ON THE BRINK OF WORLD WAR III
Why Is the U.S. Modernizing
Its Nuclear Weapons?
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
March 2014
This article appears in the March 28, 2014 issue of Executive Intelligence Review and is reprinted with permission.
 Helga Zepp-LaRouche. |
March 21—There is not the slightest reason why Germany, or any other nation, should agree to sanctions against Russia, because these are directed as much against our fundamental self-interest, as they are part of a highly dangerous escalation spiral, at the end of which could be the annihilation of human civilization by a global thermonuclear war. If this disaster is to be averted, we must immediately place on the agenda an international order of peace, in which all nations will work together for the common aims of mankind.
What led the EU Heads of State and Government now, in great haste, to sign a partial EU Association Agreement with "Yats," the Ukrainian interim Prime Minister by the grace of Victoria Nuland? A regime that includes four ministers from the ultra-nationalist Svoboda party (vice-prime minister, defense minister, minister of agrarian policy and food, and minister of ecology and natural resources; where the head of the Security and Defense Council is Andriy Parubiy (a co-founder of the Social-National Party, which later changed its name to Svoboda); and where the Attorney General, Gen. Oleh Makhnytsky, is a leading member of Svoboda?
Why has the EU made a pact with a government that came to power in a coup run by fascist stormtroopers, and simultaneously announced sanctions against Russia, which, in the view of renowned international and American constitutional law experts, such as John V . Whitbeck and Prof. Stephen Cohen, has adhered strictly to international law? This means that the EU is determined to hold to an imperial course against Russia, which will not, however, result in the hoped-for increase in power, but rather go straight to the atomic annihilation of Europe!
NATO's Nuclear Escalation
The President of the Russian Academy of Geopolitical Problems, military scientist Dr. Konstantin Sivkov, on March 18, commented on the recent decision of NATO to modernize and beef up its tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, as a possible sign of preparation for war with Russia. By the end of the decade, the F-16 fighter aircraft and Tornados of five NATO countries are to be replaced by F-35 Joint Strike Fighters capable of delivering B61-12 class nuclear bombs. This would apply to countries that were previously considered to be non-nuclear, namely Belgium, the Netherlands, Turkey, Germany, and Italy.
Hans M. Kristenson, author of the Federation of American Scientists Strategic Security Blog, had on Feb. 28 very strongly suggested that the enhancement of the B61-12 bombs is a violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and of the Obama Administration's own promises. Under the pretext of a life-extension program, a new nuclear capacity would be created that does not exist in current versions of the bomb. Under the program, the upgraded bomb gets a new tail-kit assembly that substantially improves its accuracy, from 110-180 meters down to perhaps as little as 30 meters, and also gives the bomb the ability to glide to its target, which features make deployment options possible with significantly less radioactive fallout.
Kristenson emphasizes that the B61-12 bombs would be able to cover the entire range of military missions for non-guided bombs, from the lowest explosive force of the B61-4 (0.3 kilotons) to the 1,200 kiloton B83-1 and the B61-11 bunker-busters. "That's quite an achievement for a weapon that just a few years ago was described simply as a refurbishment of four old B61s," Kristenson wrote on Oct. 30, 2013. "Now the B61-12 has become the all-in-one nuclear bomb on steroids, spanning the full spectrum of gravity bomb missions anywhere." But why create these capacities, he asked, which do not correspond at all to the security interests of Europe?
Dr. Sivkov argues that the failure of the American strategy [cutting off Russia from its strategically important access to the Black Sea by a pro-Western coup in Ukraine, and thus rendering Russia defenseless—HZL] may lead to a more radical policy, a direct military attack on Russia. "In this context, increasing the potential of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe is perfectly understandable," he writes: "It is about the attainment of superiority in these weapons over Russia." If the U.S. succeeds in this goal, then an aggressive
NATO war will become possible, and Russia's ability to retaliate against European territory will be limited, and out of fear of a U.S. strategic counterstrike, it would refrain from using nuclear weapons. The modernization of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe should therefore be seen, he writes, "as a sign of the preparation of the United States for war against Russia."
Utopian Insanity
The utopian idea that a nuclear war could be "winnable," by a further development of smart-weapons systems, permeates all aspects of NATO and U.S. doctrines, all of which aim to eliminate air defenses, to destroy command-and-control functions, and thus to eliminate the second-strike capacity. This is the basis of the U.S. missile defense system in Eastern Europe; it is the basis for the "Prompt Global Strike" doctrine, as well as the Air-Sea Battle doctrine against China.
FIGURE 1
NATO’s Eastward Expansion
 Wikimedia Commons/Glentamara; adapted by EIRNS. |
In the Strategic Studies Quarterly, the official journal of the U.S. Air Force, the authors Keir Lieber and Daryl Press had already announced the end of the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine of NATO in the Spring of 2013, and put forward the theory that nuclear wars are winnable. Various critics of this delusion have pointed out that all these doctrines lead to a race to a first strike on both sides, and massively increase the danger of war.
These utopian war doctrines are an expression of the fact that Great Britain and the United States, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, instead of taking the opportunity to establish a real peace policy, decided to rule as a world empire, based on the Anglo-American special relationship. This is the context for the continuous eastward expansion of NATO and the EU, as well as the systematic strategy of encirclement of Russia and China.
In the meantime, some strategic analysts are saying that this is where the current crisis started, and it is also the reason that Russia was never offered participation in security alliances, and that the various Russian offers have been ignored. The European Monetary Union—as the price for German reunification—and the EU treaties, from Maastricht to Lisbon, have transformed the EU into a junior partner of the Anglo-American Empire.
The acute reason for war results from the imminent collapse of the trans-Atlantic financial system. Neither the British monarchy and its power base, the City of London, nor the Bush-Obama continuum and its power base, Wall Street, can tolerate the idea that their system would break down, while Asian and Eurasian countries—China, India, Russia—develop themselves economically. This is the old geopolitical impulse of Halford Mackinder, Alfred Milner, Karl Haushofer and Co.—the conviction that dominance of the Eurasian "heartland" would threaten the power of the Atlantic "rimland"—and which led to the First World War.
The Single Resolution Mechanism (SRM), recently adopted by the EU—i.e., the step-by-step plan for a European Banking Union and the so-called Cyprus model of bail-in, means the end of the European financial system. Because if this bail-in mechanism is used, the hopelessly bankrupt financial system will implode, just as when a cable breaks in an elevator on the 70th floor of a skyscraper, and the car plummet down without brakes.
One must understand this concept of empire and its geopolitical motivation, which are intended to achieve the capitulation and, if necessary, military destruction of Russia and China, in order to understand the strategic situation. Germany's intensive economic ties to both countries are a thorn in the side of the Empire, and economic sanctions are therefore the best way to ruin this cooperation, to the detriment of both sides.
An Existential Question for Germany
This geostrategic confrontation with Russia and China, against the potential of their cooperation with the industrial nation of Germany, has been an historical continuity since Otto von Bismarck; that was the reason for his dismissal as Chancellor in 1890, and for the chess moves that set the course for the outbreak of World War I. In an effort to overcome the isolation and economic devastation imposed on Germany by the Versailles Treaty, German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau negotiated the Rapallo Treaty with the Soviet Union in 1922, for extensive economic cooperation; he and the others who had signed the Treaty were murdered within a year. The well-documented financial support for Hitler by the head of the Bank of England, Montagu Norman, and by Wall Street banker Prescott Bush, had the same basic reason: It was known that Hitler would go to war with Russia. The entry of Germany into the corset of the EU's Maastricht Treaty had the stated purpose of preventing Germany's economic cooperation with Russia and Eurasia, which would have prevented the geopolitical defeat of Russia during the Yeltsin years.
The existential question we face in Germany today is: Have we learned anything from history, or are we going to be, for the third time, the victims of the geopolitics of the British Empire, of which Wall Street has historically been only an appendage?
If we do not want to admit that, by a spiraling escalation of economic sanctions which will ruin us, and a military policy which will make Germany the theater of a nuclear war, and if we go, like lambs to the slaughter, to our own demise, then Germany must propose a peace policy.
There is a way out, however, if important representatives of industry, social organizations, and other thinking people would propose replacing the casino economy with a two-tier banking system in the tradition of Glass-Steagall, establishing a credit system with Eurasian nations for the construction of the World Land-Bridge, and cooperating on behalf of the common aims of mankind.
Are we intelligent enough to embrace this alternative?
Translated from German by Susan Welsh
