Back in January 2017 I wrote the first of a series of thirteen pieces titled “Dodging the Bullet.” The theme was nuclear war: how miraculous it is that we haven’t had one since Nagasaki, and how blase the mainstream media and political class are about the possibility of one happening today. I called it “Dodging the Bullet” because that seems to me such a uniquely American expression – the idea that anyone can dodge a bullet is absurd, and yet the concept clearly exists. “Dodged that bullet, bro!” But no one can.
One thing that encouraged me was the United Nations treaty to ban the possession and use of nuclear weapons: the sheer number of countries that signed up for it. Just about the only countries which didn’t sign up were the ones which own nuclear weapons, plus all the members of NATO. It seemed a fine example, which might even influence a NATO membert or two. How about Spain? The last piece I wrote was about US plans for war with Russia, based on US Army publications. That was in July 2021. I’d written everything I could think of on the subject, I thought.
Wrong. Instead, an entirely preventable, regional war is spinning out of control due to the US and NATO’s desire to keep it going. Careers (in NATO and the arms industry) are made from threatening war and further enhanced (for a while) from making it. Pundits and politicians, Raytheon and Northrop, the three-letter-agencies, all profited and rose in status as a result of destroying Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan, and Iraq, and Libya, and Syria, and…
It was easy, as an American professional politician once remarked, to throw some shitty little country up against the wall every few years. It didn’t matter if this policy killed millions, wrecked functioning states, and created wave after desperate wave of unwelcomed refugees. For the people with a bit of money, war was always good business, and they could invest somebody else’s son.
Now US and NATO politicians bay for a boots-on-the-ground, shooting war with Russia. Maybe they will get one. In the mean time, they are practicing:
Starting on January 29 (a month before the invasion of Ukraine), NATO began war games in Estonia, on Russia’s border. British, French, and Estonian troops practiced “force on force” attacks, live fire, and anti-tank exercises. NATO’s “Enhanced Forward Presence Battlegroup Estonia” is led by the UK’s Royal Tank Regiment, with France and Denmark providing forces on a rotational basis. Iceland also participates. NATO has other “Enhanced Forward Presence Battlegroups” in Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. These exercises were followed by “Operation Bold Dragon”, which began this month and involves aerial war games over Estonia by the Belgians, UK, French and Danes. Belgian F-16s have been deployed to Estonia for an indefinite period.
Meanwhile, in tiny Latvia, adjacent to Estonia, and also sharing a border with Russia, NATO has just started the “Namejs 2022” military exercises: a series of war games involving soldiers from the Czech Republic, Poland, the UK, Lithuania, Estonia, Albania, Czech Republic, Italy, Iceland, Montenegro, Canada, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain.
In case you thought Lithuania was being ignored, don’t worry. This small state, which shares a border with the Russian territory of Kaliningrad, recently hosted its largest-ever NATO outdoor combat operations: “Exercise Iron Wolf”, involving thousands of troops from the US, Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Poland, plus the Lithuanian “Iron Wolf Brigade.” Another round is scheduled this year.
No doubt these ongoing NATO war games on their border in wartime will not be interpreted by Russia as aggressive in any way. We must all reassure ourselves that NATO’s pretend attacks and incursions will never accidentally spark a thermonuclear war.
If you would like a playlist to enjoy while following the progress of Exercise Iron Wolf, I recommend a couple of songs from The Clash. They’re both on the Sandinista album and entirely of this moment: the anti-war song The Call Up and the disco anthem, Ivan Meets GI Joe.
[Update: not that it makes any real difference, but the US, despite its congenital inability to appoint ambassadors, has managed to appoint one to oversee the brinkmanship in Ukraine. Her name? I kid you not: Bridget Brink.]
[Another update — continuing the Brink Theme, there is an organization called Back From The Brink, which seeks to convince the US government to renounce first use, cancel the 1.7 trillion dollar nuclear upgrade, and “actively pursue a verifiable agreement among nuclear-armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals” which sounds pretty weeny. “Actively pursue a verifiable agreement” is like “provide access to health care” – meaningless Democrat-ese which ultimately produces nothing. But less money for war is always a good cause.]
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