Will we really risk nuclear war for Ukraine or Taiwan? How Iran becomes the next friction point.

West prepares for panic at home if Putin goes nuclear

Western countries are making contingency plans to deal with the chaos of a nuclear war in Ukraine, officials say, as the threat grows of a battlefield strike by Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

The measures could include issuing leaflets on how to survive an attack or ways to ease panic buying amid fears that the fallout could reach Europe and beyond.

Putin’s recent threats to use nuclear weapons have set off alarm bells across Nato, with the alliance holding talks behind closed doors on how it will respond to such an attack.

Some observers believe there is a realistic prospect of the Russian leader using a tactical nuclear weapon against Ukraine, either firing it on land or into the Black Sea.

The West is in no way shape or form blameless in the war that is raging in the Ukraine and the ratcheting up of tensions with China over Taiwan.

That is not to say for one second that I support Putin or Xi, or that I’m an apologist for either regime. I believe deeply that Putin has committed war crimes and has no justification for this violence.

I’ve never understood people who make apologies for Putin and I have no time for the authoritarian nightmare China has become, but the West has to acknowledge its own role in creating the environment that we see now.

It is the West that has surrounded China with military bases and it is the West that has pushed into the Ukraine. China and Russia see these incursions and encircling as existential threats to their existence.

I was one of the few commentators in NZ who predicted Putin would invade and argued the attempted coup in Kazakhstan in January was the trigger and that much of this is about how Putin views his own legacy amongst the Russian hard men of history.

Putin sees himself as part of a 1000 year Christian tradition and that this war is for the soul of Russia.

We don’t appreciate the power and importance and motivator Russian Orthodox Christianity plays out in all of this.

In 988AD, Vladimir the Great, whom Putin takes his name from, mass baptised 1000 Russians at the River Nee-Proh in what has become the founding spiritual moment in Orthodox Russian Christianity as the moment Russia became Christian and led to a cultural narrative structure that Moscow is the third Rome and was a homeland for Christianity.

What isn’t widely known is that Putin himself is a very staunch Russian Orthodox Christianand that he has used the Russian Orthodox Church as an enormous control mechanism over the Russian people.

Putin has spent billions rebuilding the Churches smashed down by Communism and uses his relationship with the Church for political advantage. It was the Orthodox Church who first praised Putin for annexing Crimea, a region with much religious importance for the Church.

Recently the Ukrainian branch of the Orthodox Church severed ties with the Russian branch because they felt Putin was having too much influence over it.

If Moscow is the third Rome, Kyiv is the second Jerusalem.

Putin sees himself as part of a long line of Christian Defenders of the true faith.

Putin’s mentor Alexander Dugin has argued for the invasion of Ukraine…

Russian intellectual Alexander Dugin is the main architect of the neo-Russian imperialism called Eurasianism. In a series of lectures, articles, and books, Dugin has sought to “rehabilitate fascism in Russia.” He has borrowed from obscure 19th and 20th century political theories, adopted a sympathetic interpretation of Nazism that attempts to separate it from the Holocaust, and sought to thwart what he and many Russians believe is a conspiracy led by the United States to contain Russia. Dugin has called for a “Russian spring” and the domination of Europe through Ukraine.

…that’s what makes Putin’s mad gamble in the Ukraine so dangerous, Putin is in it to win it no matter the blood, that he’s going to feed hundreds of thousands of his own men into this mincer of war against Ukranian fighters with next generation weaponry is a symptom of his devotion.

Likewise, Xi’s desire to become elected as a God in China is a cult of personality minus any personality.

We have two very powerful, very dangerous leaders who feel increasingly isolated and threatened.

What are we in the West going to do?

Putin’s desperation of course is now being purposely manipulated by the West…

Behind Austin’s Call for a ‘Weakened’ Russia, Hints of a Shift

When Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III declared Monday at the end of a stealth visit to Ukraine that America’s goal is to see Russia so “weakened” that it would no longer have the power to invade a neighboring state, he was acknowledging a transformation of the conflict, from a battle over control of Ukraine to one that pits Washington more directly against Moscow.

…protecting innocent Ukrainians from invading Russians is now secondary to a wider American goal of significantly weakening Russia.

Those are two very different goals and of course the American Military Industrial Complex is already making $33Billion in military aid…

Biden says U.S. sending Ukraine another $150 million in aid

President Joe Biden on Friday authorized the shipment of another $150 million in military assistance for Ukraine for artillery rounds and radar systems in its fight against Russia’s invading forces.

Biden said the latest spending means his administration has “nearly exhausted” what Congress authorized for Ukraine in March and called on lawmakers to swiftly approve a more than $33 billion spending package that will last through the end of September.

…$33billion and a new military aim to weaken Russia.

This stopped being about saving innocent Ukrainian lives sometime ago. This is now about making the American Corporate Military Gods of War rich.

We can’t tolerate Putin’s aggression or Xi’s repression, but are we really going to risk  nuclear war to stop Russian influence in the Ukraine or China’s forced reintegration of Taiwan?

Russia sees the Ukraine as theirs, China sees Taiwan as theirs, I don’t believe in either of their claims, but these are regional issues for two countries who share more in common culturally and economically with each other than the West does.

I think we have an obligation in the West to support the Ukraine and the people of Taiwan in resisting dominate from Russia and China, and that support must be military, economic and political, but there has to be very clear limits to that support, because forcing Russia or China into a direct military response could easily spiral out of control.

With the reality of a severe global economic recession looming, the triggers for a fully blown global war keep getting higher.

The latest friction point dangerously includes Iran.

The Iranians are selling Russia missiles and drones.

Israel has responded by threatening to start selling the Ukrainians weapons.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has responded to that threat by warning Israel selling the Ukrainians weapons would destroy its relationship with Israel.

The miscalculation here is that Russia gives the Iranians the final bits of nuclear tech they need for their nuclear weapons program which will incur a military strike by Israel, which will set the entire region ablaze.

With China’s economy faltering, with new Iranian friction points and with the ongoing impact on global commodity prices from the Ukrainian war, we are in a more perilous position than at any other time in modern history and I don’t believe we understand that.

There is no military solution here, only de-escalation.

But no one wants to de-escalate. There is a terrible inevitability in what comes next.

 

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