Aerial view of the European Parliament in Brussels
By Alice Slater
NEW YORK, Jun 6 2024 – It is quite astonishing and clearly insane, that Manfred Weber, the German leader of the European Union’s center-right European People’s Party, now expected to come in first in the European Parliament election scheduled on June 6-9th, is calling for the EU’s own nuclear “deterrent”—arguing that the US-stationed nuclear weapons in five NATO states, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherland, and Turkey, may be inadequate protection for Europe’s security should Trump, that great friend of Russia, be elected!
There is a total disconnect from reality in the western world. It is driven by what has been described as an expansion of the warning of former General Eisenhower, commander of US World War II forces that worked with Russia to defeat the Nazi onslaught, which happened to kill the astounding number of 27 million Russians, in his outgoing presidential address.
Eisenhower warned against the undue influence of the Military Industrial Complex–which has been described by Ray McGovern, former CIA agent and founder of VIPS (Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity) as the MICIMATT– the Military, Industrial, Congressional, Intelligence, Media, Academic, Think Tank complex! They are all making a killing on killing!
The US, leading this doomsday machine, is hurtling us towards destruction based on a flouting of all the laws and treaties that have been painfully negotiated and put in place to avoid WWIII, for what it calls its “rules-based order”.
This was the alibi it used when it bombed Kosovo over Russia’s UN Security Council veto, despite its UN treaty obligation not to commit any war of aggression without Security Council approval unless under “imminent threat of attack”, which could hardly be rationally expected to come from Kosovo!
Although the US violated no treaty, it’s steady expansion of NATO eastward, despite well documented promises to Gorbachev, when he miraculously dissolved the Warsaw pact, without a shot, and expressed his apprehension at the Nazi slaughter Russia had suffered with a hope that a unified Germany would not be part of NATO.
Reassurances were given to him that we would never allow Germany to commit aggression again and that we would not expand NATO one inch to the east. At one point, Russia was so threatened by the expansion of NATO that Putin proposed to Clinton that Russia be invited to join. The US turned him down.
And of course, Putin actually tabled a proposed agreement two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, promising not to take action if Ukraine remained neutral and was not accepted into NATO. Bush walked out of the 1972 ABM Treaty we had with the USSR to stop the proliferation of anti-ballistic missiles, and the US put missile bases in Romania and Poland.
Russia (as well as China-the other enemy we are creating to keep the war machine going) has been very forthcoming in seeking nuclear disarmament and peace. After the devastating destruction in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Stalin asked Truman to turn the bomb over to the UN which we jointly founded “to end the scourge of war” and the US turned him down. So, Russia got the bomb!
Gorbachev, after the wall came down, asked Reagan to join the USSR in eliminating nuclear weapons, provided the US gave up its Star Wars policy to “dominate and control the military use of space”. Reagan turned him down. Russia and China both tabled treaties for a space weapons ban at the Committee on Disarmament in Geneva where consensus is required to discuss negotiations.
The US vetoed it, refusing even any discussion in 2008, and again in 2014. Putin proposed to Clinton that we cut our nuclear arsenals to 1,000 bombs each and call the six other nuclear armed countries to the table for a treaty to abolish them. The US turned him down.
When the US and Israel boasted about their use of the Stuxnet virus to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment plant, Putin approached Obama to negotiate a cyberwar ban treaty. The US turned him down.
The demonization of Russia and Putin and now China as well, is a major project of the MICIMATT! The EU has bought the brainwashing caused by the manufacture of a false narrative to keep the war machine going.
In the words of Pogo Possum, a Walt Kelly cartoon character during the first Red Scare, “We have met the enemy, and he is us!”
Alice Slater serves on the Boards of World BEYOND War and the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. She is the UN NGO Representative for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and on the Advisory Board of Nuclear Ban U.S. in support of the 2017 Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
IPS UN Bureau
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