Recently Sweden, celebrated for its commitment to “neutrality” joined NATO as its 32nd member and immediately engaged in “defense” training exercises with all of its Scandinavian neighbors as well as U.S. Marines. One marine was quoted as saying that “we are ready to fight when they come.” Recently Senator John Thune, (r. South Dakota and touted as possible replacement for Mitch McConnell)) said that NATO had to be strengthened with new arms along Ukraine’s borders with Russia “or else we may have to send our own boys and folks won’t like that.” In centuries past Sweden was a bellicose and imperial power and had aggressively invaded Russia and blocked its access to the Baltic Sea.
Amidst all the hype about the illegality of Russia’s re-annexation of Crimea and its illegal war nothing is said about the historical fact that for centuries European nations have been warring and seizing each other’s territories. In contravention of the United Nations the U.S. jumped into the act when it supported the breakup of Yugoslavia and later the secession of Kosovo which had been part of Serbia for 700 years. Well before the coup that overthrew the elected pro-Russian government in 2014 Washington had been arming and training the Ukrainian military with “the goal to produce NATO level military interoperability ” (Benjamin Abelow, How the West Brought War To Ukraine).
In all the hysterical dissimulation over Darth Putin’s malevolence and dire threat to western civilization a central historical fact has been disappeared: the last time Russian forces were in western Europe, with the exception of East Germany in 1945 for obvious reasons, was in 1814 after Napoleon’s equivalently illicit invasion when they drove the French dictator to defeat and briefly entered Paris, then to return to Mother Russia. Since then Russia has been invaded twice from the west with millions of casualties and consequences. If Americans could imagine such a bloodbath on American soil we might be able to see why Russia has set its “red line” on NATO and Ukraine. Under no circumstances would the U.S. allow foreign forces in the Western hemisphere. The near extinction events of 1962 demonstrate that.
Under International law there is no doubt that Putin’s assault on Ukraine is illegal but the hypocrisy emanating from Washington is appalling Yes, tragically the deaths and casualties of the “special military operation” are in the hundreds of thousands on both sides. Yet we ignore at our peril the hideous illegal wars waged in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wherein the U.S. caused the fatalities of well over ten million human beings, all mere pawns in the planetary geo-political power game. The deadly game continues: more sacrificial victims yet to come?
Despite the viral ideological contagion now infecting “the West” about the peril the demonic Putin poses, Russia isn’t going to be invading Scandinavia or Ukraine or any NATO country: Nor vice versa unless we do collectively lose our sanity. The reasons are many but the most consequential is that should they, or we, do so we shall all be extinct shortly thereafter. If there is a malevolent war-mongering shadow looming over Europe (and the world) it emanates from an agenda long basting in Washington since the U.S. became an international and economic power during World War I but especially after it emerged as overdog after Round Two in 1945. At the core of the immediate existential danger to our species is The BOMB. Neither world war has taught the lessons needed to save us from the third.
Many of the Bomb’s primary scientific creators realized their folly and warned our species that it was the overriding threat to our future existence and that all measures had to be taken to ensure it would never be used again. None of the nations armed with thousands of nukes today learned the lesson. Despite hopes for normal relations between the two superpowers after the collapse of the USSR in 1991 the U.S has abrogated most of the treaties designed to limit the dangers of nukes, thereby ramping up the potential for nuclear war. I insist that so long as nuclear weapons exist sooner or later they will be used. Take your pick: slow extinction via climate disaster, the only solution to which is honest and intense international cooperation, or instant nuclear annihilation.
The U.S. and Russia were allies of a sort during World War II but had quite opposite visons for its aftermath. For Russia national security guarantees became paramount to ensure that anything remotely resembling Germany’s invasion could never again occur. For Washington the goal was mastery of a new global geo-political and economic order.
The Hollywood film “Oppenheimer” ignores (among many vital issues especially the desolation A-Bombs wrought), the resignation of Joseph Rotblat, a prominent scientist engaged in the Manhattan Project. Once he realized that Germany would not be able to create its own Bomb he perceived the weapon as immoral. As he asserted in an article published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (August 1985), he made his decision when he heard General Leslie Groves, the military commander of the bomb project, state categorically that the “that the new rationale for the U.S. nuclear project was To Subdue The Soviet Union “
Groves asserted the same on various occasions. Of course, Russian intelligence became aware of such statements. Later, as many scientists and others raised serious objections to future developments of the Bomb, they were ignored. Russia meanwhile knew of the U.S. bomb project and understood that if the bomb was successful it would be employed as the primary measure of American postwar power in its blueprint to reconfigure the geo-politics of planet Earth. Virtually on the day Japan surrendered Stalin accelerated the Soviet Bomb project
Most citizens are also inculcated since childhood with the false belief that the Atomic desolations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were absolutely necessary to end the war. In fact, Washington had broken Japan’s communication codes and knew that Tokyo was seeking an end to its war via secret communications with Moscow. At that point Russia was not involved in the war against Japan. But Stalin desired revenge for Russia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 and he agreed with the U.S. to enter the Asian War after Germany’s surrender.
Now Washington had a problem. Before the Bomb, the Truman Administration believed it required Russian participation in the invasion of Japan. As originally conceived such an incursion was expected to be enormously costly in lives. Even so a full-scale operation was probably not possible until early 1946. By August 1945 the Soviets mobilized and rapidly overran northern China and Korea, signaling further intent by taking a few remote Japanese islands. Would Washington have to accept U.S.-Soviet co-occupation of Japan? That would mean the same agonistic issues then emerging from the co-occupation of Germany and Europe. The Atomic bombings were not “necessary” to defeat Japan but to beat Russia to the prize and send a clear message about American ruthlessness in its geo-political goals. By September of 1945 only the U.S. ruled Japan.
How many Americans know that the Red Army willingly withdrew from China, and Iran and Austria after the war? So much for the falsehood that the USSR was intent on global conquest. It is essential to note that American forces did not occupy South Korea by force.
The Soviets had defeated Japanese forces on mainland Asia not the U.S. and then enabled American troops to occupy the South when Stalin consented to co-occupation with the U.S. coupled with agreement that elections would be held and the Koreans would decide their future. However, the only real native Korean resistance throughout Japanese rule had come from the Korean communists. The U.S. knew where that would lead so it maintained Korea’s division, prevented elections, and ruled the South with the same Koreans who had collaborated with the Japanese, thereby setting in motion the full-scale Korean War of 1950 with four million deaths. An armistice was reached in 1954, the same year the Hydrogen Bomb was developed. It is technically still “on” and North Korea’s acquisition of nukes today intensifies and accelerates the already extreme danger of nuclear war.
Paul Atwood is the author of
War and Empire: the
American Way of Life
Source: CounterPunch
