The World is Descending Into Chaos, Violence, War, and Atrocity.
The prospect of nuclear conflict,” António Guterres, the United Nations Secretary General, recently warned, “is now back within the realm of possibility.” Nuclear strategists and former U.S. officials warn that there is a remote but growing risk of an unintended slide into direct conflict — even, in some scenarios, a nuclear exchange.
I’m sure that the thought hasn’t crossed our minds. Are we headed towards nuclear war?
While Western leaders bluster pathetically and announce absurd meaningless sanctions that will have zero impact on Putin’s actions, we are sleepwalking closer and closer to the edge of a very dangerous situation.
Russian military doctrine has for some considerable time emphasized the use of tactical battlefield nuclear weapons in the event of any direct action against NATO forces.
This strategy exists for two primary purposes. The first is to negate any technological and material advantage NATO may have (which these days is slim to none anyway). The second is psychological: by instilling the fear of nuclear conflict, Putin has in advance defeated Western politicians and military planners. After consolidating his position in Ukraine, Putin will be at liberty to deploy the bulk of his invasion force elsewhere.
We have a nation armed with weapons of mass destruction, led by a dictator who wants to create a neofascist empire that stretches into the heart of Europe. He is openly threatening to use those weapons, which is a good guide to what’s unfolding in Ukraine. Ukraine’s President has already warned that Putin will “march to the gates of Berlin” if he’s allowed to.
Our strategy is not working. Why? Because it’s made by Western technocrats who have used such economic warfare on poor countries — Venezuela, most of South America, much of Africa. If you don’t do what we want, we cut you off from our global economy. You don’t get access to funds, goods, money, finance, credit, stuff. It works in poor countries because they’re poor. They have no choice. They meekly submit, usually, because the alternative is literally starving to death.
But Russia is not such a country. It will grow poorer, correct. But it will stay relatively healthy by selling its abundant natural resources to a world from China to Africa to Asia. Russian resources power China and India to produce what the West consumes. Most of the world has no special sympathy for us in the West. It isn’t going to join us in sanctioning Russia because we’ve abused that world, too. It needs Russia’s resources desperately precisely because we’re the ones who’ve stopped it from developing by exploiting it basically the level of slave labor, paying it as little as possible for its labor and goods, for so long. We played ourselves.
Russia is not a poor and powerless country. Our strategy of sanctions and economic warfare was designed to bring poor countries down. But they were already on their knees. Russia isn’t like that. It’s not going to be significantly weakened by our approach — at least not enough to stop making war. It is a relatively well off country with abundant resources which the world is only too happy to buy.
Putin is openly threatening to use weapons of mass destruction on Europe, while the world watches, horrified. Our strategy is increasingly in disarray — we increase sanctions everyday, and hope for the breaking point, but it never comes, precisely because there isn’t one. We are dealing with it the wrong way.
There is going to be a confrontation, my friends. That’s not what any of us want. Putin openly talks now about a “global confrontation.” That means a world war.
You don’t threaten Europe with weapons of mass destruction for nothing. Putin is confident for a reason. He knows he can make war for a very, very long time to come. He thinks of us as weak, lazy, pampered and degenerate and easily corrupted, because we accepted his gifts of blood money and oligarchy without a second thought. And now we are making another mistake. We are not making him stand down. That is the only way out of this mess.
Putin isn’t reaching a breaking point because there isn’t one for him. Russia wants a global confrontation, a world war — and its escalating to the point of openly threatening weapons of mass destruction on the free world. Our situation looks like this. Putin isn’t backing down. China’s on his side. The world isn’t ours. He’s confident because he is still in a very, very strong position. Financially, economically, socially, culturally, politically. So while Ukrainian civilians continue to get slaughtered are thereby paying the price of our pusillanimity and our abject intellectual failure. It is not difficult to foresee that all this will end very badly for all of us. We will need to figure out something better and fast…
Vincent Lyn
CEO/Founder at We Can Save Children
Director of Creative Development at African Views Organization
Economic & Social Council at United Nations
Middle East Correspondent at Wall Street News Agency
Rescue & Recovery Specialist at International Confederation of Police & Security Experts
Your perspective holds three truths:
-Use of nuclear weapons is very possible
-Russia and its supporters are being under estimated
-There is clear discriminatory treatment of poor countries with people of color
My hope is that leaders are using history as a guide to make timely, effective plans behind closed doors to prevent escalation. In the meantime, Ukraine is suffering.
Thank you for saying what needs to be said.