At a recent Moscow State University philosophical seminar advertised as “The World: Split and Woven,” the keynote speaker, Professor Aleksander Ageev, one of the world’s leading economic and geopolitical strategists, touched on the probability of WWIII. “If one estimates the chances for such war during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis at 20%,” – said this distinguished speaker – “the current crisis is close to 100%.”
After hearing this doomsday prediction, no one from the audience or in the Zoom session ran out the door for cover since nowadays, one can often see and hear such forecasts in the mainstream or social media, but coming from such a severe expert added to the anxiety.
Looking at what is happening daily, one wonders if Professor Ageev and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, who gave the world only 90 seconds to the symbolic doomsday midnight were too optimistic.
The self-proclaimed leader of the free world, Joe Biden, finally decided to let Ukraine strike Russian territory with US-supplied weapons. Some obedient European leaders, hesitating to do this without Boss’s approval, followed the leader. French President Macron was even ahead of Biden when, besides sending weapons to Ukraine, he announced his readiness to send “several hundred” troops over there, which means official direct involvement of a NATO power in a battle. Unofficially, many NATO military personnel were already there.
Speaking about visionaries, one should mention Senator Sam Nunn and former Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, who predicted in 2020, even before the war in Ukraine, that we are “sleepwalking toward the nuclear precipice.”
In a new report from Politico titled “Biden secretly gave Ukraine permission to strike inside Russia with US weapons,” authors correctly described this as a “stunning shift the administration initially said would escalate the war by more directly involving the U.S. in the fight.”
Earlier, the New York Times, in the article titled “From Allies and Advisers, Pressure Grows on Biden to Allow Attacks on Russian Territory,” accurately predicted that “Biden is edging toward what may prove to be one of his most consequential decisions in the war for Ukraine: whether to reverse his ban on shooting American weapons into Russian territory.”
When one adds this new development to the reports that Ukraine has been repeatedly attacking Russia’s early warning systems for incoming nuclear strikes, such as Orsk radar system, with Ukrainian drones targeting Russian radar sites hundreds of miles from Ukrainian-controlled territory in addition to attacking the largest Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, one wonders, if there are any red lines left to avoid the Armageddon.
So far, Russia limited its responses to NATO’s escalations by advancing in Ukraine, destroying its military machine and infrastructure without attacking NATO forces directly. Washington and Brussels took this as a sign of weakness and assumed it was safe to keep escalating.
No one knows except Putin when Russia will strike back, but the list of those in the West who know what happens if you push the bear in the corner raise the alarm and demand to give diplomacy a chance before it is too late.
So far, Washington is uninterested and worries more about who wins in the dirtiest presidential campaign in U.S. history.
At the same time, the polls show the American people overwhelmingly disapprove of U.S. foreign policy, but their opinion in the so-called democracy counts for very little. What is left for us is to raise our voices for peace from every hilltop. The survival of our civilization and this beautiful planet Earth depends on it.
After hearing this doomsday prediction, no one from the audience or in the Zoom session ran out the door for cover since nowadays, one can often see and hear such forecasts in the mainstream or social media, but coming from such a severe expert added to the anxiety.
Looking at what is happening daily, one wonders if Professor Ageev and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, who gave the world only 90 seconds to the symbolic doomsday midnight were too optimistic.
The self-proclaimed leader of the free world, Joe Biden, finally decided to let Ukraine strike Russian territory with US-supplied weapons. Some obedient European leaders, hesitating to do this without Boss’s approval, followed the leader. French President Macron was even ahead of Biden when, besides sending weapons to Ukraine, he announced his readiness to send “several hundred” troops over there, which means official direct involvement of a NATO power in a battle. Unofficially, many NATO military personnel were already there.
Speaking about visionaries, one should mention Senator Sam Nunn and former Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, who predicted in 2020, even before the war in Ukraine, that we are “sleepwalking toward the nuclear precipice.”
In a new report from Politico titled “Biden secretly gave Ukraine permission to strike inside Russia with US weapons,” authors correctly described this as a “stunning shift the administration initially said would escalate the war by more directly involving the U.S. in the fight.”
Earlier, the New York Times, in the article titled “From Allies and Advisers, Pressure Grows on Biden to Allow Attacks on Russian Territory,” accurately predicted that “Biden is edging toward what may prove to be one of his most consequential decisions in the war for Ukraine: whether to reverse his ban on shooting American weapons into Russian territory.”
When one adds this new development to the reports that Ukraine has been repeatedly attacking Russia’s early warning systems for incoming nuclear strikes, such as Orsk radar system, with Ukrainian drones targeting Russian radar sites hundreds of miles from Ukrainian-controlled territory in addition to attacking the largest Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, one wonders, if there are any red lines left to avoid the Armageddon.
So far, Russia limited its responses to NATO’s escalations by advancing in Ukraine, destroying its military machine and infrastructure without attacking NATO forces directly. Washington and Brussels took this as a sign of weakness and assumed it was safe to keep escalating.
No one knows except Putin when Russia will strike back, but the list of those in the West who know what happens if you push the bear in the corner raise the alarm and demand to give diplomacy a chance before it is too late.
So far, Washington is uninterested and worries more about who wins in the dirtiest presidential campaign in U.S. history.
At the same time, the polls show the American people overwhelmingly disapprove of U.S. foreign policy, but their opinion in the so-called democracy counts for very little. What is left for us is to raise our voices for peace from every hilltop. The survival of our civilization and this beautiful planet Earth depends on it.
PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER OF THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY IN MOSCOW Edward Lozansky