In season of peace beware countdown to nuclear war

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Lead Editorial

14 December 2022
Vol. 24 No. 50

As much of the world pauses to reflect on the message of peace that is the essence of the Christmas season, the consequences of decades of Anglo-American strategic scheming has the world teetering on the brink of nuclear war.

The Australian Alert Service has documented this escalating danger in real time, including in:

• “Sixty Years After the Cuban Missile Crisis, on the brink again”, AAS, 30 September 2022;
• “Biden Administration’s ‘Nuclear Posture’ keeps up war preparations”, AAS, 23 November 2022.

Back in April the US-based Arms Control Association, citing senior US officials, reported: “Biden has decided not to follow through on his 2020 pledge to declare that the sole purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack against the United States or its allies.” Biden has left open the option to use nuclear weapons “to respond to non-nuclear threats”. 

Russian President Putin’s response to this change in attitude was to declare in a 9 December press conference in Kyrgyzstan that Russia will reconsider its nuclear doctrine—currently to use nuclear weapons only if the existence of the Russian state is threatened—and may adopt the same preemptive strike policy as the USA (p. 7).

This issue has defined 2022, but not only because Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine started on 24 February. It’s also because that operation is the culmination of three decades of NATO encroachment on Russia, intensified by the Obama-backed neo-Nazi coup that overthrew Ukraine’s elected government in 2014, which Ukrainians in the east resisted, setting off the eight-year civil war that had already killed 14,000 mostly eastern Ukrainians before Russia’s military crossed the border this year. And recently both Ukraine’s former President Petro Poroshenko and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted that the so-called Minsk Accords—negotiated between Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France—were not a genuine attempt to restore peace in Eastern Ukraine but a cynical exercise in buying time for Ukraine to arm up in anticipation of military conflict with Russia that would be sparked by Ukraine joining NATO.

In Consortium News on 5 December, American former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter wrote: “While the socalled ‘collective west’ (the US, NATO, the EU and the G7) continue to claim that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was an act of ‘unprovoked aggression’, the reality is far different: Russia had been duped into believing there was a diplomatic solution to the violence that had broken out in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.… None of Russia’s diplomatic interlocutors have demonstrated a modicum of integrity…. War, it seems, was the solution sought by the ‘collective West’, and war is the solution sought by Russia today. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.”

Anti-war leaders are speaking out in response to this intensifying nuclear war danger. Former New Zealand Associate Foreign Minister Matt Robson denounced the 14 December address of Ukraine’s President Zelensky to the NZ Parliament as “an affront to democracy”:

“The New Zealand Parliament this morning turned its Debating Chamber into a stage-managed event to commit New Zealand to the NATO path of a prolonged war in the Ukraine with the declared aim of weakening Russia”, he said. “New Zealand should be using our voice to foster true peacemaking, dialogue, diplomacy and de-escalation of conflict.”

ACP National Secretary Craig Isherwood today called for Australia to immediately withdraw from the AUKUS alliance and close the Pine Gap signals and guidance facility in the Northern Territory, as both add to the danger of nuclear war. “Australia must be a sovereign voice for peace, not a mindless accomplice in war”, he said.

The only basis for lasting peace is nations cooperating on economic development, to which the ACP’s campaign for a national postal bank is a profound contribution. With this final AAS of 2022, reflect on the progress we have made this year in fighting for a peaceful, prosperous future for Australia and all humanity.

In this issue:

• Have your say on nuclear power
• Councils fight back against bank branch closures
• Albanese’s AUSMIN 2022 agreement paints fresh nuclear bullseyes on Australia
• One step away from nuclear annihilation of mankind!
• What Putin said
• China-Saudi agreements a marker of new economic system
• The unravelling dollar: BIS rings the alarm
• Keep the heat on the Treasurer over bank branch closures
• Celebrating 50 years of Australia-China relations
• O’Malley: ‘Finance is a government institution’

Click here for the archive of previous issues of the Australian Alert Service