Pulled from the brink of global nuclear war

US PRESIDENT-ELECT Donald Trump’s landslide victory may have pulled humanity out of the brink of thermonuclear war and the consequent extinction of our species.

That may sound too much of an exaggeration and a giant leap to a baseless conclusion. Consider, however, where we are now though, and you might agree with me.

First, Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza, which has claimed 42,000 people, has been going on for a year now, and the war has expanded into the West Bank.

The Israelis have taken the war to Iran, Lebanon and Yemen, claiming these have been the bases for the Palestinian missile and drone attacks against them. The US has continued financing the Israelis by an astounding $23 billion since the war began in October 2023. This has convinced Iran and other Muslim states that the US is secretly supporting Israel’s plot to exterminate or force out of Gaza all 2.2 million Palestinians.

The Muslim people in the Middle East are aghast over such genocide, and their governments may, any day, declare to a world similarly aghast at the Israeli genocide that “enough is enough,” and join forces to attack Israel. Iran is on the brink of raining its missiles on Israel.

What does Israel do in such a scenario? It uses its atomic bombs against Iran and even Lebanon. Russia, which sees Iran as a client state and with a far more powerful military and the industrial backbone to support it, attacks Israel. The US defends Israel, and things go out of hand for a total nuclear war among the superpowers.

Second, there is another war, which most analysts are more worried about: The Russia vs Ukraine war, which started over two years ago, has had 800,000 killed or wounded from both countries. Ukraine is clearly the proxy of the US, which had wanted to encircle Russia by getting Ukraine and other former Soviet nations to join NATO. The Biden administration has given Ukraine a huge $60 billion in arms to fight Russia, including, indirectly, state-of-the-art F-16 warplanes.

Putin

Exasperated, Russian President Putin has threatened several times to attack or nuke NATO that has been supporting Ukraine. NATO was founded and operates on the principle that “an attack against one member is an attack on all members.” The US would have to attack Russia on that basis; China will support Russia and we have a global thermonuclear war.

Because of the Gaza war and the Russian-Ukraine war, the infamous Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, using its timescale, had adjusted it in 2023 to 90 seconds to midnight (global thermonuclear war) from two minutes in 2019 and 100 seconds in 2022. “The 90 seconds is the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been,” the Bulletin warned.

And third, and finally, there is a possibility of a war between US and China, when the latter decides to forcibly reintegrate its rogue province Taiwan and if armed conflict breaks out in the Spratlys between the Asian superpower and the Philippines.

The US has successfully brainwashed the Philippines’ idiot leadership, including its military and its coast guard, to totally misinterpret the territorial (for China) and maritime claims (by the Philippines) that it sees China as an imperial power plotting to take over its islands as well as of other countries in the South China Sea.

Missiles

The US has even managed to reverse the Philippine Senate’s decision in 1992 to ban US military bases in the country by establishing nine military bases disguised as temporary facilities the American war machine can use when they please, under the so-called Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement entered into by the Aquino III government in 2021. The real intent of such “temporary facilities” is to house US missile systems that can reach China and even Russia.

For instance, the US deployed the Mid-Range Capability missile system, known as the Typhon, to the Philippines in April 2024 for joint military exercises. Initially, this deployment was intended to conclude by the end of September 2024. However, as of November 2024, the Typhon system remains in the Philippines. Philippine military officials, including Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. and military chief Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr., have expressed support for its continued presence, citing its importance for national defense and training purposes.

Russian President Putin, whose country’s capital is 7,200 kilometers from the Philippines, sees this missile system as a threat, himself warned that his country would take steps, such as increased production and deployment of more missiles, to counter these temporary bases in the country.

Conflict escalating into war in the Spratlys has become a real risk, as the US has managed to brainwash the Philippine military to provoke China by entering areas the superpower claims it has long owned and controlled — such as the Ayungin and Scarborough shoals. Chinese vessels had managed to block the Filipino vessels through risky maneuvers to push them out of such areas. Such maneuvers, however, carried the risk of ships sinking the ships of either nation and with their sailors killed, violent retaliation that could lead to war between the two nations, that the US would be involved in.

Power

In all three situations, there is obviously one country that is in a position, and has the power, to stop these conflicts from escalating into war: the US.

What gives us optimism are recent statements attributed to Trump that points to his decision to end these conflicts. Trump told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he wants the war in Gaza finished by the time he assumes office in January, according to a report in Israeli media on Oct. 30. Neither Trump nor Netanyahu have denied the report.

“I’m going to stop the wars,” Trump said in this victory speech the other night. The previous days, he called his rival Kamala Harris, a “warmonger” and even suggested she should be made to face a firing squad to realize how horrible wars are. The implication is that unlike Harris, the warmonger, he will be a peacemaker, thus ending the situation in the past two years of a world on the brink of war.

While Trump may change his mind — if for instance his generals tell him war cannot be avoided — one reason to believe that he will indeed undertake his “end-war” program is that the new president is an ideological and political maverick, untied to the “Deep State” of neo-conservative political and business leaders together with their military-industrial complex that really has ruled the US.

Landslide

His landslide victory despite a mainstream media bias against him shows that he is not beholden to the infamous Jewish group that has made the US, as renowned scholar John Mearsheimer revealed in his “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,” “tied to the hips with Israel.”

Trump is also certainly not part of the Democratic Party cabal led by former president Obama and his foreign secretary Hillary Clinton that formulated and executed the so-called US Pivot to Asia policy, a thinly disguised program to demonize China, and prevent it from being a hegemon in Asia.

Trump may see himself as one who will prove that he is as good in the political sphere as he has been in business, and as a hero, one that will “make America great again.” But his worldview is still that of a businessman, which explains why his moves against China during his first term are in the form of increased tariffs and sanctions against the superpower, rather than in the form of propaganda, diplomacy and military positioning against it.

As a businessman at heart, he sees China as a huge market of 1.4 billion, whose rising middle and upper class could rush buying units in Trump Towers he could build all over that huge country. He sees wars as good business only for a tiny group of tiny defense contracts but disastrous for business in general.

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Pulled from the brink of global nuclear war
Source: Breaking News PH