Irregular Warfare Will Not Lead to an “Off-Ramp”, but to Armageddon

In just a few weeks, the global strategic situation has moved into the domain of massive infrastructural sabotage and other forms of irregular warfare, on top of the war pitting Russia against NATO. On Sept. 26, sophisticated sabotage ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, and then on Oct. 8, a truck blew up on the Crimean Bridge, causing a partial collapse of that vital transport infrastructure (cf. below). Evidence in both incidents point to NATO involvement somewhere along the line. In addition, according to new leaks from U.S. intelligence and military officials, reported Oct. 5, American special operations experts are being sent into Ukraine in increasing numbers to carry out covert missions against and in Russia.

At the same time, loose talk about the possibility of nuclear warfare is widely circulating among Western governments and in the media, which is in itself extraordinarily dangerous. This almost cavalier discussion of what threatens to become the extinction of civilization, is designed to make “the unthinkable” thinkable, and thereby lower the threshold for actual war.

President Biden himself, in a speech given Oct. 6, evoked Armageddon, underlining the “direct threat of use of nuclear weapons” today. “We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” he added. The threat comes, in his view, from Vladimir Putin, who “is not joking”, and therefore, we are “trying to figure out what is Putin’s off-ramp”, his “way out”.

Ukraine’s puppet President, Volodymyr Zelensky, went overboard in his demands on Oct. 5, saying outright that NATO should carry out “preemptive strikes” on Russia’s nuclear arsenals to prevent their use in the future. He and his advisers quickly backpedaled his remarks, due to the backlash. In Washington as well, security officials assured they have no evidence of Russian plans to use the ultimate weapon.

What Joe Biden has apparently not understood, or and other Western leaders for that matter, is that the “off-ramp” for Putin that he claims to be looking for, has been loudly and repeatedly stated by Russian officials: that Russia’s fundamental security concerns need to be taken into account, that Ukraine should not join NATO, and that NATO should put an end to its expansion on Russia’s borders. Unfortunately, the Anglo-American dominated Western powers have consistently refused to even consider, much less negotiate these demands.

On Ukraine itself, and the fate of the regions that want to become part of the Russian Federation, such issues need to be urgently resolved among the parties directly involved, without outside interference.