Seconds To Midnight

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock 89 seconds to midnight. One of its reasons was Russia’s war in Ukraine entered its third year. In 1,100 days the human meat grinder left one million Russians and Ukrainians dead on the battlefield. Nuclear war lingers in the background. According to the New York Times, “The world is closer than ever to the apocalypse.” In a surprise US foreign policy u-turn, the Trump administration tried to normalize relations with Moscow. In a reversal, the administration strong-armed Ukraine. Zelensky signs over $500 billion in precious resources while Ukraine is left out of negotiations. According to the New York Times, President Trump said “We’re asking for rare earth and oil — anything we can get.” The Trump administration changed another policy at the Munich Security Conference. According to the Washington Post, the US does “not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement.” Vladimir Putin made a similar speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference.

The Washington Post reported Putin said NATO expansion “represents a serious provocation… And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended?” In his memoir “The Back Channel” the Former Director of the CIA William J. Burns emailed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2008 with a warning. “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin).” It wasn’t only the director of the CIA. Professor John Mearsheimer told The Economist “many prominent American foreign-policy experts have warned against NATO expansion since the late 1990s.” The National Security Archive recorded “former CIA Director Robert Gates’s criticism of pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward (in the 1990s), when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.” U.S. Secretary of State James Baker agreed with Mikhail Gorbachev “NATO expansion is unacceptable.” Baker promised NATO wouldn’t expand to Eastern Europe: “not one inch eastward.” The Iron Lady Margret Thatcher and former French President Mitterrand made the same guarantee to the last soviet leader.

In her memoir “Madam Secretary” Madeleine Albright reached a similar conclusion. “Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his countrymen were strongly opposed to (NATO) enlargement, seeing it as a strategy for exploiting their vulnerability.” Immediately, Washington pushed NATO to expand eastward and exploit Russia’s weakness. The Center For Arms Control and Non-Proliferation explained “There are 100 U.S.-owned nuclear weapons stored in five NATO member states across six bases.” Professor Christopher Layne reversed the roles in Harpers Magazine.“What, after all, would be America’s reaction if Mexico were to invite China to station warships in Acapulco and bombers in Guadalajara?” Noam Chomsky wrote “Mexico cannot join a Chinese-run hostile military alliance.” China can’t store weapons on the border. The US would go to war if China’s Congress appropriated over $174 billion in taxpayer money for a proxy war. Or China’s Spy Agency secretly operated in the country and leaked documents revealed Chinese special forces in Mexico.

Anton Porcari

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