Ukraine
joining NATO would take world dangerously close to nuclear war
George
Galloway
George
Galloway was a member of the British Parliament for nearly 30 years. He
presents TV and radio shows (including on RT). He is a film-maker, writer and a
renowned orator.
6 Nov,
2019 14:33 / Updated 1 hour ago
Ukrainian
membership of NATO would be a brazen provocation that could finally break the
back of Moscow’s patience. Besides, very few seem to worry about the ontology
of Ukrainian nationalism.
The
Berlin Wall fell 30 years ago and with it eventually the “Iron Curtain” which
had divided Europe from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic.
Russia
accepted this on the basis of a clear assurance from the US that NATO would not
expand its frontline any closer to Russia’s borders. A promise that wasn’t
worth the paper it wasn’t written on.
That much
is demonstrated daily by the presence of US missiles in Poland and Romania,
periodic war-games which are clearly predicated on possible war with Russia,
and now with the renewed “offer” to the Ukraine of
membership of the NATO war alliance.
It is
obviously true that some at least are nervous about the Ukraine finally joining
NATO. They worry it might be that straw that finally breaks the back of
Russia’s patience. They worry about Ukraine’s stability. The country has had
governments friendly to Russia relatively recently and might do so again. They
compare it to Turkey and worry about whether the new president of Ukraine can
really be guaranteed to stay in power and moreover stay loyal to the
anti-Russian cause.
And some,
at least one hopes, worry about the ontology of Ukrainian nationalism. In the
week in which the German city of Dresden declared a “Nazi emergency,” so
worried are the authorities about a far-right insurgency, the merest glance at
the right of Ukrainian politics is enough to chill the blood.
Just
recently, Ukrainian fascists destroyed a memorial to the Soviet war-hero
Marshal Zhukov, without whom I might have been writing this in German.
When
shocked locals came out with candles and flowers to place at the scene of the
desecration, fascist mobs savagely attacked them.
What if
NATO actually does, finally and after many failed promises, admit the Ukraine
to NATO? To whom exactly, will they be pledging to ride into a potential valley
of death with, and why?
Ukrainian
membership of NATO would be a brazen provocation given the state of relations
with Russia and would take the world, as Mikhail Gorbachev – the man who
believed the empty promises of President Ronald Reagan – said this week,
dangerously close to nuclear war.
The US
unilateral abrogation of the INF Treaty together with the absolute
unpredictability in the White House complete a picture of potential conflict
between the two superpowers that should shake even the most somnolent in Europe
which would be incinerated in any such conflict.
As
always, I ask myself why.
When the
USSR existed and its armed socialist hinterland frontiered Western countries
there was a clear and obvious basis for confrontation. The Soviet Union and
what it stood for was an existential threat to Western capitalism and its role
in the world.
But
Communism is 30 years dead and so is the USSR.
While
Russia demands respect for its legitimate interests, and refuses diktat in
foreign affairs, it threatens nobody least of all ideologically. Yet, the
endless preoccupation with Russia is as virulent now as it was in all but the
coldest points of the Cold War. It’s genuinely difficult to provide an answer
to my question: ‘why?’
No day
goes by without the words Russia and Putin on the lips of the British media and
political class. And not in a good way.
Although
events do still have a capacity to surprise. This week we have the spectacle of
the Labour Party in full pursuit of the Conservative prime minister and his leading
cadres with the charge that the Tories are secretly, very secretly obviously,
agents of the Kremlin.
The last
time the UK had general election in December was in 1923. It led to the
first-ever Labour government. Two years later the government was brought down
by the publication of the Zinoviev Letter, a forgery cooked up by the
Conservatives, which sought to show that Labour were, ahem, Russian agents.
And at
the launch of the Conservative election campaign Boris Johnson denounced Jeremy
Corbyn as… Stalin!
Russia,
Russia, always Russia…
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