Chris Hedges is one of my favourites, if not my very favourite writer. Not just because he is brilliantly effective at using language to convey meanings but perhaps more importantly because of his political analysis.
Today my partner, Penny, forwarded to me his March 14th, 2022, article Waltzing Towards Armageddon with the Merchants of Death.
Hedges reviews the historical roots and reasons for the current war in Ukraine, beginning with the fact that the possibility of peaceful coexistence with Russia at the end of the Cold War was rejected by Washington.
Washington initially promised not to expand NATO beyond the borders of a unified Germany. In return, Moscow consented to the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. (The creation of the Warsaw Pact was the Soviet Union’s response to the creation of NATO.) In the years since the end of the Warsaw miliary alliance, NATO has admitted Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia.
This criminal betrayal by Washington meant that the arms industry profited by billions of dollars which could have been used instead to address the climate emergency.
Hedges reminds us that the Amazon is reaching its final tipping point (a point beyond which irreversible negative feedback mechanisms will kick into gear) where trees will die off en masse. Hedges tells us “In the face of the gravest existential crisis to beset the human species, and most other species, the ruling elites stoke a conflict that is driving up the price of oil and turbocharging the fossil fuel extraction industry”
Hedges observes that a protracted conflict between the US, Russia, and China could also destroy the US economic system, noting that if Russia and China create an alternative financial system, one that does not use the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency, the American dollar could plummet in value with the result that treasury bonds, which are used to fund America’s massive debt, would become worthless.
Hedges warns how “a Pandora’s box of evils” can follow from attempted political and social engineering, citing as a case in point the so-called Soviet-Afghan War, when President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski equipped and armed radical religious terrorists in Afghanistan in a successful attempt to stop the Soviets from supporting the mildly progressive communist government which then ruled. This newly armed group morphed into the Taliban and al-Qaida.
Once again Russia has entered into a quagmire from which it cannot escape. Russia would not have had any pretext to invade the Ukraine if Washington had promised that the Ukraine would never be admitted to NATO and that nuclear weapons would not be placed on Russia’s border.
The above are just a few of the insightful observations Hedges offers up in his article. I would urge you to read it. I would hope that you will then immediately contact your MP and demand that Ottawa propose the following peace plan:
- There be an immediate cease fire, followed by
- a complete withdrawal of Russian troops from the Ukraine, and
- the Ukraine and Washington declaring that Ukraine will never be admitted to NATO or acquire nuclear weapons
Planet Earth’s ecosystem is on the verge of a complete collapse. We simply cannot let the arms industry eliminate any possibility of humanity snatching victory from the jaws of defeat by diverting into its own coffers hundreds of billions of dollars that could be used to avert an environmental collapse.
Daily atmospheric CO2 [Courtesy of CO2.Earth]
Latest daily total (Mar. 17, 2022): 418.96ppm
One year ago (Mar. 17, 2021): 417.25 pm
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