At that time, President Harry Truman had the strategic advantage of the atom bomb but after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he had no appetite to use one again. Soon, Russia obtained its own weapons of mass destruction and from then on, direct conflict between the world’s superpowers became unthinkable.
That is until the Biden administration convinced itself that, through Ukraine, it had found a way out of the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) impasse to get at Russia.
In that provocative speech, he made two things very clear to Moscow: Firstly, he has never read Lao Tzu, or George Washington for that matter, and is dangerously underestimating his opponent. Secondly, America aims to go far beyond defending Ukraine, to diminishing Russia as a world power.
He knows that could only happen if Russia was under some form of occupation, or if Putin is replaced by a pro-Western, globalist leader.
The West’s confidence in a Russian defeat surged after its forces were seen to retreat from around Kyiv last month. But this assumes that Russia’s intent was the takeover of the whole of Ukraine and even neighboring countries.
Certainly, the scale of death and destruction would have been much higher than the not insignificant 850 people who lost their lives during the five-day incursion. Russia stopped its advancement that time too before reaching Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi. Was that a defeat or a tactical decision?
Brave words, but then he’s still alive.
His line was almost borrowed from Putin, who had told the Russian people that he wanted Ukraine not to be able to threaten its neighbor, Russia. This was after Zelenskyy’s announcement at the Munich Security Conference, with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris by his side, that Ukraine would be joining NATO, inferring he would site its nukes on Ukrainian soil to be aimed at Russia—for Moscow this instantly became its very own Cuban missile crisis.
Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev claimed, “The need for demilitarization is due to the fact that Ukraine, saturated with weapons, poses a threat to Russia, including from the point of view of the development and use of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.”
The West denies these allegations and Austin dismissed them as “unhelpful,” but it was under a similar pretext of the development of weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein that the United States invaded his country in 2003.
Without providing any real proof this time either, Western governments are now basing their policy decisions on the assumption that Putin intends to push further West after Ukraine.
“We will keep going further and faster to push Russia out of the whole of Ukraine,” she added. This would include Crimea and Donbas.
Truss all but implied that a state of war now exists between the UK and Russia by adding, “The war in Ukraine is our war—it is everyone’s war. … because Ukraine’s victory is a strategic imperative for all of us.”
Her fightin’ talk went further.
“Heavy weapons, tanks, airplanes—digging deep into our inventories, ramping up production. We need to do all of this. We cannot be complacent. The fate of Ukraine remains in the balance.”
She may want to be seen as The Iron Lady II, but Lady Margaret Thatcher never contemplated a direct confrontation with Soviet Russia. Indeed, her dialogue with Mikhail Gorbachev was an important step in ending the Cold War.
“We have all the tools [to respond] that no one can boast of, and we will not [just] be bragging about them, we will use them if necessary.”
It’s worth reading the rest of Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech, because he left the door open for a better outcome with Russia, which was at the time being ruled by Joseph Stalin.
“It is a solemn moment for the American democracy. With primacy in power is also joined an awe-inspiring accountability to the future.”
Then, he encouraged them to consider the world from their new adversary’s perspective.
“We understand the Russian need to be secure on her western frontiers by the removal of all possibility of German aggression. We welcome Russia to her rightful place among the leading nations of the world. Above all, we welcome constant, frequent, and growing contacts between the Russian people and our own people on both sides of the Atlantic.”
Western leaders are currently playing with fire, but do they really want a world war?