Mobilize Now to Stop a Nuclear Armageddon

Any evaluation of the strategic situation that is not based on the confrontation between Global NATO leaders and Russia, a nuclear power, with the threat of nuclear Armageddon in the equation, misses the point. The armed mutiny staged by Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin June 23-24 must be seen in this context, even if many aspects of it are not yet known.

The point is: It is time for people to intervene to stop the Armageddon dynamic. Such is the call to action launched by Schiller Institute founder and leader Helga Zepp-LaRouche. She highly recommends reading an article by Dmitry Trenin that was posted June 22, before the dramatic weekend events in Russia, headlined “The U.S. and Its Allies Are Playing ‘Russian Roulette;’ You’d Almost Think They Want a Nuclear War.” (cf. below).

What is most disturbing about last weekend’s events in Russia, is the reaction from the West. As Prigozhin’s mutiny was defused, from the Western capitals came the battle cry, in unison: “Russia and Putin are on the way down! It’s time to go in for the kill!” On June 26, the Washington, D.C. Hudson Institute hosted a special event to promote pumping even more firepower into Ukraine, titled, “Mutiny in Russia: Assessing the Implications of Prigozhin’s March on Moscow”.

The same message — “Russia is down and on the way out” — was peddled by Western media, while the EU Foreign Ministers gathered in Luxemburg June 26 heard the High Representative of Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell proclaim that “the Russian state and Putin’s personal credibility are being weakened”. Given Russia’s “internal instabilities and fragilities”, he indicated, we are committed to go all out to back Ukraine’s victory.

No mere rhetoric, this is the context of delusion in which one incident could trigger nuclear obliteration. The stage has been set for such a trigger, around the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant. On June 23, Kyiv’s military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov claimed that the Zelenskyy government has evidence that Russia has put into place all it needs to commit a strike on the Zaporozhye plant, which will cause radioactive fallout. The only question is the date and time Moscow will do this. Russian leaders have denied the charge, but a classic false-flag operation could be carried out by NATO or its stooges (remember the Nord Stream sabotage).

The conclusion of Dmitry Trenin’s article is clear: “To avoid a general catastrophe, it is necessary to put fear of armageddon back into politics and the public consciousness. In the nuclear age, it is the only guarantee of preserving humanity.”

The international Schiller Institute has taken on the extraordinary responsibility of contributing to make that happen. In that context, it has set up an International Peace Coalition, which will hold weekly Zoom meetings to coordinate the actions taken worldwide by various antiwar organizations. (See the SI website for more information and https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2023/06/20.) The urgency of mobilizing the population was also at the center of a June 23 symposium held by Diane Sare’s campaign for Senate in New York State, which was addressed by former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter; Steven Starr, a writer for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: and Carl Osgood of Executive Intelligence Review.