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Home Articles Flashpoints TAKING THE WORLD TO THE BRINK?

TAKING THE WORLD TO THE BRINK?

Wednesday, 11 April 2018 12:54 John Hallam
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 11 APRIL 2018


PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

HUMAN SURVIVAL PROJECT


TAKING THE WORLD TO THE BRINK?

COULD MILITARY ACTION IN SYRIA LEAD TO WW-III?

Russia has warned that US military action over or in Syria could lead to 'dire consequences. Russia says that a US invasion of Syria:

“...would be ‘absolutely unacceptable’ and could lead to ‘dire consequences.’”

They “...warn that military intervention under flimsy pretexts fabrications regarding Syria, where, at the request of the legitimate Government are Russian servicemen, is absolutely unacceptable and could lead to the most severe consequences.”


Escalation of conflicts either in the Baltic States, or in Ukraine or in Syria, have been pointed to as possible triggers for the 'apocalypse' (i.e., for US-Russia nuclear conflict which would in all probability end civilisation), at least since 2014, when the BBC produced a video of a UK DoD war-game in which conflict in the Balkans results in nuclear war, and another program in which conflict off the coast of Syria rapidly escalates into WW-III.


That this possibility, no matter how remote, exists, and is taken seriously by at least some analysts, does not of course mean that it is inevitable or even that it is the most likely outcome of US retaliatory action. Hopefully nothing of the sort will happen.


It does however mean that it should be taken seriously, and that any action over Syria should take seriously the Russian warnings quoted above. Russia currently feels itself cornered. It has responded to what it sees as threats to its own security by investing in the worlds most powerful nuclear weapons program. It has responded (whether wisely or not), by making threats of its own, and demanding to be taken seriously. It has displayed its nuclear assets, rather ostentatiously. It has even threatened openly at times to use them.


Use of Russia's very powerful nuclear assets takes any conflict, even the most trivial, into an area in which the stakes are literally infinite. What is threatened is the end of civilisation. Nothing, no political gain, no considerations of national security, no conceivable interest whatsoever, justifies risking the possible end of everybody and everything.


The author of this press-release plans on Friday week to get into a plane and travel to Geneva to speak at the UN about how to reduce the likelihood of global thermonuclear war. Hopefully the world will still be there, planes will still be flying and Geneva will still be there, and I will give my speech. It would be nice to be just a little more confident that this will indeed be so.


John Hallam

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