Can We Survive Our Wars?
There are two problems for our species' survival - nuclear war and environmental catastrophe - and we're hurtling towards them. Knowingly. – Noam Chomsky
Many people, around the world and in Israel, itself, hate Benjamin Netanyahu, with a passion. Therefore, it is ironic that he could be responsible for setting off a nuclear holocaust. Yet, that is the way things are headed in the Middle East.
Netanyahu seems to hate all people in the region who are not part of the Jewish state. It began with Palestinians being forced off the land they had lived on for generations because of a decision by the great powers of Europe who deemed that their land should become a homeland of the Jewish people.
More recently, those Arabs and their descendants, who had been displaced to Gaza rose up on Oct. 7, 2023 in an insurrection, which is the right of all oppressed people. Netanyahu retaliated, and is still retaliating, by killing more than 40,000 men, women and children, which was deemed to be a genocide by the World Court.
What could be worse than a genocide? We will find out if Netanyahu continues on his reckless path to igniting a nuclear war against Iran. At this point, only the U.S. has the power and influence to stop Netanyahu from using his nukes against Iran.
Netanyahu’s hatred of Arabs and Iranians cannot become a nuclear war unless the United States continues to fuel his dreams of a Greater Israel by supplying tons of high-powered weapons. The continued supply of weapons makes it unlikely that either Israel or the U.S. will be interested in negotiating their differences with any of Netanyahu’s chosen enemies.
Neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump is in favor of ending the flow of arms to Israel, or taking any action to stop Netanyahu’s crusade against the peoples of the Middle East.
Of all the candidates for president only Jill Stein, of the Green Party has the ability to roll up large numbers of votes against these two political warmongers and stop the genocidal mass murders by the IDF (Israel Defense Forces). Unfortunately, millions of U.S. voters will vote for one or the other major party candidates without a thought that they are signing the death warrants of thousands of people and perhaps provoking a nuclear war.
Why Are Nukes Still a Weapon of War?
In past years, we only acted to protect ourselves from nuclear war when we were on the brink of catastrophe. It took the Cuban Missile Crisis before the Superpowers, the USSR and the US, would back down. Treaties that limited the use or spread of nuclear weapons were proposed, signed or put into force as follows:
Limited Test Ban Treaty: 1963 (signed and mostly adhered to);
Non-Proliferation Treaty: (signed in 1968, put into force 1970);
SALT1: (signed in 1972);
SALT2: (signed in 1979, though never ratified);
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty: (signed in 1987);
SORT Treaty: (signed in 2002);
New START Treaty: (signed in 2010);
Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons: (2017, signed but not put into force until 2021).
As you can see, many treaties were either begun, but not signed, or signed but not put into force. It is as if the negotiators did not want to be bound by a prohibition of using nukes.
While the nuclear-armed countries were slowly negotiating, or not negotiating, controls on the nukes, more countries were either developing, or stealing, their own nukes. Among those who stole their nukes was the small country of Israel.
Back to the Brink
We are again on the brink of nuclear war between Israel and Iran. Israel has kept its nuclear program secret, but now it is an open secret. Iran, may or may not have nukes. There is speculation that it has two bombs about the potency of those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Israel’s arsenal ranges from some nukes to many.
A nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran might not stop there, which would be bad enough. The worst that could happen is that other countries would be drawn into the conflict and unleash their own arsenals of nukes.
Other possible players in this deadly conflict could include Russia, U.S., U.K., France, China, India, Pakistan, and/or North Korea. Several of these countries might come to Israel’s aid, and others might come to the aid of Iran. Reasons why others would get involved range from religion to political alliances. The major threat would be if Russia and the U.S. started throwing around their nukes. If this happened, the beautiful Left Coast would become a wasteland, along with most of the planet.
Backing Down from Armageddon
In the run up to the Ukraine-Russia war, U.S. officials refused to talk to their Russian counterparts. As a result, Russian President Putin proceeded with sending troops into the Donbas area of Ukraine (thankfully, Ukraine does not have nukes).
In contrast, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy opened a secret line to Premier Khrushchev so that an agreement could be worked out that led to a deescalation of tensions. It’s been reported that most of Kennedy’s military and civilian advisors wanted immediate military action, that would have been irreversible, against the Soviet Union.
Here in 2024, there is only one man who could call back the nukes. That is Joe Biden, who was removed/stepped down as president because of concern about his mental faculties, but is still in office until the end of the year. If someone was called upon to make a nuclear decision before then, it would be Biden.
After January 1, one of two people would likely be in Biden’s seat, one of whose mental facultiesare in doubt, and the other who lacks experience to judge how leaders on both sides would react if they were put under the extreme pressure of having to make a nuclear decision.
Who knows? Perhaps Harris or Trump will have a change of heart (if they have a heart) and make peace. Or, maybe multiple leaders in various countries will decide to pressure the new U.S. President to back down rather than subject the world to thermonuclear war.
