Sunday 8th of September 2024
Home » Blogs » Gus Leonisky's blog

biden’s reckless and incompetent foreign policy is pushing us closer to annihilation...

Each of the last five presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, have brought us closer to the brink. We desperately need leaders with a knack for peace who can steer the nation, and the world, toward a more secure and less dangerous future.

 

Presidents who gamble with nuclear Armageddon     By Jeffrey D. Sachs

 

The overriding job of any U.S. president is to keep the nation safe. In the nuclear age, that mainly means avoiding nuclear Armageddon. Joe Biden’s reckless and incompetent foreign policy is pushing us closer to annihilation. He joins a long and undistinguished list of presidents who have gambled with Armageddon, including his immediate predecessor and rival, Donald Trump.

Talk of nuclear war is currently everywhere. Leaders of NATO countries call for Russia’s defeat and even dismemberment, while telling us not to worry about Russia’s 6,000 nuclear warheads. Ukraine uses NATO-supplied missiles to knock out parts of Russia’s nuclear-attack early-warning system inside Russia. Russia, in the meantime, engages in nuclear drills near its border with Ukraine. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg  give the green light to Ukraine to use NATO weapons to hit Russian territory as an increasingly desperate and extremist Ukrainian regime sees fit.

These leaders neglect at our greatest peril the most basic lesson of the nuclear confrontation between the U.S. and Soviet Union in the Cuban Missile Crisis, as told by President John F. Kennedy, one of the few American presidents in the nuclear age to take our survival seriously. In the aftermath of the crisis,  Kennedy told us, and his successors:

“Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy—or of a collective death-wish for the world.”

Yet this is exactly what Biden is doing today, carrying out a bankrupt and reckless policy.

Nuclear war can easily arise from an escalation of non-nuclear war, or by a hothead leader with access to nuclear arms deciding on a surprise first strike, or by a gross miscalculation. The last of these nearly occurred even after Kennedy and his Soviet counterpart Nikita Khrushchev had negotiated an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when a disabled Soviet submarine came within a hair’s breadth of launching a nuclear-tipped torpedo.

Most presidents, and most Americans, have little idea how close to the abyss we are. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which was founded in 1947 in part to help the world avoid nuclear annihilation, established the Doomsday Clock  to help the public understand the gravity of the risks we face. National security experts adjust the clock depending how far or how close we are to “midnight,” meaning extinction. They put the clock today at just 90 seconds to midnight, the closest that it’s ever been in the nuclear age.

The clock is a useful measure of which presidents have “gotten it” and which have not. The sad fact is that most presidents have recklessly gambled with our survival in the name of national honor, or to prove their personal toughness, or to avoid political attacks from the warmongers, or as the result of sheer incompetence. By a simple and straightforward count, five presidents have gotten it right, moving the clock away from midnight, while nine have moved us closer to Armageddon, including the most recent five.

Truman was president when the Doomsday Clock was unveiled in 1947, at 7 minutes to midnight. Truman stoked the nuclear arms race and left office with the clock at just 3 minutes to midnight. Eisenhower continued the nuclear arms race but also entered into the first-ever negotiations with the Soviet Union regarding nuclear disarmament. By the time he left office, the clock was put back to 7 minutes to midnight.

Kennedy saved the world by coolly reasoning his way through the Cuban Missile Crisis, rather than following the advice of hothead advisors who called for war (for a detailed account, see Martin Sherwin’s magisterial Gambling with Armageddon, 2020). He then negotiated the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with Khrushchev in 1963. By the time of his death, which may well have been a government coup resulting from Kennedy’s peace initiative, JFK had pushed the clock back to 12 minutes to midnight, a magnificent and historic achievement.

It was not to last. Lyndon Johnson soon escalated in Vietnam and pushed the clock back again to just 7 minutes to midnight. Richard Nixon eased tensions with both the Soviet Union and China, and concluded the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), pushing the clock again to 12 minutes from midnight. Yet Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter failed to secure SALT II, and Carter fatefully and unwisely gave a green light to the CIA in 1979 to destabilize Afghanistan. By the time Ronald Reagan took office, the clock was at just 4 minutes to midnight.

The next 12 years marked the end of the Cold War. Much of the credit is due to Mikhail Gorbachev, who aimed to reform the Soviet Union politically and economically, and to end the confrontation with the West. Yet credit is also due to Reagan and his successor George Bush, Sr., who successfully worked with Gorbachev to end the Cold War, which in turn was followed by the end of the Soviet Union itself in December 1991. By the time Bush left office, the Doomsday clock was at 17 minutes to midnight, the safest since the start of the nuclear age.

Sadly, the U.S. security establishment could not take “Yes” for an answer when Russia said an emphatic yes to peaceful and cooperative relations. The U.S. needed to “win” the Cold War, not just end it. It needed to declare itself and prove itself to be the sole superpower of the world, the one that would unilaterally write the rules of a new U.S.-led “rules-based order.” The post-1992 U.S. therefore launched wars and expanded its vast network of military bases as it saw fit, steadfastly and ostentatiously ignoring the red lines of other nations, indeed aiming to drive nuclear adversaries into humiliating retreats.

Since 1992, every president has left the U.S. and the world closer to nuclear annihilation than his predecessor. The Doomsday Clock was at 17 minutes to midnight when Clinton came to office, but just 9 minutes when he left it. Bush pushed the clock to just 5 minutes, Obama to 3 minutes, and Trump to a mere 100 seconds. Now Biden has taken the clock to 90 seconds.

Biden has led the U.S. into three fulminant crises, any one of which could end up in Armageddon. By insisting on NATO enlargement to Ukraine, against Russia’s bright red line, Biden has repeatedly pushed for Russia’s humiliating retreat. By siding with a genocidal Israel, he has stoked a new Middle East arms race and a dangerously expanding Middle East conflict. By taunting China over Taiwan, which the U.S. ostensibly recognizes as part of one China, he is inviting a war with China. Trump similarly stirred the nuclear pot on several fronts, most flagrantly with China and Iran.

Washington seems of a single mind these days: more funding for wars in Ukraine and Gaza, more armaments for Taiwan. We slouch ever closer to Armageddon. Polls show the American people overwhelmingly disapprove of U.S. foreign policy, but their opinion counts for very little. We need to shout for peace from every hilltop. The survival of our children and grandchildren depends on it.

 

First published in Common Dreams on May 29, 2024

https://johnmenadue.com/presidents-who-gamble-with-nuclear-armageddon/

 

 

SEE ALSO: 

enfants terribles …..

hegemonists....

 

U.S. President Truman’s Historical Achievements and Ranking

 

Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)

1. He created America’s military-industrial complex (MIC). Eisenhower (a master-deceiver who condemned the MIC that he himself had greatly expanded after Truman started it) and Truman’s other successors, only continued and constantly expanded its grip upon the U.S. Government, but Truman himself was actually the one who created the CIA, the ‘Defense’ Department, and all the rest of it. In stark contrast to Truman, his immediate predecessor FDR had been determined that after WW2 the War Department would go on as it had always been, in accord with the Constitution and its Founders who wrote it — no standing army — and was determined that the OSS of WW2 would end, not become replaced by the pervasive permanent CIA and “Intelligence Community” portion of Truman’s new standing-army permanent-warfare MIC imperialistic Government and its routine breaking of the Constitution and of the intentions and priorities of the 100% anti-imperialists who collectively wrote it at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

2. He created the state of Israel; he was the sole crucial person who made it happen. By contrast, FDR was determined that the Zionists would not have their way — there wouldn’t have been any Israel — because the first principle of FDR’s foreign policies was anti-imperialism, and Zionism was nothing if not imperialistic.

3. Truman also created the Cold War. Specifically, he started it on 25 July 1945, by telling Stalin that the U.S. wouldn’t recognize or accept into the budding U.N. (which FDR had created) the Eastern European countries that the Soviet Union had conquered from Hitler. By contrast, Stalin didn’t even object, at all, to the countries that America and the UK had conquered from Hitler, nor demand that they become communistic. Stalin was quietly shocked at Truman’s horrendous demand (which Stalin knew would never have come from FDR) that the U.S. Government have a say over the domestic policies of the countries that the Soviets had freed from Hitler. Truman had been persuaded by Churchill and Eisenhower that after WW2 either the U.S. would take over the world or else the Soviet Union would; and, so, Truman was going to see to it that the U.S. would do that; he set about and achieved reversing FDR’s anti-imperialistic foreign policies, and he replaced FDR’s entire Cabinet within two years; in private, Truman despised FDR, but decided not to inform anyone about it because he knew that if he did, that might terminate any hope of being elected as President or respected by the historians. He decided not even to send the one letter he wrote disparaging FDR’s foreign-policy team. Fortunately, however, he filed it, instead of trashed it. Perhaps he thought that after the U.S. Government takes over the entire world, future historians should be able know that he had needed to reject FDR’s foreign-policy aims in order to make possible the all-encompassing U.S. global empire, which he, Truman, had started. But, in the short term, he didn’t want anyone to know about it.

4. He stripped from the FDR-envisioned U.N. Charter any enforcement-capabilities of what FDR had been intending to be the democratic federal republic of all sovereign nations and sole source for creating, judging, and enforcing, international laws: his U.N. Whereas FDR was intending for the U.N. to replace all empires by establishing a democratic world government over sovereign nations — to replace all empires so as to prevent any World War Three — Truman instead made the U.N. tolerant of empires, tolerant of what FDR knew had caused both of the World Wars, and so which FDR was determined to end. Truman did this by producing a U.N. Charter which failed to include in the new organization any functional arms and legs.

5. So, in foreign affairs, as great a President as FDR had been, Truman was virtually the exact opposite — the worst decision that FDR ever made was to allow the Party’s megadonors to have their way in selecting whom his 1944 V.P. running-mate would be — and Truman achieved all of the harms that I’ve just listed here, without even ever having been noticed by the ‘historians’ to have done any of those catastrophic things that created the world of today — including now a very real possibility of a world-ending WW3. Only FDR’s domestic-policy triumphs were allowed by Truman to continue on into the future undamaged. But the even-bigger part of FDR’s greatness was his foreign policies, which Truman effectively nullified.

In sum, then, Truman was probably the worst President up till at least the time of Biden (who may yet outperform Truman’s badness by producing a WW3 and so being the worst leader ever in history — Biden is very much a hegemonist in the Truman mold).

There can be reasonable debate about the relative extents to which the catastrophicness of his Presidency was due to his conscious evilness or to his stupidity, or to a combination of those two in his hypocrisy (which is an essential part of liberalism and the lack of which is essential to progressivism — Truman was definitely a liberal, no progressive). However, Truman did know about most of the coups, invasions, protections and hirings of Nazis, etc., that his CIA, etc., were doing under him in order to advance his hegemonic objective; so, it wasn’t merely his stupidity that was the problem.

The consensus of historians and ‘historians’ is that Truman was a nearly great but not great President, generally ranked from 6th-best to 9th-best of the 44 U.S. Presidents up through Obama. (Obama, who created in 2014 the war in Ukraine — which now could turn into WW3 — is ranked from #7 to #15, or very good, but he was certainly one of the worst of the 44, just as both Bushes and Clinton were.) The ‘history-books’ don’t generally even so much as mention any of the facts that have been summarized here to the contrary of that scandalous, absurd, myth about Truman’s Presidency — it’s nothing historical at all. Saying that the creator of U.S. imperialism, of real and rabid global-hegemonic U.S. imperialism, something that was new with President Truman — was instead a nearly great President, is almost like saying that Hitler was a good leader for Germany. But neoconservatives and nazis — all sorts of imperialists — do sometimes become ‘historians’ and rate nations’ leaders. History itself disproves their beliefs, but they nonetheless believe the myths that they cling to and propagate.

FDR in his foreign policies was the greatest President that America has ever had, because in order to make them work, during the immense challenge of WW2, he constantly had to achieve things that were almost impossible to achieve; so, even if his immediate successor were to have been a good and competent person, it would have been almost impossible to fill his shoes. What Truman instead did was simply to trash it. That is unforgivable. It isn’t merely that the man wasn’t up to the task; he reversed what the task was. And the result is the world that we live in today, which, in international relations, is the opposite of what FDR had so carefully and brilliantly designed and planned (for which, see this and this).

Furthermore, what President Andrew Johnson was to his immediate predecessor Abraham Lincoln, Harry Truman was to FDR, but whereas Johnson’s atrociousness largely reversed Lincoln’s greatest achievement, which affected almost only the U.S., Truman’s reversing FDR’s foreign policies has been a curse that harms and endangers the entire world. Johnson is ranked by historians as being the worst or nearly the worst U.S. President ever, but his badness is actually dwarfed by Truman’s.

In order to be able to understand the world of today, its source must be honestly known and recognized. Its source was Truman’s historical achievements. He was a very ordinary person, whom some billionaires and fate — and FDR’s biggest blunder — placed at what might turn out to have been the biggest hinge-point of human history (which it will be if the constant movement since then toward WW3 will not somehow become reversed back toward what FDR had been intending).

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

https://theduran.com/u-s-president-trumans-historical-achievements-and-ranking/

 

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

 

 

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

THESE WILL ALSO INCLUDE ODESSA, KHERSON AND KHARKIV.....

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

TRANSNISTRIA WILL BE PART OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION.

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

 

EASY.

 

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

 

READ FROM TOP

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

 

zigzag policies...

 

Ralph Nader: Joe Biden’s Deceptive-Declaration Zig & Deadly-Deed Zags

 

By Ralph Nader / Nader.org

As the keynote speaker at Morehouse College in Atlanta last week, Joe Biden listened to the class Valedictorian’s call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. The President nodded and applauded with others in the assembly. In contrast, he had just approved another billion dollars in killer weapons for the genocidal Netanyahu regime to blow up what’s left of the Death Camps in Gaza. “Stop it, stop it now, Joe,” declared his wife, Dr. Jill Biden months ago.

Countless times Joe Biden has publicly urged Netanyahu to allow the waiting trucks carrying – food, water, and medicine – blocked at the Egyptian and Israeli borders to deliver this humanitarian aid. But Biden declined to demand sanctions and an end to the Israeli military blocking hundreds of trucks, paid for by the U.S., into Gaza to help the dying population. He could have draped American flags over these trucks and dared the Israeli state terrorists to stop them. Biden showed lethal weakness from an unused position of great presidential power. “Stop it, stop it now, Joe,” implored his wife Dr. Jill Biden as thousands of children are being killed who could have been saved.

Biden asked early on that Netanyahu comply with international law. His government commits daily overt numerous war crimes targeting civilians, homes, schools, markets, hospitals and health clinics, ambulances, fleeing refugees, and even Mosques and Churches. The Israeli regime also violates the international law that requires the conquerors to protect the civilian population. Biden, Blinken and Austin have refused to condemn such “crimes against humanity,” halt arms shipments and thereby obey five federal laws prohibiting the U.S. from sending weapons to countries that are violating human rights or being used for offensive purposes.

When Biden took his oath of office, he swore to uphold the laws of the land. That oath requires action. His State Department, in a required compliance report this month to Congress, disgracefully punted. “Stop it, stop it now, Joe,” beseeched Dr. Jill Biden.

From the beginning, Biden has backed a two-state solution publicly and in private conversations with Netanyahu. These words support a peaceful settlement. Yet whether under Obama as vice president for eight years or since 2021, as president, Biden has not connected to any action advancing the two-state proposal. Worse, he has never called out Netanyahu, with consequences, for bragging year after year to his Likud Party that he has been supporting the Hamas regime and helping to fund it because Hamas, like Netanyahu, opposes a two-state solution.

Biden is still rejecting the recognition of a Palestinian state by 143 of the 193 member states of the United Nations. This week Spain, Norway and Ireland said they would recognize a Palestinian state. Biden bizarrely insists statehood be negotiated with Israel. He knows, of course, how many Israeli colonies (so-called settlements) exist in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel rejects outright any such Free Palestine. Weak Joe Biden is okay with that brutal occupation. “Stop it, stop it now, Joe,” says Dr. Jill Biden.

Joe Biden is always condemning anti-semitism against Jews, while he spends billions of dollars weaponizing Netanyahu’s violent anti-semitism against Arab semites in Palestine. This “other” anti-semitism has been violently inflicted, with very racist epithets, on defenseless, subjugated Palestinian families for over fifty-five years. The violence includes U.S. fighter planes bombing, ground troops smashing homes, and refugee camps, blowing up homes, imprisoning and torturing thousands of men, women and children, without charges, and hundreds of dictates, checkpoints, and other maddening harassments. (See the New York Times Magazine Sunday, May 19, 2024 piece “The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel”). Biden and Netanyahu are arm-in-arm anti-semites against Arabs. (See the “Anti-Semitism Against Arab and Jewish Americans” speech by Jim Zogby and DebatingTaboos.org).

Throughout his fifty-year political career, Biden has never said that “Palestinians have a right to defend themselves.” Only the overwhelmingly more powerful, occupying Israelis have this right, as he has repeated hundreds of times. “Stop it, stop it now, Joe,” advises Dr. Jill Biden.

Biden has expressed doubt about the Hamas Health Ministry’s fatality count in Gaza – itself a huge undercount. (See my column March 5, 2024 column: Stop the Worsening UNDERCOUNT of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza). His actions enabling the Israeli annihilations (“over the top” he once blurted) are moving the real fatality toll, especially with the Rafah invasion and starvation, to the fastest rate ever recorded in 21st century conflicts, according to experts. This includes the bloody, accelerating deaths of babies and children.

It’s the ongoing massacre of these little innocents – in their mother’s or father’s arms or in crumbling hospitals that led Dr. Jill Biden to admonish: “Stop it, stop it now, Joe.”

Still, Joe Biden conveys weakness to Netanyahu, to Netanyahu’s Congress and its omnipresent “Israel-can-do-no-wrong” lobby. Being weak on such a high visibility and protested genocide in Gaza is bad for your re-election, Joe. Even though Der Führer Donald is worse. Look at the latest polls in the swing states! A true leader doesn’t zig and zag when innocent people are being killed. “Stop it, stop it now, Joe.”

 

https://scheerpost.com/2024/05/27/ralph-nader-joe-bidens-deceptive-declaration-zig-deadly-deed-zags/

 

READ FROM TOP

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

sinking pier.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMb_FanFwTk

BOONDOGGLE?! $320 Million WASHED OUT To Sea As Gaza Pier SINKS
Briahna Joy Gray and Robby Soave react to Gaza Pier disaster; $320 million pier sinks.

 

READ FROM TOP

 

ONE COULD THINK THAT THIS WAS THE PLAN. WHY? TO "BY ACCIDENT" PREVENT SUPPLIES OF FOOD TO GAZA .... SIMPLE...

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....