Given a series of recent speeches by leading US officials and actions, the question must be frankly posed: Has Washington gone collectively looney tunes? Even as the governments of the EU are moving to buck US pressures and ease the sanctions, the Obama Administration seems intent on marching in the direction of a nuclear confrontation with Russia. As the ancient Greek expression puts it, “Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad…” The following recent developments fit that pattern quite nicely, thank you.
On June 5, Ashton Carter, the neo-conservative Obama Defense Secretary gave clear indications he is prepared to be far more provocative against Russia than his fired predecessor, Chuck Hagel. Carter convened a special meeting in Stuttgart, Germany of two dozen US military leaders and US Ambassadors in Europe at the headquarters of US European Command. He told them, “We have something that has taken a sad turn recently, which is Russia.”
That in itself was not so notable as were the reports that the neo-con US Defense Secretary, “Ash”—that is his nickname, appropriately enough—Carter discussed at the Stuttgart meeting returning US short-range nuclear missiles to European NATO countries to target Russia.
On June 7, just two days after Carter’s Stuttgart remarks, UK Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, told the press that the UK might again place American nuclear missiles on British soil because of what he termed “heightened tensions” with Russia. The Foreign Secretary said there were “worrying signs” about the increased activity of Russian forces and that the UK would “consider the pros and cons of taking US intermediate-range weapons.”
The UK Telegraph reported that Ash Carter was considering unilaterally abrogating a Cold War-era treaty with Russia’s predecessor, the Soviet Union, and re-deploying nuclear-capable missiles in Europe.
Britain’s Foreign Secretary Hammond went on to reveal what a psychologist might clinically call paranoid schizophrenia. First he sounded the war drums, declaring boldly, “We have got to send a clear signal to Russia that we will not allow them to transgress our red lines.” The last NATO politician to foolishly talk about red lines was US President Barack Obama in Syria in 2013 and that nearly landed the US in a Middle East conflagration so dangerous that his own generals reportedly threatened to resign. Then, in the next breath, Hammond the tough guy talking about re-stationing US intermediate-range nuclear missiles on UK soil, blurts out, “At the same time, we have to recognize that the Russians do have a sense of being surrounded and under attack and we don’t want to make unnecessary provocations.”
Does that mean the UK will only make “necessary” provocations? Indeed, the intellectual and moral quality of western politicians in the last decades has become laughable.
Neither Britain nor France, both NATO countries with nuclear arsenals, signed the 1987 INF Treaty, something Moscow at the time vehemently protested.
Germans agree US Pershing II missiles
In 1983 the German Bundestag agreed to allow the deployment of American Pershing II middle-range nuclear missiles on German territory, at the same time the Reagan Administration announced it was initiating an anti-ballistic missile defense system, later dubbed Star Wars. Both decisions led to a state of extreme military tensions between the Warsaw Pact and NATO until the USA and Soviet Union agreed to sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in December 1987 which provided for destruction of all middle range weapons on both sides.
Significantly, that was one year after Washington and Saudi Arabia had deliberately collapsed the price of crude oil to well below $10 a barrel, devastating the Soviet hard currency dollar budget that was essential to obtain technologies to counter the US Star Wars and other NATO military threats.