J.C. Malone
Today we are closer than ever to a nuclear war, four nations with nuclear weapons are on the brink of a warlike conflict.
On one side is the United States with 5,600, France with 290, and England with 225 nuclear weapons. On the other side is Russia, with 6,257 nuclear weapons. They add up to 12,372 nuclear warheads.
They would fight for the rich deposits of oil and natural gas under the marine platform of the Crimean Peninsula, Ukraine, on the shores of the Black Sea, in front of Turkey.
Whoever controls Ukraine, which has never been and will never be independent, will control Europe’s main energy reserves.
Today Europe depends on Russia for its energy needs, but if it manages to control Ukraine it will be self-sufficient, and Russia will lose its main customers. No one can ask Russia to sit idly by, when it will expropriate something that it considers part of its heritage.
Europe supports Ukraine, which declared independence in 1991, following the fall of the Soviet Union.
War is almost certain, because the United States and Europe have much to gain and are willing to risk it.
All for Crimea
If they win, Europe would gain its energy independence.
The president of the United States, Joe Biden, besieged by the pandemic, inflation, and partisan division, a war suits him, thus unifying the country around his presidency.
It is a matter of time before the sending of US troops to Europe is officially announced.
That war, furthermore, would please a sector as silent as it is powerful in the US economy and politics.
The arms industry has been in “Dead Time” for five years, as we used to say in the sugar mills when there was no milling.
During the four years of Donald Trump and the first of Biden, there were no wars, if there are not many deaths in wars, that industry is in “Dead Time”, the war suits them, to “sting” once more.
War Drums
In European capitals, and in Washington, the drums of war are beating.
On Friday the US diplomatic chiefs, Antony Blinken, and Russian, Sergei Lavrov concluded a meeting in Geneva, and ended without agreements. On Saturday, Washington ordered all non-essential staff at its embassy in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, to leave the country.
On Monday, Biden met with Pentagon chiefs and discussed the possibility of sending troops to Europe. In the old continent, almost all countries seem willing to “defend” Ukraine from an “aggression” by Russia.
Throughout Europe they perform the dance of war, they move troops, weapons, everything, they are dedicated to war, they do not admit dissidence, they shot “freedom of expression”.
In Germany, the head of the navy, Admiral Kay-Achim Schoenbach, questioned whether Ukraine would recover the Crimean Peninsula, occupied by Russia in 2014. And he said that Vladimir Putin deserves respect.
That comment cost him his job, and Schoenbach had to resign. In Europe, “Russian-phobia” flourishes and the baddest man in the world is Putin.
the abusive husband
Russia and Ukraine have a centuries-old love-hate relationship.
Their “co-dependent” relationship, as psychologists say, began in 1783, when Catherine the Great annexed the Crimean Peninsula to the Russian Empire, acquired an outlet to the Black Sea.
The Tatars who inhabited present-day Ukraine became independent from the Ottoman Empire, have never been independent, and became Russian citizens. Kiev, the current capital of Ukraine, was the capital of Russia for many years.
Russia and Ukraine have been separating and reconciling for several centuries.
It is a “husband and wife” lawsuit, but the neighbors, interested in the woman’s energy deposits, defend her from Putin, “abusive husband”.
Basically, they are all, as Walt Whitman would say in his Song to Myself, “possessed of the mania of possessing” the deposits of the marine platform of the Crimean Peninsula.
We are witnessing what might be the most dangerous armed conflict in Europe and humanity.
The 12,372 nuclear weapons are left over, less than half a dozen might destroy life in Europe and much of the planet.
europe once more
It was always said that the next great war would be over energy, we thought it would be in the Middle East, but we never imagined that it might be in Europe.
The Europeans, the most “civilized” on the planet, staged the two great wars of the last century, and it seems that they will initiate the third great war, the first of this century.
We know how, when, where, why and with what wars start, which never end with the weapons with which they started. And no one knows when they will end.