View from Europe: “Do we want to risk the very existence of Humanity, clearly not ‘for the sake of Ukraine’?”

Napoleon campaigned in Russia and was crushed. The Western powers heavily intervened in Russia against the Bolsheviks (1918-21), only to face humiliation and see their own troops revolt. Hitler’s Germany attacked Russia and was destroyed.

Their glory is apparently envied now by Biden, Scholz, Macron, Stoltenberg, von der Leyen etc., perhaps the most decadent coterie of “leaders” of the West in its whole history. Those persons probably they have just a very vague idea, if they have, of European history, which makes easier for them to repeat it.

The only problem is that we now possess nuclear weapons and a whole host of other technological means that did not exist before 1945. This is why the new campaign risks becoming not just the Waterloo of the West, but the Waterloo of humanity, unless humanity is mobilized in a massive and dynamic way to prevent its destruction, writes Dimitris Konstantakopoulos, ex-advisor at the office of the Greek PM Andreas Papandreou on Arms Control and East-West relations.

After Biden’s decision to allow the use of US weapons against targets on Russian territory, within three days, the French are preparing to send troops to Ukraine, the Germans are discussing the possibility of recruiting 900,000 reservists, the Dutch and the Danes say they have no problem if the F16s they give to Ukraine strike inside Russia. But these aircraft can carry nuclear weapons. In other words, the Russians will be under constant threat and uncertainty that they could be subject to a nuclear attack.

Increasing uncertainty can cause nuclear war by mistake, while facilitating a provocation. The existence of such weapons in Ukraine, where Zelensky now seems to be fully controlled not only by the West in general, but by the extremist “Party of War” within it, makes any provocation much easier, i.e. destabilizes the most crucial factor of nuclear stability.

It’s like a poker game where the opponents are constantly moving up in stakes. US weapons have already carried out deadly attacks in Belgorod, Russia. Russia, as Putin himself said, responded by carrying out an attack in the direction of Kharkiv.

So what do they think in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin? That they will keep escalating the intervention in Ukraine and Moscow will not respond? Or do they want it to respond, they want escalation, taking things to a nuclear conflict without taking themselves the responsibility of it?

The Russians, for their part, released a map of the bases where the United States has stored nuclear weapons in Europe and Putin made a special reference to small European states whose leaders do not understand what they are getting themselves into. Most European media did not even report this news.

The vast majority of European political personnel, directly dependent on NATO and the US services, as it seems are powerless to challenge decisions and plans that threaten to lead Europe and humanity to their end.

An honourable exception is the Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán, whom many may not like for other issues, but who had the courage to clearly oppose the war plans and is now threatened from Brussels, the seat of a supposedly democratic and increasingly totalitarian, European Union, with the exclusion of Hungarians from all posts in the EU. There is also, of course, the left-wing Slovak Prime Minister Fico, even more radical in his criticism of NATO policy, but someone made sure he was sent to hospital.

Last month, the leader of the European People’s Party (EPP), Weber said that he wants the introduction of compulsory service and the creation of a European Army, which would not be subject to the constraints of control by national governments. In other words, Brussels will directly send European soldiers to Ukraine without asking anyone.

At the same time, the idea of a “military Schengen” is being discussed, i.e. NATO troops being able to move into EU territory without consulting governments.

European leaders do not understand that what they are doing is probably a prelude to the third world war and they think of nuclear bombs as a “tactical deterrent tool”, not as something that will actually be used, but what may not seem likely at the start of a war could occur by its conclusion, as the Hungarian Prime Minister pointed out.

The Americans may hope that, even if a nuclear conflict occurs, it will be under control and confined to European territory. But such calculations are utterly foolish. If humanity crosses the threshold of using nuclear weapons, whether tactical or strategic, it will be extremely difficult to control and contain, even to keep it on European soil. Most likely, once mankind crosses the nuclear threshold, it will be the end of mankind.

Ultimately, the question that political forces and societies in the West have to answer is this: Do we want to risk the very existence of humanity, clearly not for the sake of Ukraine or democracy, but to uphold the dominance of an ultra tiny minority over the planet and our own nations?

Is it not time to start thinking again like Roosevelt, the two Kennedys, De Gaulle, Willy Brandt, Olaf Palme, Aldo Moro, Andreas Papandreou? Where they all working for Moscow as agents? Is it not time for the people to mobilise?

Because, as Nikita Khrushchev and John Kennedy said, those who survive a nuclear war, the living, will envy those who have died.

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