The Doomsday Clock Is Just Minutes Away from Midnight

The world has never been closer to a nuclear war, in a global situation more dangerous than the Cuban missile crisis. Western leaders assure us it’s all Russia’s fault, but cover up the fact that the conflict in Ukraine has become a direct war of NATO against Russia since at least mid-September (cf. SAS 38/22). That escalation includes, as we reported last week, the call by the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces for the western alliance to use its “entire arsenal of means” against Russia, including nuclear weapons.

On Sept. 21, President Putin announced a “partial” mobilization of Russia’s armed forces, and underscored Moscow’s intent, in the event of a threat to its territory and against its people, to “make use of all weapon systems at our disposal. It’s not bluff.” He also pointed out that some of Russia’s weapons are “more modern” than those of NATO. At the same time, as we know, it was announced that referendums would be held in four regions of Ukraine on whether or not to join the Russian Federation. If a majority of the population votes yes, and if and when Moscow effectively agrees to integrate them into the Russian Federation, any attack from Ukrainian or NATO forces on those regions, as Russian leaders have stated clearly, would be considered as an attack on Russia itself, and they would respond accordingly.

Clearly, now is the time for the West to make every effort to arrive at a negotiated settlement. But, unfortunately, leaders of NATO member states reacted to these statements in the same arrogant way they have responded for decades to the demands and warnings from Moscow, i.e., by dismissing them offhand, with no further consideration.

Thus, NATO secretary General Stoltenberg called Putin’s remarks “reckless rhetoric”, and the referendums “sham votes” that “do not have any legitimacy”. Ukraine’s puppet President Zelensky said that “Putin is bluffing”, while his senior adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told The Guardian that the West should carry out “nuclear strikes” on Russia’s launch sites, if Moscow “even thinks of carrying out nuclear strikes”, in other words preemptively. From Brussels, Commission President von der Leyen called for more of what has not worked until now, namely sanctions, a call that was supported by the EU’s foreign policy chief Borrell, who is convinced that “Putin is failing militarily”. President Biden told the UN that the U.S. would not respect the outcome of the referendums, after asserting, absurdly, that “no one has threatened Russia”.

However, the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, Admiral Charles Richard, admitted that he and his colleagues are now studying the implications of “potential direct armed conflict with a nuclear-capable peer… This is no longer theoretical.”

The only rational conclusion to draw is that the escalation must be stopped now, urgently. If NATO countries, but especially the United States, were to stop sending weapons and providing intelligence to their proxy in Kiev, the fighting would end almost immediately, and serious negotiations could begin. That is the sense of an open letter the Schiller Institute submitted to the United Nations General Assembly, co-signed by the Foundation to Battle Injustice. It calls on the UN to “guarantee an open and free debate on the need to establish a new international security and development architecture”, which takes into account the legitimate interests of every country on the planet.