The Psychotic Logic of the New US-Russia Arms Race

The Psychotic Logic of the New US-Russia Arms Race: One Step Closer to Nuclear Confrontation(Source globalresearch.ca)

On October 7th, Russian ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said that Russia and the US needed to come to grips with the issue of short-range and intermediate-range missile deployment.

“In case the United States deploy these types of missiles very close to our borders, we will be forced to protect our country, we will be forced to resort to the necessary measures….It is high time for us to sit at the negotiations table, to stop negotiating via media trading accusations; it is high time to meet, perhaps in Geneva, in Vienna, in Washington, in Moscow and to come to grips with these issues,” he said. The United States has no particular reason to come to any agreement with Russia concerning short-range or intermediate-range missiles. The existence of US military bases in Poland, Romania, Japan etc, means that the United States’ strategic nuclear advantage exists on the level of short-range and intermediate-range weapons. The same cannot be said regarding intercontinental ballistic missiles. Therefore, when US officials argue that they would prefer “a more comprehensive agreement,” they are being disingenuous, ignoring the elephant in the room. Everybody in Russia’s political and foreign policy establishment, including Ambassador Antonov, understands this clearly.

To understand the strategic nuclear situation in clear, coldly amoral terms, we must also bear in mind the economic fundamentals which drive it. The world is running out of natural resources very quickly, and Russia is blessed with natural resources. This is the most central factor determining the levels of geo-strategic hostility which the western alliance shows toward Russia. Ultimately, the nations of the western alliance need Russia to become a minerals and hydrocarbons colony, to subsidize their unsustainable models of financialized capitalism. That model has always required subsidization by the natural resources of de facto colonies, and always will.

If we compare the predicament of the United States today to its geo-strategic logic 35 years ago, the Reagan administration were also imperialists, of course. However, the Reagan administration believed that they could afford to play a long-term geo-strategic game. That long-term game is no longer possible – the western economies’ access to cheap natural resources is now dwindling too quickly.

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