals who were pushing for war with the former Soviet Union. Today, the neocons control the US government and they have a long ugly track record of starting wars, despite the terrible outcomes.”
US Navy flag bearers, backdropped by the radar building of a missile defense base, during an opening ceremony attended by U.S., NATO and Romanian officials at a base in Deveselu, Southern Romania, Thursday, May 12, 2016. Russia has expressed concerns that the Aegis Ashore anti-missile systems in Poland and Romania could be converted to station offensive Tomahawk cruise missiles.
© AP Photo / Vadim Ghirda
“Today, the US has missile launch bases in Romania and Poland that can fire first-strike attack nuclear-capable cruise missiles that could hit Russia in minutes. At the same time, the US-NATO has their intelligence services and special forces troops inside Ukraine running the war against Russia. Along with the ever-expanding NATO, these realities signal that this war is much more severe than what happened in 1962.”
“The US is a collapsing military and economic empire,” he said. “Its time as ‘king of the hill’ is done. The long colonial reign of Europe over much of the world is also fading.”
“Washington is having a nervous fit and wants to strike back at anyone who dares to resist Washington's 'full spectrum dominance.' The US is incapable of serious negotiations to limit nuclear weapons, wars for control of resources, or respect for the national sovereignty of other nations.”
“[T]he acceptance of the four oblasts into the Russian Federation and the call-up of 300,000 reservists signals that Kiev's days are numbered,” Gagnon added.
“Washington is a very sore loser and always strikes back in retribution when it has been defeated. These are very dangerous times. Washington and the EU elites are currently willing to drag this war out into the future. The US wants regime change in Moscow and the break-up of Russia into smaller countries that would enable the resource-hungry West to grab Russia's natural bounty.”
Joseph Oliver Boyd-Barrett, a professor emeritus at Bowling Green State University, told Sputnik that “The Soviet Union is not Russia: the Soviet Union had a mission to spread communist philosophy, whereas a capitalist Russia in actuality poses no threat to the West beyond the protection of its natural security interests.”
“The aggressive force here is the West, salivating for access to Russian natural resources following the putative dismemberment of the federation,” he added.
This, he said, is “because the model of Western capitalism, untempered by a sufficient commitment to real public interest, is dying. The graver the self-imposed energy crisis for Europe, the more intense is the West’s desperation, as neoliberal European leaders look helplessly to the US to pull them from the mess they are in.”
U.S. aerial reconnaissance photograph of a medium range ballistic missile launch site at San Cristobal in Cuba, on 1 November 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis.
“But the US welcomes infantile European dependence; it is not Europe’s friend. It seeks only global hegemony. What is needed right now is courageous European leadership that can find ways of talking with Russia, urgently, and, in time, containing the USA’s ‘exceptional’ sense of its own importance and entitlement,” he said.
Sadly, he added, “there may well be no JFK here and no [Soviet Premier Nikita] Khrushchev - i.e. men or women with sufficient leadership skill and emotional intelligence to know when and how to talk in the shadows.”
“Biden is wrong. On many occasions before and since the Cuban crisis, the US has contemplated [the] use of nukes: never forget [US President Richard] Nixon’s admonition to [US national security adviser Henry] Kissinger - ‘think big, Henry!’ Therein, lies all the rot of US foreign policy.”
Boyd-Barrett said Zelensky “plays an optics game,” feeding perceptions of panic to get more Western money for Ukraine, regardless of whether such funds have any practical use.
Zoomed in image of trooper with an SS-Totenkopf patch on his bodyarmor behind President Volodymyr Zelensky during the latter's visit to eastern Ukraine.
© Photo : Telegram / Zelensky Official
“Does anyone believe that Zelensky and his associates are not enriching themselves through this game?” he asked.
“What is said in public is thoroughly depressing. Zelensky, the optics guy. has decreed against even the possibility of negotiations, while Russia has zero reason to believe anything that Ukraine says or that its Western sponsors say, given the hostility of Washington and London to the peace deal that was almost struck on March 29.”
