Speaking at a meeting hosted by Washington think-tank The Brookings Institution on Monday, Vice Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General John E. Hyten warned of the risks if conflicts spiral out of control, and expressed hope that cooler heads can prevail. "We never fought the Soviet Union," he said. "As for the great powers, our goal is to never go to war with China and Russia."
According to Hyten, such an event would "destroy the world and the global economy. It will be bad for everyone, and we have to ensure that we do not go down that path." However, the general went on, previous deals between Moscow and NATO after the fall of the USSR concluded "Russia was not a threat any more." At the same time, however, he alleges that the Russians were "modernizing their entire nuclear arsenal." This, he says, was because "I think they were worried about the US."
Comment: Rightfully so. It's the US who has only ever used the nuclear bomb. It's the US who conducts regime change around the world and has put their military bases around Russia's borders. Can anyone blame them for beefing up their defenses?
Progress has been made in delivering improved relations between the two countries, Hyten argued, but it was still a long way from total stability.
However, he said that Washington is increasingly worried about the lack of similar steps with China, a country he alleges is undergoing "unprecedented nuclear modernization that is now becoming public... you see hundreds and hundreds of fixed silos."
"And by the way, there's no limits on what China can put in those silos," the top Pentagon official warned. "We're limited with Russia to 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads, so we have to decide where we want to put those - submarines, ICBMs... that puts a limit on what we have. China, there's no limit... you have to ask yourself, why are they building that enormous, enormous nuclear capability?"
In December, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov warned that it was Washington, not Moscow, that was increasing the risk of fatal escalations by stationing nuclear weapons on foreign soil in Europe.
Ryabkov said the Kremlin "hopes that the United States will stop 'sharing' nuclear weapons with its allies, and stop deploying nuclear weapons in countries that do not possess such weapons... Obviously, this leads to destabilization; in addition, new risks appear."
At the same time, his comments struck the same note as Hyten's, saying that "a nuclear war cannot be won... Russia is ready to cooperate in reversing this state of affairs."
Reader Comments
I don't have kids. My wife and I don't want them. We're homebodies. Our motivation to earn money is for a slowly lessening desire for more stuff (it's a process as I try to simplify my life and my wife slowly comes to realize stuff isn't what makes us happy). So we have no intergenerational motive to earn and pass on money or things. Even if we did, we were raised to believe reward without effort is of no value.
These royal families have to go. Their motivation isn't to do good for the world or ease suffering. It's to line their own pockets and put themselves on pedestals to be worshiped.
My dying regret will be that I didn't become enlightened enough to stop my own cycle of rebirth and that I have to come back to this world that thrives, profits on causing anxiety, suffering, doubt, guilt, self-hate, and everything terrible about sports, politics, news, and entertainment.
Maybe it won't happen that way. Maybe I'll find my way back onto the path. But part of what makes that difficult is being in front of a computer for work all day, and having to be at a computer for work all day due to debt I accumulated in naïvety and ignorance. I can only see my place in the universe when I'm turned away from the black mirror that entrances humanity.
I am departing headlong for the mountains and my family exactly to get away from at least some of the darkness.
Honestly, we just want a place we can call our own where we can be ourselves and raise our cats and integrate with our natural surroundings, where poll workers don't go because no one gets paid enough to hike that far for work.
Off to work at it more, talk later . . .
Just more fear propaganda for us the sheeple.
Are you really getting to the wilderness? Does it feel like a return to peace, somehow? It always does for me.
Right now I am out on the deck, watching a major storm go through. A covered deck is so nice, and we are storm watchers.