Nuclear war, to win US elections?

Dissident journalist Gonzalo Lira reviews recent events to sketch out a grim scenario of nuclear conflict in northern Europe.

He is emphatic that Ukraine is losing the war with Russia. He says that the Biden administration has staked all on a win there, to distract from economic failure at home, and analyses the situation as follows:

The Democrat government wants to avoid another Afghanistan-style humiliating defeat, albeit by proxy this time, in the run-up to the November mid-term elections. Since victory is not available in Ukraine, the US plans to escalate the conflict via NATO, by attacking Kaliningrad (formerly the Prussian city of Königsberg and now part of Russian Federation territory.)

Lithuania has blocked rail traffic between Kaliningrad and Russia, and may be preparing a military assault. The Poles would likely want to join in, since they have hated Russia for centuries.

Lira speculates that some provocation will be arranged, to provide a pretext for Lithuania and Poland to become involved; I assume this is because both countries are subject to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and so forbidden to wage wars of aggression (whereas the US and Russia are NOT signatories to the Rome Statute.)

Kaliningrad is very well-prepared to resist and counterattack. Also, Russia’s fighting units in Ukraine have been regularly rotated so that a large proportion of her armed forces are now battle-hardened. They are winning against what was Europe’s biggest NATO-trained army and if war breaks out in the Baltic states they are set to win there also.

So at that later stage, the US may choose to use nuclear weapons. Unlike Russia, says Lira, they have never bound themselves to ‘no first use.’ There are ‘crazy’ elements in Washington prepared to risk this escalation, for domestic political ends.

In a shorter supplementary video, Lira discusses the rumours that a Ukrainian general is considering a coup against President Zelenskyy, in order to sue for peace with the Russians and spare further unnecessary death and injury. Lira says there is a faction in the Pentagon that would support this development; but there are others in the State Department, the National Security Council and among political representatives who want to go on with the war and win at all costs.

Whether or not the general in question, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, is actually plotting such a move, the rumours may have already marked him for arrest or assassination by the Ukrainian right-wingers who control Zelenskyy and who would have to flee for their lives if peace broke out. So there will be no coup, says Lira.

His analysis is plausible and deeply worrying. Sixty years on from the Cuban Missile Crisis we seem to creeping towards another direct confrontation between the world’s two most heavily nuclear-armed nations.

This time, though, there is no young and forceful Chief Executive in the White House, able to restrain the aggression of his generals. The current President is old and feeble, and as I said a few weeks ago, the first and second people in line to replace him in a crisis appear ill-equipped for the task.

Lira ends the first of the above videos by lamenting the passivity of Americans, but realistically what can any of us do to affect such high-level events, except hope and pray? ‘There are no atheists in foxholes,’ as the saying goes.