Monday, 15 August 2022 — Internationalist 360°

Andrew Korybko

The only possible explanation for this shocking stance is that the West has become so desperate to stop Russia’s slow but steady advance throughout the latest phase of the Ukrainian Conflict that its ideologically driven elite are literally willing to sacrifice their own people’s lives and that of future generations in a last-ditch gamble to bring that about. Their citizens, meanwhile, obviously don’t approve of this but are powerless to shape the course of events.

“Kiev’s Nuclear Terrorism Towards The Zaporozhye Power Plant Threatens All Of Europe”, as the author wrote last week, yet many in the West still claimed that it was Russia that was waging such after being gaslighted by the Mainstream Media (MSM) into falling for the unbelievable narrative that the Eurasian Great Power would bomb the same facility under its control. The truth has since been indisputably spilled by none other than Zelensky and his senior advisor Podalyak. The first brazenly declared that “Every Russian soldier who either shoots at the plant, or shoots using the plant as cover, must understand that he becomes a special target for our intelligence agents, for our special services, for our army”, while the second confirmed that Kiev will “use any kind of weapon” to “liberate” that facility.

These statements amount to tacit admissions that Russia was once again right in what it warned about Kiev, which in this context was that it’s waging nuclear terrorism against Europe. There’s now no longer any doubt after those two leading officials openly announced that they’ll use military force to remove Russia from the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (ZNPP). The fact that those threats haven’t been condemned by any Western official suggests passive acceptance of their proxy holding the Damocles’ sword of a nuclear catastrophe over everyone’s head. This is all the more astounding when the consequences of any potential disaster would reverberate widely throughout the continent, especially the Black Sea region that several EU and NATO members abut.

The only possible explanation for this shocking stance is that the West has become so desperate to stop Russia’s slow but steady advance throughout the latest phase of the Ukrainian Conflict that its ideologically driven elite are literally willing to sacrifice their own people’s lives and that of future generations in a last-ditch gamble to bring that about. Their citizens, meanwhile, obviously don’t approve of this but are powerless to shape the course of events. Even if they peacefully protested en masse, it won’t make any difference since the most that they could do in theory is pressure their officials to condemn Kiev, which is unrealistic to expect and also wouldn’t make any difference. The only one capable of averting this impending nuclear catastrophe is that crumbling country’s US patron.

Cynically speaking, Washington might not mind all that much even if the worst-case scenario transpires since the “silver lining” would be that its economic rivals across the Atlantic would be forever prevented from competing with it in the future. That said, it’s unclear which ratio of its elite might hold these views and whether they have the influence to ensure that their country doesn’t intervene to prevent that from happening. Nevertheless, there’s no doubt that at least some within its permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) aren’t averse to that scenario otherwise it wouldn’t have ever gotten to the point where Kiev is practically boasting about bombing the ZNPP on the pretext of “liberating” it from Russian control.

There’s a lesson to be learned from this that’s much larger than the Ukrainian Conflict itself, and it’s that radical elements of the US elite will resort to the highest-stakes last-ditch efforts to ensure that their ideological agenda is advanced regardless of the costs. That doesn’t necessarily mean that everything will cross the red line, though it could always happen even without anyone intending for it to. In terms of the broader picture, the impending resumption of the US’ “Pivot to Asia” following Speaking Pelosi’s provocative trip to Taiwan earlier this month suggests that a regional variation of Kiev’s indirect nuclear brinksmanship might one day be applied towards the People’s Republic.

The East Asian theater of the New Cold War is very different from its Eastern European one but that same strategic principle remains constant: it can no longer be discounted that the US’ regional proxies will follow in Kiev’s footsteps by raising the stakes to the highest levels in a desperate attempt to stop China if it’s emerging victorious in a hot conflict (even at a slow and steady pace like Russia is in Ukraine). In a sense, this is a remix of Nixon’s so-called “Madman Theory” where he pretended that was crazy enough to do the unthinkable in order to deter his country’s international rivals at the time, with the primary difference being that the ideologically driven US elite might actually not be pretending.