If the US leaders wanted to wage a thermonuclear war that would destroy America and the world, we would not be here to talk about it. President Biden has explicitly ruled out a direct confrontation with Russia, no matter what happens in Ukraine.
However, there are disturbing indications that some individuals in high places in the US (or representing the thinking of many in such high places) are okay with a nuclear war that will destroy the United States, or in fact are encouraging such a war.
A "no fly zone" of death would expand across the globe instantly
Imposing a no-fly zone in Ukraine will trigger a third world war because it will require targeting Russian airfields, radar and defense systems on Russian territory with American missiles. Russian defenses have vast ranges that prohibit the use of US aircraft over Ukraine. Russian weapons can also easily reach all American airfields in Europe that would be involved in any such operation. The vastness of the Russian military means that the US would have to launch a devastating attack on Russia to neutralise all the threats to US planes as they attack the Russians. Russia would invariably respond by attacking US airfields in turn, and very quickly targeting the US mainland and cities in response to its own territory being attacked by America.
Despite this, there are calls from seemingly well-qualified individuals to go ahead and start this suicidal conflict anyway.
Here are just three examples. There are no doubt others, possibly more influential, but these are just picked at random for being prominent examples of Anglo-American leadership on both sides of the Atlantic.
General Philip Breedlove
This man is no crank. Breedlove is a US general and the former supreme military commander of NATO (Supreme Allied Commander Europe, or SACEUR). He has explictly pleaded, "How many casualties does it take before we take a different approach to this war?" While this may simply seem like a stupid remark, based on emotion, this man is trained and competent enough to be fully aware that what he is advocating will entail killing not just everyone in Ukraine but everyone in Russia, Europe and North America too. Why, then, is he advocating it?
Lindsey Graham
Lindsey Graham, an influential and powerful US senator, has stated that the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine (which he will only blame on Russia) will make the moral case to forget about the risk of nuclear war and begin attacking the Russians. He is also too well-informed in briefings to be unaware that his suggestion to start a world war against Russia would kill far more people than a chemical attack and would quickly kill everyone in the United States and Russia under the fire of hydrogen bombs.
Jonathan Powell
The former Downing Street Chief of Staff under Tony Blair from 1997-2007 has advocated against "appeasement" and argued for launching a war on the Russians if they use a chemical weapon in Ukraine. He cites the example of Syria and the need to take a firmer moral stand (apparently that will do a whole lot of good when we are all skeletons). He is advocating this despite the fact that Western governments were never even fully confident that Syria used chemical weapons, and they bombed Syria merely because of intelligence assessments stating it was "likely". Apparently, we will be very impatient to immolate ourselves and not bother to wait for any investigation in Ukraine, too.
As horrifying as the pictures may have been, the use of chemical weapons in Syria barely killed anyone and had little to no effect on the battlefield other than prompting Western strikes. More people died from knives in Syria. The nuclear exchange that would be guaranteed by attacking Russia on such a flimsy, emotionally manipulative pretext about "chemicals" would kill almost everyone in Ukraine, and then kill almost everyone in both the West and Russia. Apparently, politicians don't see a moral issue with the scenario of mass immolation of people, followed by the larger group of us whose skin will melt and their eyeballs will fall out, followed by another percentarge who will be vomiting blood. No, these scenes don't worry them; they are just worried about the "chemicals" and the idea of people choking, such that they think it is worth risking the nuclear scenario.
These interventionist leaders we are talking about may be insane, but the unique mental health problems of those with power are less important to talk about than the need to stop them.
Who will stop these men?
The answer is... currently serving American officers and generals, who want their troops to live, and probably want their families to survive too.
It should be observed that military experts and officials tend to always warn against what will cause a nuclear war, as happened in Syria. Here we are again, and the same kind of "hawks" are trying to impose a situation where deescalation could become too difficult for the military personnel tasked with a nation's safety, as if the politicians had reached out and ripped the brakes from your car to make sure you crash.
Getting closer and closer to Russia and trying to enforce the US's will closer and closer to them potentially creates an ever more uncontrollable and unpredictable series of conflicts between the US and Russia that make it almost impossible for troops to avoid a nuclear war, even if they have the maximum will to avoid one.
Being responsible for a larger population, if the US gets into a nuclear war with Russia, it will suddenly make the world record for being the country with the biggest piles of dead bodies in human history. Every American officer and general's family will most likely perish, meaning that they have utterly failed not only in their duty as a soldier but even as a human being.
The only solution can be that American officers must continuously resist the pressure of politicians to put them in a situation of nuclear escalation that they cannot escape. Finally, if American officers are unable to prevent themselves being put in that situation, it would become their duty to preserve their country by, in the worst case scenario, mutiny. One should be prepared, privately, to kill their own political leaders and seize control of the government, even at grave risk to their own lives, if the alternative is to obey orders that will directly lead to nuclear war.
- ClubOfInfo
