The Ukraine proxy war is well on its way to turning into a WWIII.
The longer the conflict in Ukraine goes, the clearer it’s getting that we are moving closer and closer to the final war - the nuclear war.
There’s a reason why the anti-war activists have been against this proxy war from the day one. Any person with a good head on his shoulders would not find it difficult to recognize that once two nuclear superpowers start to ascent upon the escalatory ladder, the only end it’s going to lead to is that of nuclear warheads flying over people’s houses.
Nothing can be easily predicted than this.
Since the war started, numerous announcements have been made from both sides - all of which led to more escalation and none of which led to a ceasefire. The decisions made by the US and its allies this week represent one such scenario in this almost a year long war that’s going to massively escalate the war in such a way that we might see a direct conflict between NATO and Russia, which means nothing other than WWIII.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock already cleared the Western powers’ viewpoint as she said, “We are fighting a war against Russia,” which is in direct conflict with what the French President Emmanuel Macron has been telling us since the early days of the war: “We are not at war with Russia.”
Yesterday, the President of United States tweeted:
“Today, I announced that the United States will send 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine – evidence of our enduring and unflagging commitment to Ukraine and our confidence in the skill of Ukrainian forces.”
The decision to send tanks to Ukraine came “after weeks of tense back-channel negotiations with the chancellor of Germany and other European leaders,” says the recent NYT article, because in order for Germany to consent to sending its Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, the US had to show that it’s as committed to helping Ukraine as it pressures other countries to be.
The writers of the same article argue that “it is the latest in a series of gradual escalations that has inched the United States and its NATO allies closer to direct conflict with Russia.”
Even without their agreement, it is clear as day that sending the kind of weapons that up until recently were denied (evidence bullet-pointed) by the Western officials is a major escalation but reading it in one of the propaganda arms of the US empire shows that the situation is far more dangerous than many expect it to be.
Just a week earlier, Sabrina Singh, the deputy Pentagon press secretary, said it “doesn’t make sense” to give Ukraine the tanks at this stage.
“I just don’t think we’re there yet,” said US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl in reference to the tanks.
Biden himself denied sending offensive weapons such as tanks in March 2022 because, in his words, “that’s called World War III.”
The decision of sending offensive tanks to Ukraine is one of the many incidents where the US officials first denied sending particular kind of weapons due to the concerns that it would trigger a direct conflict with Russia but then crossed its self-imposed line a few weeks or months later - a kind of pattern that the other officials observed too.
Branko Marcetic raises the similar concerns in his article titled, “Mission Creep? How the US role in Ukraine has slowly escalated,” by saying that “when the United States involves itself militarily in a conflict, it often finds it hard to get itself out, let alone avoid deep entanglements that blow well past lines it had drawn at the start of the intervention.”
He cited the historical examples of Vietnam and Afghanistan.
In an October 2022 interview, Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, talked about this pattern:
“When I was in D.C. in November [2021], before the invasion, and asked for Stingers, they told me it was impossible. Now it’s possible. When I asked for 155-millimeter guns, the answer was no. HIMARS, no. HARM, no. Now all of that is a yes. Therefore, I’m certain that tomorrow there will be tanks and ATACMS and F-16s.”
Just when the approval of sending tanks to Ukraine was being celebrated by the war hawks, the officials from the war-hosting country demanded another kind of weapons which has been on the top of their wish list all the time - fighter jets such as F-16s - and this demand turned Lockheed Martin, who has been the only manufacturer of such weapons, into a happy bunny.
Lockheed will be “ramping production on F-16s” said Frank St. John, the military giant’s chief contracting officer.
The war, which is about to have its anniversary next month, is either going to end through detente or a nuclear armageddon. Since the prospect of peace talks have already been flushed down the toilet, the only thing that can be expected out of these constant escalations is the direct confrontation between the US and Russia.
Apart from the ever-increasing escalation from the Western governments, another thing that makes these times even more risky is that Russia already sees the conflict not only against Ukraine alone, but NATO as a whole, and it has already warned the use of nukes if its current struggle in Ukraine results in a defeat.
When the decision to send tanks to Ukraine was announced by the US and Germany, the Russian Embassy in Berlin called it as “extremely dangerous” and said it was now convinced that Germany and its closest allies were “not interested in a diplomatic solution to the Ukrainian crisis” but were “set up for its permanent escalation and unlimited pumping of the Kyiv regime with more and more deadly weapons.”
So, it’s clear that showing green light to the delivery of offensive weapons to Ukraine IS provoking Russia to escalate from its side too, if it wants to stay relevant in the war.
But people using social media sitting in their comfortable homes think Russia won’t materialize the warnings it gives about crossing its “red lines.”
The only argument that people in the Western countries have for supporting their governments’ policies regarding this war, which the Kremlin has called out as escalatory many times, is that Russia won’t escalate in a way that may lead to an all-out nuclear war because it hasn’t done so yet. Just because Russia hasn’t escalated massively so far is a proof that it won’t escalate massively in the future; that’s the witless logic blood-thirsty people put forward.
Can you contemplate how dumb it sounds?
Caitlin Johnstone tweeted a good analogy to it, she said, “This is the same as believing it's safe to jump harder on the sleeping grizzly bear because it still hasn't woken up yet.”
I repeat it in every article that I do not side with any party in this conflict, for choosing sides in a war means choosing more destruction, pain, suffering, and death. Supporting or cheering for one side is understandable as long as it’s about a sport, but war is not a sport; it’s the worst thing that a nation collectively can go through.
What I am doing here is not “supporting Russia” but highlighting the components that are prolonging and widening the war which has already caused hundreds of thousands of casualties.
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