Pearls and Irritations

Ramesh Thakur

  • RAMESH THAKUR. Has NATO become a threat to world peace?

    NATO is endangering Earth

    This article was first published in the Japan Times on 8 September 2014.

    Have NATO leaders created a crisis to justify NATO’s continuation after its original purpose expired?

    Former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul says: “Without U.S.-sponsored ‘regime change,’ it is unlikely that … the Malaysian Airlines crash would have happened.” Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, wonders why Washington is risking war with Russia. John Mearsheimer argues the Ukraine crisis Is the West’s fault. (more…)

  • RAMESH THAKUR. The slide to war with Russia.

    ‘God created war so Americans could learn geography’ (1)

    On 3 October, taking another step on the road to a new cold war, Russia suspended the 16-year bilateral plutonium disposition agreement with the US. Are the two countries sleepwalking into a war that could cross the nuclear threshold – remembering that those sleepwalking are unaware of it at the time?

    One possible pathway to slide into war would be to act on the growing chorus of calls in the Washington beltway for a no-fly-zone over Syria. In a bon mot often misattributed to Mark Twain that is so good it deserves to be true, God is said to have created war so Americans could learn geography. Russia–US tensions are rising again and could boil over if Hillary Clinton becomes president, which seems all but certain.

    The threat of war comes less from Russian revanchist or imperial ambitions and more from the US insistence that no other power must have the economic resilience and military capability to resist Washington’s will, anywhere. Rooted in the triumphalism of US supremacy in the post-Cold War unipolar moment, this is both unsustainable and increasingly risky as US primacy wanes against the steady accretion of economic, military and diplomatic power by China and Russia’s recovery. The fierce US resistance of the inexorable tide of history also spells dangers for Australia. (more…)