Creating circumstances for another world war?

© 2017 Peter Free

 

11 April 2017

 

 

Caveat

 

To be comprehensible, what follows requires at least some knowledge of the last 120 years of world history. Including fair-minded, reasoned assessments regarding which "whos" were (objectively speaking) responsible for which outcomes.

 

This caveat almost certainly means that virtually no uncritically rah-rah American is going to "get" it.

 

So, I'm writing this for our friends abroad, who know all too well that crazy leaders and their wars cause massive and unnecessary suffering among populations.

 

I am trying to demonstrate that not all of us in the United States are complacently or viciously asleep.

 

 

Theme — aspects of American leadership and proto-apes have a lot in common

 

Neither group is (or was) capable of sustained reality-conscious thought.

 

 

Recall the origins of both World Wars?

 

World War I arguably started because its contributors could not look beyond their macho-perceived self-interests.

 

These supposedly civilized nations managed to escalate comparatively trivial tactical circumstances into an unnecessary strategic conflagration that ate up 38 million lives and gravely injured many more than that.

 

Afterward, the bag of arguable imbecilities that marked the origin of the First World War then permutated — via the foolishly vindictive Treaty of Versailles (1919) and its variously idiotic geographic cobblings — to cause the Second.

 

World War II, in its turn, obliterated more than 60 million lives and damaged many more.

 

 

Today . . .

 

We are witnessing the United States doing its air-headed best to escalate exploding Middle Eastern disorder — which it had a historically primary hand in creating — to recklessly flirt with forcing the brink of nuclear war.

 

 

Think about — today's strategic situation

 

We are intentionally escalating tensions — from one very broad Greater Middle Eastern mess — to add two more overtly global ones.

 

Already at war in multiple locations in the Middle East, the United States is now aggressively poking nuclear-armed adversaries in Russia, China and North Korea.

 

The strategic recklessness involved in this is mind-boggling. Pre-World War I's European brain-deadness pales in comparison.

 

 

Global Front One — the Russian Federation

 

President Trump just arced some missiles into Syria, illegally and without a batshit hope in Hell of favorably affecting the Syrian Civil War.

 

Evidently the fact that the Russian Federation has genuine national interests in Syria (unlike our pretend ones) did not enter this American calculation.

 

Nor did the Trump Administration (apparently) stop to think that:

 

the combination of NATO's decades of Russian border crunching,

 

combined with our anticipated deployment of missiles to Poland and Romania — (under the pretext that Iran is a threat to Europe) —

 

just might aggravate Russian President Putin enough . . .

 

that he would start appraising the wisdom of countering with America-killing nukes.

 

 

Global Front Two — the People's Republic of China and North Korea

 

Not too long ago — and apparently not satisfied with pissing the Chinese off with historically typical Western "You ain't shit" babble — the United States deployed THAAD missiles to South Korea. Much to North Korea and China's consternation.

 

(You can imagine what effect a Chinese or North Korean missile emplacement of similar type in Mexico or Canada would have on us.)

 

 

That not being enough of a stability-provoking provocation, President Trump has now sent an American carrier strike group on its way to the Korean Peninsula. Its goal is to show North Korea that the communist nation's missile and nuke testing are bad ideas. (Given that North Korea has an unblemished record demonstrating that it cannot be intimidated by bullshit Western moves, one wonders what geopolitical merit the carrier group has — unless the Trumpian scheme really is to provoke a nuclear combat of some kind.)

 

Notably, this American naval force embarked Korea-ward at about the same time that President Trump presumably tried — based on his prior statements — to persuade or intimidate China's leader, Xi Jinping, into submitting to American demands that very probably grossly contradict China's own national interests.

 

 

In sum — lunacy?

 

Bone-headed American leadership is aggressively fueling seeds of war on three globally massive fronts. And at least two of these involve the potential introduction of nuclear weapons.

 

It is easily foreseeable that Russia, China and North Korea will (rationally) believe themselves to be defending against unwarranted American aggression.

 

 

Note here that — US actions defeat our own non-proliferation ideas

 

The United States has done everything that it could, since World War II, to conclusively demonstrate the only nations mildly safe from the Great American Plutocracy's threats and aggression are nuclear-armed ones.

 

One cannot rationally fault the (admittedly wacko) North Korean, (noticeably less crazy) Pakistani and (comparatively sane) Iranian governments for pursuing nuclear weapons. History clearly demonstrates that, if you want to stand up to the overweening United States, you need nukes.

 

Today, the Trump Administration appears to be doing its best to demonstrate that not even possession of nukes will forestall American attempts to control other cultures' every move.

 

 

The moral? — If recklessly indulged strategic ineptness is a measure of American leadership, we rule

 

Pre-World War I's macho-blind incompetents arguably did not muck things up to the incomprehensible degree that the United States does today.

 

U.S. foreign policies are what happen when an oversupply of brain-gobbling testosterone combines with:

 

 

abysmal ignorance of history

 

the inability to see other cultures' legitimate perspectives

 

and

 

an unalloyed inability to reason and plan with facts and foreseeable consequences in mind.

 

 

If you are not concerned, you probably should be. Your children may be the ones, who ultimately get incinerated, one way or another.

 

Even the carelessly originated Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) unnecessarily tangled with only one nuclear armed adversary. Not three.