This article is a translation of "Op oorlogspad (6). Van zwakkelingen in 1914 tot misdadigers nu"
'The politicians of 1914 were no criminals, they were weak figures who were not able to resist the forces pressing for war.' That was the judgement of the historian, G.W.F. Hallgarten, about the European governments which gave free rein to the hurricane of destruction that would rage for four years, what we today call the First World War. A war that was followed by a second one, many times more destructive, with some fifty million dead and hundreds of millions lives destroyed on top of it.
Shouldn't the same judgement apply to the American and European politicians gathered in Warsaw for the NATO summit, who are not able to resist the forces of war either?
OorlogIsGeenOplossing.nl (War Is No Solution) was founded in February 2013 as the national branch of a group that had been active under this label for many years in Enschede. The occasion for the new formation was the deployment of Patriot missiles in Turkey, on the pretext of protecting that country against attacks from Syria.
Today we need not explain that this was a transparent fairy tale. However, in our statement of principles we also argued that the spiral of death and destruction unleashed by the crisis-ridden West would not remain confined to the Middle East and North Africa. The perspective threatening us is a world war.
'The more the economic dynamics is displaced [from the West] to elsewhere—and not only to the BRICS—the more war, or so it seems. Even Russia and China are being targeted. War Is No Solution considers this development a huge danger that urgently must be averted.'
'Even Russia and China…' The 'even' can meanwhile be dropped, because in Warsaw NATO has declared Russia an official enemy and with the deployment of troops in the Baltic states violates the NATO-Russia Foundation Act of 1997. An act intended as a consolation prize for Moscow, then still under the pliant Yeltsin, to compensate for the relentless advance of the alliance to the Russian borders.
The same scenario for the original agreements with Gorbachev to get his signature under the reunification with Germany: forget it.
As argued earlier, the current NATO posture has nothing to do with the threat of a Russian invasion (which is as probable as a Syrian attack on Turkey in 2013). Instead it is related to the looming instability in the Baltic states with their large Russian minorities (around a quarter of the population in Estonia and Latvia), against whom a nationalist campaign is being waged that openly considers ethnic cleansing. It was the same in Ukraine after the nationalist, American-directed seizure of power in February 2014 ('the Russian incursion').
Those who consider the return of the Crimea into the Russian Federation, which constituted a response to this violent seizure of power, a justification for risking in nuclear war (of which scientsts in the Reagan years already established it would extinguish life on earth via a 'nuclear winter') are not just 'weak'.
They are criminals, war criminals. That holds for all those who put their signatures under the new NATO plans in Warsaw.
Kees van der Pijl
OorlogIsGeenOplossing.nl (War Is No Solution) was founded in February 2013 as the national branch of a group that had been active under this label for many years in Enschede. The occasion for the new formation was the deployment of Patriot missiles in Turkey, on the pretext of protecting that country against attacks from Syria.
Today we need not explain that this was a transparent fairy tale. However, in our statement of principles we also argued that the spiral of death and destruction unleashed by the crisis-ridden West would not remain confined to the Middle East and North Africa. The perspective threatening us is a world war.
'The more the economic dynamics is displaced [from the West] to elsewhere—and not only to the BRICS—the more war, or so it seems. Even Russia and China are being targeted. War Is No Solution considers this development a huge danger that urgently must be averted.'
'Even Russia and China…' The 'even' can meanwhile be dropped, because in Warsaw NATO has declared Russia an official enemy and with the deployment of troops in the Baltic states violates the NATO-Russia Foundation Act of 1997. An act intended as a consolation prize for Moscow, then still under the pliant Yeltsin, to compensate for the relentless advance of the alliance to the Russian borders.
The same scenario for the original agreements with Gorbachev to get his signature under the reunification with Germany: forget it.
As argued earlier, the current NATO posture has nothing to do with the threat of a Russian invasion (which is as probable as a Syrian attack on Turkey in 2013). Instead it is related to the looming instability in the Baltic states with their large Russian minorities (around a quarter of the population in Estonia and Latvia), against whom a nationalist campaign is being waged that openly considers ethnic cleansing. It was the same in Ukraine after the nationalist, American-directed seizure of power in February 2014 ('the Russian incursion').
Those who consider the return of the Crimea into the Russian Federation, which constituted a response to this violent seizure of power, a justification for risking in nuclear war (of which scientsts in the Reagan years already established it would extinguish life on earth via a 'nuclear winter') are not just 'weak'.
They are criminals, war criminals. That holds for all those who put their signatures under the new NATO plans in Warsaw.
Kees van der Pijl
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