{"id":247976,"date":"2022-01-06T06:48:37","date_gmt":"2022-01-06T06:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=247976"},"modified":"2022-02-28T17:41:17","modified_gmt":"2022-02-28T17:41:17","slug":"nuclear-war-over-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=247976","title":{"rendered":"Nuclear War Over Ukraine?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric S. Margolis \u2013 Lew Rockwell Jan 5, 2022<\/strong><\/h1>\n

How many American soldiers will die in the battle for Luhansk?\u00a0 Or Kerch?\u00a0 Not 1 in 1,000 Americans could find these drab Ukrainian (formerly Russian) industrial cities on a map.<\/p>\n

How many Americans are aware that a unit of the Florida National Guard is stationed in western Ukraine, of all places?\u00a0 It\u2019s just a training mission, says the Pentagon.\u00a0 Right. Training how to pick oranges.\u00a0 This from the \u2018invincible\u2019 US military (I used to be a member) that got its backside whipped in Vietnam, Iraq and now Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

No matter. The US, says President Biden, is geared up for a major fight in this obscure coal-mining region of the former Soviet Union.\u00a0 US Navy vessels and aircraft now challenge Russia\u2019s Black Sea and Azov Sea borders.\u00a0 NATO units probe Ukraine\u2019s air and land borders.<\/p>\n

Washington is warning Moscow not to react to US military intrusions.\u00a0 And, above all, not to invade Ukraine \u2013 which was part of historic Russia and the Soviet Union until the USSR fell apart after a US-engineered coup in Kiev that created western-orientated Ukraine.\u00a0 Today, Ukraine is governed by a former TV comic whose career was financed by shady oligarchs and western interests.<\/p>\n

President Biden has all but threatened war against Russia if Vlad Putin makes good on threats to attack Ukraine.\u00a0 Putin warns the US of his new arsenal of whizz-bang weapons, many of them nuclear.\u00a0 This reminds me of an Italian diplomat\u2019s brilliant quip about the regional conflict over a barren Eritrean border region: \u2018two bald men fighting over a comb.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ukraine is an economic black hole, with massive industrial pollution, titanic debts, unbridled thievery, and staggering corruption.<\/p>\n

For Russia, Ukraine was its former industrial and agricultural heartland, and key component of the Russian state.\u00a0 Think of Ohio suddenly detached from America by pro-Trump rebels or the Red Fleet cruising the Great Lakes.<\/p>\n

Moscow has no doubt at all that Washington\u2019s strategic objective is to complete the amputation of Ukraine from Russia and then to go on tearing down what\u2019s left of the current Russian Federation.\u00a0 Russia\u2019s remote Far East would be a key target.\u00a0 No wonder Putin keeps making ever more dire warnings. He is the West\u2019s target number one.<\/p>\n

Yes, Moscow has moved about 80,000 troops to \u2018NATO\u2019s border.\u2019\u00a0 But this border is Russia\u2019s own external border as well. \u00a0Moscow has every right to do so.<\/p>\n

Putin is no angel (see his repression of the Chechen) but he is quite right when he says that the West back-stabbed Russia when it orally promised not to expand NATO east in exchange for Gorbachev\u2019s agreeing to Germany\u2019s reunification and its inclusion in NATO<\/p>\n

Today NATO has pushed into Moscow\u2019s former backyard.\u00a0 In NATO\u2019s vanguard are Russia-hating Poland, the three Baltic states and Hungary \u2013 all of whom have ample reason to fear and mistrust Russia.\u00a0 All would be happy to see the US go to war with Russia.\u00a0 But the US has no strategic objectives and no logical war aims in southern Russia\/Ukraine.\u00a0 A bridge too far, as it proved for Germany in the 1940\u2019s, one of the toughest campaigns fought by one of Germany\u2019s top generals, Erich von Manstein.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very unlikely that Joe Biden or Vlad Putin want a real shooting war in Ukraine.\u00a0 We see lots of breast-beating but no real military action \u2013 so far.\u00a0 What neither side will admit is that they both have serious shortages of ammunition, spare parts, fuel, recovery vehicles and guided missiles.\u00a0\u00a0 Neither Kiev nor Moscow can afford to replace weapons lost even in a short war.\u00a0 Bankrupt America is in no position to fight for Ukraine.\u00a0 The other NATO allies are paper tigers.\u00a0 Most important, Germany has no desire to fight Russia.\u00a0 Unlike the snarling Republicans in the US Congress, Europeans want no new wars.\u00a0 Their boys are not ready to die for Luhansk.<\/p>\n

But an accidental conflict is always close and growing nearer.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How many Americans are aware that a unit of the Florida National Guard is stationed in western Ukraine, of all places? Eric Margolis on how the potential for an accidental conflict is growing nearer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,91,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=247976"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247977,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247976\/revisions\/247977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=247976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=247976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=247976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}