September 13,
2024
The first
confirmed use of ATACMS, Storm Shadow or Scalp inside of Russia would provoke a
Russian military strike against a western military target. We should step back
from this new missile crisis and push for a negotiated ceasefire.
When Sir Keir
Starmer meets Joe Biden today he will be seeking weapons free to use Storm
Shadow missiles inside of Russia. That comes as no surprise. Britain has been
militarily the most hawkish adversary of Russia in the Ukraine proxy war. It
would, however, be a mistake for Biden to cede to Britain’s demands, because it
will provoke a military escalation against those NATO states that engage in the
use of western weapons in Russia, including the US.
Russia has
warned consistently of the risk of escalation and, therefore, retaliation. Yes,
Russia has been using its weapons against cities in Ukraine since the war
started. But from their perspective, the war in Ukraine has remained largely a
war between two opposing sides, even if each side has received materiel support
from other countries.
It doesn’t
matter if you disagree. That is how the Russians frame their rules of
engagement. They would view any use of western weapons, that rely on US systems
and intelligence in order to function, as a direct act of war by the
participating countries.
How Russia might
respond
Following the
first confirmed use of a western supplied missile inside of Russian territory,
I assess Russia will launch a targeted conventional strike on a US and UK
military asset, including possibly in either country or in one of their
overseas facilities (Guam, Diego Garcia, etc).
I judge Russia
would be careful in targeting a military facility to minimise the risk of
civilian casualties in NATO states.
As the Russians
are highly reciprocal in how they act, I consider the risk of a tactical
nuclear escalation as low, at least in the short term.
Russia will also
fear the risk of escalation leading to a general war which Russia would not be
able to win against a much more powerful NATO and which, therefore, would take
us a step closer to all out Nuclear War.
They will also
worry about the impact of a disproportionate nuclear escalation on its
diplomatic relations in the wider world, in particular with China.
While cyber
attacks are a constant risk, I judge Russia would want a retaliation that was
attributable and which they could use in their communications.
Why Putin will
have to act
It would be
suicide politically for Putin to say that he will act, but then allow months to
pass with inaction as British missiles rain down on Russian targets. It is a
fantasy to think that he will do nothing.
A weapons free
signal to use Storm Shadow means that these missiles will strike Russian
targets at will for the remainder of this war, and no one has a plan for when
the war will end. Both the US and the UK are signaling that they are in this
for the long haul.
And, given the
intense internal pressure he will be under – not necessarily from the Russian
public – but from the hawkish parts of his inner circle, it would be
politically too damaging for Putin not to respond militarily.
The political
risk to Starmer
For Starmer, the
risk is that having beaten his chest and somehow appeared more war mongering
than Boris Johnson, he will look weak if he backs down now on the world stage.
He is gambling on calling Putin’s bluff i.e. that having said he would
retaliate Putin would, nevertheless, backdown. However, that is foolish, and
driven by the British government’s lack of Russia expertise.
If Starmer
succeeds in getting Biden’s approval, then hot on the heels of a disastrous
start to his premiership, he may have to explain why Russian missiles are
hitting British military targets, potentially in the UK itself. Which may force
him to escalate militarily, or back down and look weak and inept domestically.
The risk for
Biden
Biden risks
dragging the US into a direct military conflict with the world’s biggest
nuclear power, the outcome of which he cannot predict, just two months before
an election. There won’t be the time for the US to emerge victorious over
Russia so that Kamala Harris gets some sort of election boost from victory.
More likely, American service personnel will die.
The Times has
already reported that while Biden may permit the use of UK and French cruise
missiles, he may nevertheless not agree to the use of ATACMS inside of Russian
territory.
Pro-war
advocates like Jake Sullivan will believe this hedges the risk of a Russian
retaliation against America. But that assessment is also false. Russia has said
repeatedly that the use of British and French missiles is only possible with
the direct assistance and participation of US assets.
Conclusion
We have entered
a crisis as serious as when Khrushchev sent nuclear weapons to Cuba. Right now,
lofted up by hubris and an underestimation of the risk to global peace and
security, Starmer is going cap in hand to the White House. The risks to him
politically, whatever happens, seem overwhelmingly negative. But right now, I’m
more worried about the risk to humanity Starmer should be pressing for a
negotiated end to the fighting in Ukraine, not taking us one step closer to
nuclear catastrophe.
Two events dominated international
news this week: the TV debate between U.S. presidential candidates, Kamala
Harris and Donald Trump; and reports that Washington and its NATO allies are
gearing up to permit the Ukrainian regime to use their long-range missiles to
hit deep into the territory of the Russian Federation. The latter move would be
viewed in Moscow as a major escalation from a proxy war to a direct conflict
between nuclear powers.
The aforementioned events are
tightly connected. The U.S. presidential election is less than two months away
with Democrat Harris and Republican Trump vying in a hotly contested and
divisive race for the White House. Harris, the incumbent vice president,
performed best in the live TV debate, according to polls. Trump, however, with
characteristic brashness, claimed that he had won the debate. His subsequent
refusal to engage in a follow-up second debate might infer that the Trump
campaign fears that Harris was able to get the upper hand over her older
opponent, who sounded hackneyed and incoherent. We are talking here about
superficial style and not substance, which neither candidate has much of.
Discernibly, the U.S. establishment
favors Harris to win. Most of the American media are supportive of what would
be the first woman to become president of the United States, and a woman of
color too. That credential alone burnishes the image of the American republic
as a supposed bastion of democracy and liberal values.
More importantly for the American
deep state – or ruling class – is that Harris is more aligned with its
imperialist foreign policy. As with her current boss, President Joe Biden,
Harris spoke belligerently about confronting Russia and unwavering support for
the conflict in Ukraine.
The Washington establishment wants
Harris to win on November 5 to ensure the continuation of the proxy war against
Russia. The all-dominant military-industrial complex at the heart of U.S.
capitalism wants the war racket to keep churning out mega profits. But also in
the bigger geopolitical picture, the conflict with Russia is just one element
in a wider policy of confrontation with other foreign powers, primarily China,
or any other nation that challenges U.S. presumptions of hegemony. As we argued
in our editorial last week, the United States is endeavoring to offset its
failing global power by pursuing an intensified policy of aggression and
bellicosity even if such a policy puts the entire planet at risk of
catastrophic world war.
The highly choreographed move this
week by the United States and Britain to give the Ukrainian regime permission
to use long-range missiles to strike deep into Russia is tightly correlated
with the high-stakes presidential election.
Even Western media are reporting
that the Ukrainian regime is in dire straits as Russian forces make significant
gains in the Donbass region as well as pushing back the month-old Kursk
offensive. A telling report by CNN seemed to catch up with the reality that
many independent observers have already been pointing out, namely that
Ukrainian defenses are collapsing.
The Biden administration cannot
afford an embarrassing defeat in Ukraine before the November election.
Candidate Harris would be indelibly damaged by the loss of prestige especially
given the huge political and financial capital invested to “defend Ukraine from
Russian aggression”.
Hence, giving the Kiev regime
another lifeline of long-range weapons is aimed at making the floundering
Zelensky junta hang on for another few weeks to get past the U.S. election.
Donald Trump would benefit greatly
from the debacle of defeat in Ukraine. The former Republican president is
pitching his bid to return to the White House on pushing a peace deal in
Ukraine and “preventing World War Three”.
Trump’s maverick disparagement of
the NATO alliance and European allies is partly why the U.S. establishment does
not favor him. By comparison, Harris is a more pliable tool for American
warmongering, especially regarding confrontation with Russia. Trump’s talk
about negotiating a resolution in Ukraine is problematic for the militaristic
deep state.
However, it is important to disabuse
the notion that Trump is a peace candidate. He may have an inchoate inclination
to scale back the U.S. aggression against Russia, but the Republican contender
is more belligerent than his Democrat rival toward China and Iran. Trump is
fully supportive of Israel’s genocide in Palestine. It is fair to say that if
Trump were president again, the U.S. foreign policy of warmongering would
merely shift to some other region of the world.
Trump’s talk about stopping World
War Three is not credible. When he was president (2016-2020), he stoked the
NeoNazi Ukrainian regime to wage its genocidal war against ethnic Russians in
the Donbass, which led to Russia’s military intervention in February 2022. He
was also gung-ho about cutting Europe off from Russian gas and putting pressure
on Germany to cancel the Nord Stream project. Biden later ordered the blowing
up of the undersea Baltic pipeline in September 2022.
Pitching himself as a peacemaker in
Ukraine is Trump’s cynical attempt to tap votes among many Americans who are
rightly alarmed by the reckless proxy war against Russia. It boils down to
rhetorical posturing.
It is improbable that a future
President Trump would deliver on making peace in Ukraine. For a start, the U.S.
establishment would go into overdrive to sabotage such an outcome. One can
imagine how the old media canard of Trump being an alleged Russian stooge would
return with a vengeance.
Notably, too, large sections of the
Republican Party in Congress and the Senate, as well as past senior figures,
are staunch supporters of the hostile policy toward Russia. It is a sign of the
times that former Republican vice president Dick Cheney – the architect of wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq – recently gave his endorsement to Harris, as have
other Republican grandees. Harris thanked the war criminal profusely.
In addition, this week senior
Republican members in the House of Representatives who sit on key intelligence,
military, and foreign policy committees wrote a formal letter to Biden urging
him to give his approval to Ukraine to launch long-range missiles at Russia.
Biden would not take much persuading. Earlier this week, he blithely said he
was “working on the proposal”.
Lending to the bipartisan
Russophobia, another Republican Party lobby, Republicans Against Trump, claimed
that “a vote for Trump is a vote for Putin”.
The conspicuous upshot – concealed
by media hype and distortion – of the “historic” TV debate in the U.S. this
week is that both candidates belong to one party – the de facto War Party.
There may be multi-party names and
labels and rhetorical differences, but, essentially, the vast majority of
politicians in Washington are not representative of the people and their needs,
but rather are servants of imperialist warmongering. The same goes for the
politicians in Europe.
It is a tragic reflection of the
degradation of democracy in the United States and Europe that citizens are
being led into a potential world war and nuclear conflagration by a political
and corporate-controlled monopoly. Any dissenting voices to the servile media
pro-war propaganda are being shut down and censored. Google and YouTube are
closing down anti-war sites on the absurd basis that they are “Kremlin
propaganda” in a way similar to how American and European students protesting
against genocide in Gaza are being smeared as “terrorist sympathizers”. Western
“democracies” are baring their true nature as fascist war states that are
vandalizing international law.
The U.S. rulers amid their internal
political crisis and global failing are gambling with world peace. Russian
President Vladimir Putin this week warned that if long-range missiles are given
the go-ahead then Russia will view NATO as a direct participant in hostilities.
The erstwhile proxy war will henceforth be a direct war. That is a stark red
line. Will the insane Western “leaders” cross it? They may well do so because
of their incorrigible arrogance accrued from years of warmongering with
impunity and also because the entire Western capitalist system is congenitally
wired for war as that is the only way to prevent its inherent collapse. War
seems inevitable if the Western political class has its way.
The American War Party and its
adherents in Britain and the rest of Europe are pushing the world over the
abyss. And there’s no debate about that.
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