The American people wouldn’t want to interrupt their pursuit of happiness by dying prematurely. But America is a modern democracy, which means people’s wishes don’t count.
Such matters are decided by a self-perpetuating elite made up of politicians, parasites feeding off the politicians and some influential businessmen. If we narrow the concept of ‘the Americans’ down to that group, the question becomes not only relevant but indeed urgent.
So do they? I don’t know. But neither do I know what they’d be doing differently if provoking a world war were indeed their goal.
Countries wishing to avoid war invariably take certain steps. First, they identify the flashpoints. Second, they do whatever necessary to douse the incipient flames: diplomatic pressure, a show of strength designed to discourage aggression or, in extreme cases, a pre-emptive strike.
Yet the West, as led by America, is moving in the opposite direction: it doesn’t apply sufficient diplomatic pressure; it’s showing an ever accelerating weakness; and it’s making not only a pre-emptive but even a retaliatory strike look increasingly unlikely.
The two major threats to world peace are unquestionably Islam and Russia. And everything the West is doing not only doesn’t discourage them from putting a match to the powder keg but positively begs for it.
With Islam, America, goaded by the neocons, first launched an ill-considered attack on Iraq. This plunged the country into a blood-soaked chaos, with much of the rest of the region soon to follow.
This action betokened the Americans’ ignorance of the outside world, a vacuum of knowledge filled by neocon ideology: a mixture of proselytising American supremacism with intellectual inadequacy.
In a nutshell, American democracy is the ideal that every nation, regardless of its history, religion or culture, yearns to reach. This includes the Muslim world that’s only being kept from bicameral parliamentarism by a small cadre of extremists, best described as Islamists or Islamofascists.
No problem with Islam as such is the mantra – this in spite of the fact that Muslim aggression against the West has ebbed and flowed for 1,400 years. It ebbs, when Islamic passions are weak and the West is strong. It flows, when it’s the other way around.
In 2003 America instantly impassioned Islam, which until then had been kept in check by its own evil but secular regimes. Such is the immediate origin of Isis (the long-term origin goes back to Islam’s founding). And Isis is a source of global danger that the Americans have no idea how to counteract.
Since their fiasco in Iraq has spoiled their taste for direct military involvement, the best they could come up with was the divide et impera stratagem of using Shiite Iran against Sunni Isis.
As payment, Iran, the world’s principal instigator of anti-Western terrorism, has effectively been given carte blanche to develop nuclear weapons – and all the cash she needs to do so.
Since everyone knows who the first target of an Iranian A-bomb will be, Israel, sold down the river by Obama’s administration, will have to prevent extinction all on her own. Since only tactical nuclear weapons can bust Iran’s underground reactors, Israel may have to resort to those – with consequences both dire and unforeseeable.
Hence America’s actions since 2003, and especially her current craven deal with the Ayatollahs, creates a clear danger of a world war.
Russia is another flashpoint, and here Western actions are just as suicidal. This started with triumphalism over the ‘collapse’ of the Soviet Union, which perceptive observers (modesty prevents naming one) knew at the time was essentially a transfer of power from the Party to the KGB.
Once the KGB grasp on power was consolidated by Col. Putin’s rise, only the naïve could expect history’s most evil organisation to change its spots. Even those who didn’t fit that description to begin with were dumbed down by the neocons’ assurances that the Russians, like the Muslims, were desperate to become a USA Lite.
Hence the West’s response to Putin’s aggressive wars against Chechnya, Georgia, then the Ukraine. The first two incurred no reaction other than some mildly disapproving noises. The third one, more of the same, plus a few token sanctions.
Meanwhile Russia has launched a vast rearmament programme, unprecedented since the 1970s. The programme, to be completed by 2020, emphasises strategic arms, of the kind Russia doesn’t need to fight the Ukraine.
Russian troops are massed along the western border, while the Duma is currently debating the legality of the three Baltic republics’ declaring their independence in 1990-1991.
I’d say the legality of that action stacks up well against Stalin’s 1940 conquest of the Baltics after his criminal pact with Hitler. But one way or the other, the Baltics are Nato members.
Since Nato’s charter states that an attack on one member is an attack on all, KGB aggression must be discouraged. This can only be done by making the KGB government realise that, should such an attack occur, Nato will go to war and it’s strong enough to destroy Russia.
Instead the West is disarming at a rate suggesting the intention to surrender. This is accompanied by appeasement noises and mild sanctions of no deterrent value.
The West, ineptly led by America, clearly hasn’t learned the lesson of Munich: appeasement invites aggression. And, unlike Nazi Germany, KGB Russia is a nuclear power, of which Putin’s propagandists remind us every day.
No, I don’t think the Americans want a world war. But their ill-informed, weak-kneed policies are making it likely.