We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis. I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily [use] a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon. … [For the] first time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have the threat of a nuclear weapon, if in fact things continue down the path they are going.
—Joe Biden, speaking at a fundraiser in New York, October 6, 2022.1
Certainly, a crucial lesson that people should learn from the war in Ukraine is that humanity cannot afford any longer to allow these imperialists, on any side, to continue to rule the world, and battle over who will dominate in this situation, with the very real and dire threat this poses to the future, and the very existence, of humanity.
—Bob Avakian, “World War 3 Is the Real Danger, Not a Repeat of World War 2”
A Week of Ever More Serious Threats and Counterthreats
Biden is commander in chief of U.S. armed forces. If a decision is made by the U.S. to fire nuclear weapons, Biden will make it. His “finger is on the button” of an arsenal of about 4,000 nuclear warheads, about the same amount as his antagonist, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president. Each is in control of weapons with more than enough firepower to annihilate much of the life on this planet, many times over. Biden’s remarks about the conflict over Cuba, and his reference to Armageddon, which in the Bible is supposed to be the site of the final battle between good and evil, indicate that humanity is teetering on the brink of cataclysm, and that the leader of the world’s most powerful military is making decisions and acting in ways that put the lives of millions in the crosshairs of nuclear warfare.
October 6, 2022, U.S. Army officer military aide follows President Biden carrying the nuclear launch codes known as the "football." Photo: AP
The New York Times reported this week that because of the spiraling violence in Ukraine, and uncertainty on both sides about how the other will react to further escalations, a “range of American and European officials agree” that the “next few weeks could prove a particularly dangerous time” for a possible nuclear escalation of the Ukraine war. Both sides are preparing public opinion in their own countries, and the world, for an even more devastating, perhaps nuclear, escalation of a war that has already taken the lives of tens of thousands of people, and displaced about 13 million. Biden’s comments pour gasoline on an already raging fire.
But it’s not just that. Think for a minute about the implications of Biden’s use of the term “Armageddon.” Remember, Biden and the U.S. have officially maintained that they have only been “helping” Ukraine and that they are not a direct participant in the conflict. Ukraine does NOT have nuclear weapons; so if Russia were to bomb them, Ukraine could not retaliate in kind. It would be a horrible war crime if Russia were to do that—as it was when the U.S. used nuclear weapons against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan at the end of World War 2—but like that situation, it would not necessarily turn into “Armageddon.” So in invoking Armageddon, Biden is sneaking in, or perhaps just blurting out, a basic assumption: while the United States IS currently a party to the proxy conflict in Ukraine, use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine would necessarily mean escalated and possibly direct American retaliation against Russia, an escalation ladder that could lead to “Armageddon.” Think about how you are being conditioned in advance to accept the “logic” of inevitable nuclear conflict between Russia and the U.S. if Russia were to launch a strike!
Bob Avakian: Free Yourself from the GTF! The Great Tautological Fallacy
Escalation Dominance and Fatal Miscalculations
For decades, “escalation dominance” has been a guiding premise of nuclear war preparations by imperialist war strategists. Among other things, escalation dominance means always being prepared to take confrontations to the next level of violence, and “relies upon superiority at various levels of conflict to ensure one’s own ability to win.”
David Petraeus, retired U.S. Army four-star general who commanded NATO forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, and a blood-soaked war criminal, illustrated what this can mean when he was asked on an influential Sunday morning TV talk show how the U.S. would respond in the event of Russian use of nuclear weapons. He replied: “Just to give you a hypothetical, we would respond by leading a NATO—a collective —effort that would take out every Russian conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea.”
Petraeus didn’t say whether the bloody scenario he envisioned would involve nuclear weapons. However, as Andreas Kluth of the American Federation of Scientists pointed out to a reporter, even a U.S./NATO response using “conventional” (i.e., not nuclear) weapons—which could be done by presidential order and would not require congressional approval—would lead to a direct clash between Russia and NATO, “and therefore incurs the risk of World War III, with Armageddon still one scenario at the end.”
But again, think about it: Petraeus has snuck in an assumption that the U.S. would go from “arming and advising” Ukrainian forces to leading and throwing its forces into an all-out assault designed to largely destroy Russia’s effective capacity to defend itself. And then what do you think Russia will do when their naval and ground forces have been largely destroyed? Refrain from using one of the few capabilities that they would retain—nuclear retaliation against U.S. forces and, perhaps, major U.S. cities? Again, we are being conditioned to go along with truly horrific scenarios which the Bidens and Petraeuses of this world may decide to put into effect, depending on developments.
The fact that this is being done in a “signifying” form—implying without openly saying—makes it even worse.
Russia Responds in Kind
This week Dmitri Trenin, a Russian political and military analyst, indicated on Russian state television that Russia’s leadership is fully prepared to respond to a U.S. escalation with nuclear strikes against the American mainland. “The American strategy of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia is based on the belief that Russia will not use nuclear weapons: Either it will be afraid, or it will consider that the destruction of civilization is still too high a price for maintaining its position. And here, in my opinion, lies a potentially fatal miscalculation for all of humanity.”
This open and forthright gangster logic would be almost welcome in the face of U.S. obfuscation and double-talk… except for the fact that this too is conditioning people to accept nuclear war as inevitable!!
The Fog of War
Bob Avakian (BA) wrote in “The Fog of War, The Clarity of War” that
The “fog of war” refers to the fact that, in a situation of warfare, many things become obscured. To put it simply, it is often difficult to tell exactly what is happening.
Related to this is the fact that war, once begun, has its own dynamics: things often do not go the way that the people who started a war, or became involved in it, expected them to go. This has very heavy meaning in the current war in Ukraine, which involves not just Russia and Ukraine but also the imperialist alliance (NATO), headed by the U.S., in a “war by proxy” with Russia—providing massive amounts of arms to Ukraine and waging economic warfare (in the form of “sanctions”) against Russia, while heightening the military “readiness” of NATO countries, in particular those bordering or close to Russia.
This involves the very real danger that—deliberately, or through mistakes by one or both sides—this could lead to direct warfare between Russia and the U.S./NATO, which in turn could involve the use of nuclear weapons, even on a scale that would threaten the very existence of human beings throughout the world.
As this deadly embrace drags on—and it has been going on for 8 months now—both sides get deeper into the spiraling fury of their combat, and the more likely it becomes that things could spin out of anyone’s control, regardless of the intentions of those directing it. There is an enormous risk that nuclear war could be set off any moment, whether through strategic decisions made by the rulers of the U.S./NATO bloc and/or Russia, out of crazed desperation, because of miscalculations, or “accidents.”
It is also significant that Biden mused in his Thursday remarks on the difficulty of finding an “off-ramp.” That means that he and his administration have yet to find a minimum offer that they could make to Russia that would allow Putin to “save face.” That he would muse openly about this has the effect of portraying the U.S. as being reasonable (understanding that Putin would need some concession) while at the same time preparing people for the fact that such a way out may not be possible, in which case… well, again, it’s not for nothing that Biden invoked “Armageddon.”
These dynamics are similar to those that led to two world wars in the 20th century—wars that resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people. But this time, nuclear weapons would likely be in full use, by both sides, from the beginning. That possibility is staring us all in the face, and time is short. The war in Ukraine is not some “issue” among other issues, which people can choose to ignore or not think about because it seems too complex or messy, or because it is easier to go along with the dominant “narrative” (or terms) being drummed out by the mainstream media in which the Russians are the “bad guys seeking world domination” and the U.S. is working for a just peace while innocently trying to help “the good guys.” If that is what you think, then go here and to other articles at the revcom.us Ukraine war resource page to find out the root causes of this war. In actual fact, the war in Ukraine is at this point most fundamentally a conflict between imperialist powers pursuing imperialist ends in which the future existence of humanity is increasingly being thrown up for grabs.
This Whole Dynamic Must Be Urgently, Radically Changed—in the Interests of Humanity, Not of Rival and Contending Imperialists
After Biden’s remarks, some of his aides and other officials in his administration quickly offered various explanations and assurances. CNN reported, “There has been no indication of a change in Russia’s posture and therefore no change in the US posture still stands, the official [Biden’s press secretary] said.”
Actually, certain acts taken by Russians in response to a major U.S.-aided and -guided Ukrainian offensive—acts which we covered last week, including the annexation of certain areas of Ukraine, the mobilization of some nuclear forces, the statement by Putin threatening nuclear use—escalated the war. Biden responded by in essence threatening and preparing public opinion for further escalation.
People can’t stand by passively and hope for the best. They need to be challenged with and think deeply about the truth of these words by BA:
All this emphasizes why it is vitally important for the masses of people, in this country, and other countries aligned with it, as well as in Russia—for people everywhere—to finally and fully wake up now, recognize the real, and profoundly heavy, stakes involved, and act in accordance with our actual interests—the interests of all of humanity: demanding that this war in Ukraine, and the involvement (direct and indirect) of the imperialists on both sides in this war, be STOPPED, before it not only causes even greater suffering for the people of Ukraine but possibly escalates into a far more terrible conflict which causes massive destruction and death, on a whole other level, and even possibly poses a threat to the very existence of humanity itself.