EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 20, 2022

‘How To Deter Russian Nuclear Use in Ukraine—and Respond if Deterrence Fails’

Sept. 19, 2022 (EIRNS)—If you are a regular reader of this report, you were probably shocked to learn last Thursday that the commander in chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, had co-authored an article published on the Ukrainian news site Ukrinform on Sept. 7 which claimed that there were indications that Russia was preparing a nuclear strike in Ukraine, and that it is therefore “extremely necessary ... [that] any Russian attempts at practical steps in the use of tactical nuclear weapons must be preempted by employing the entire arsenal of means at the disposal of world powers.” We warned you at the time that “such an outrageously dangerous and provocative article could never have been written, let alone published, without the prior approval of the U.S., U.K. and NATO forces running the war.”

Warning confirmed.

Over this past weekend, the Atlantic Council—a Washington-based think tank funded by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, NATO, and the U.S. State Department, and which has played a leading role in openly promoting war against both Russia and China—published a “Memo to the President” of the United States calling for precisely that policy of preemptive nuclear warfare, under the headline “How to Deter Russian Nuclear Use in Ukraine—and respond if deterrence fails.” The author, Matthew Kroenig, is the acting director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, a former CIA and Defense Department analyst, and is a well-known and unfortunately influential promoter of war, under the guise of “deterrence theory.” In May of 2022 he was appointed as a Commissioner on the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States.

Kroenig’s Memo presents various policy options if the U.S. fails to “deter” Russia’s use of a nuclear weapon, including: 1) increased arms shipments to Ukraine; 2) “a limited conventional strike on the Russian forces or bases directly involved in the attack;” and 3) “the United States could use nuclear weapons to respond to and deter further Russian nuclear use in Ukraine.” Kroenig writes that he prefers a combination of options #1 and #2, but he leaves open the possibility that full “deterrence” could require option #3—i.e., full-scale thermonuclear war between the United States and Russia.

The London Economist magazine, one of the British Empire’s foremost policy outlets, preferred to call for the U.S. to ship Ukraine “longer-range ATACMS munitions for the HIMARS launchers that have proved so effective, which it previously hesitated to supply.” The Economist argues, apparently with a straight face, that escalation with Russia can be avoided by not firing those longer-range missiles into Russian territory, and that “Ukraine will surely comply.”

Need we remind the Economist’s editors of the explicit warning issued by Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, on Sept. 14? “See how many swastikas and Nazi symbols are on Ukrainian military equipment... [I]f these warriors have long-range American missiles, they will use them without hesitation in our country. Such a scenario would mean direct involvement of the United States in a military confrontation with Russia.”

High-level American military officers—such as Gen. Anthony J. Cotton, who is about to become commander of the U.S. Strategic Command—are already parroting threats like those crafted by the Atlantic Council and the Economist, against both China and Russia. The pro-British war party in the U.S. is even issuing provocations in the form of “gaffes” by President Biden, who yesterday announced in a CBS TV interview that the U.S. would send American soldiers to “defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion”—a clear violation of decades of American policy towards China.

Behind this drive for war, is the financial Establishment’s drive to impose deadly Schachtian austerity on a subject world as their system plunges into a breakdown collapse. That New Dark Age is already roaring into Europe, where portions of the population in a number of countries have begun to stir in protest.