One minute to midnight
>> Tuesday, February 24, 2015
PERRYSCOPE
By Perry Diaz
By Perry Diaz
Every year since 1947
in the month of January, members of the Science and Security Board of the
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists meet to perform an annual ritual of setting
the time on the “Doomsday Clock.” It is a mechanism designed to warn the
world of how close we are to doomsday; the closer the clock moved to midnight,
the closer we are to a nuclear holocaust. In 2007, the scientists
added climate change as one that could also cause global
destruction.
In 1947, the scientists agreed to set the clock initially to 11:53 PM or
seven minutes to midnight. They hang the clock on a wall in
the Bulletin’s office at the University of Chicago to remind everybody how
close we were to the threat of a global nuclear war.
The following were the years when the Doomsday Clock was closest
or farthest to midnight:
In 1949, the clock was set to 11:57 PM or three minutes to
midnight. That was when the Soviet Union tested her first atomic bomb,
which officially started the nuclear arms race.
In 1972, the clock was set to 11:48 PM when the U.S. and the
Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) and the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
In 1984, the clock was set once again to 11:57 PM when tensions
escalated between the U.S. and the Soviet Union when the arms race
intensified. The U.S. deployed Pershing II medium-range ballistic
missiles and cruise missiles in Western Europe.
In 1991, the clock was set to 11:43 PM – 17 minutes to midnight --
the earliest setting since its inception. That was when the U.S. and
the Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and the collapse of
the Soviet Union thereafter.
The most recent setting was made on January 22,
2015. The clock was set to 11:57 PM or three minutes to
midnight. That was the closest we were to doomsday since
1984. It was due to the modernization of nuclear weapons in the U.S.
and Russia, the specter of a new Cold War, the problem of nuclear waste, and
the danger of global climate change.
Ukraine civil war
What the scientists did not take into account when they set the
clock last month was the civil war in Ukraine where the U.S. and her NATO
allies are being drawn into a proxy war with Russia. It is
feared that the fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists
in East Ukraine might escalate should Russia decide to invade Ukraine in full
force including the use of tactical nuclear weapons. But what is
preventing Russia from intervening is that the U.S. has so far desisted from
arming Ukraine. However, President Barack Obama is under tremendous
pressure by high military officials and a growing number of U.S. senators and
members of Congress to send heavy weapons to Ukraine. Obama is
said to be weighing his options. And then…
Last February 12, after a marathon 17-hour summit of Putin, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President François Hollande, and
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Minsk, Belarus, they agreed on a
ceasefire and a slew of measures to achieve peace in Ukraine.
Putin was the first to announce, saying: “We have agreed on a
ceasefire from midnight 15 February.” Then he added: “There is
also the political settlement. The first thing is constitutional reform that
should take into consideration the legitimate rights of people who live in
Donbas. There are also border issues. Finally there are (sic) a whole range of
economic and humanitarian issues.”
Peacemaker or renegade?
But peace was as remote as it was before the summit. No
sooner had the four leaders signed the agreement than Ukraine claimed that 50
Russian tanks, 40 missile systems, and 40 armored vehicles crossed the border
into Ukraine. It was also reported that an armored column of
Russian-speaking soldiers without insignias – the “little green men” -- were
advancing around Debaltseve, a strategic rail hub, which had been under intense
artillery shelling by the rebels.
Once again, Putin denied sending heavy weapons and troops to
Ukraine. But the U.S. released photos taken by satellites showing
the movement of heavy weapons into eastern Ukraine right after the ceasefire
agreement was signed.
Evidently, Putin is doing everything he can to make the ceasefire
fail just like the first one he agreed to last September. And this
leads many to believe that the ceasefire would not last too long, which then
begs the question: What exactly does Putin want?
While speculations abound about what his real intentions were, one
known fact is that he felt very badly about the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991. During his state of the nation address to the country’s
parliament in April 2005, he bitterly said: “Above all, we should
acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical
tragedy of the 20th century. As for the Russian nation, it became a
genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and co-patriots
found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of
disintegration infected Russia itself.”
Territorial
expansion
It did not then come as a surprise that when Putin was elected to
a third term in May 2012, he embarked on a road map to restore “Mother Russia”
to her old imperial glory. In 2014, he made several moves to
assert his leadership over the Eurasian subcontinent that includes all of the
defunct Soviet Union’s former republics and the Eastern European client states
from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.
It didn’t take long for Putin to annex Crimea, which stunned the
U.S. and her NATO allies. Unprepared for such a blatant act of
aggression, all they could do was impose economic sanctions.
Emboldened by the ease with which he grabbed Crimea, Putin then
called Ukrainian President Poroshenko and threateningly told him: “If I
wanted, in two days I could have Russian troops not only in Kiev, but also in
Riga, Vilnius, Tallinn, Warsaw and Bucharest.” These are the
capitals of NATO members who were formerly aligned with the Soviet Union before
her demise. It gave them an eerie feeling of déjà vu when the Soviet
Union forcibly imposed her reign over them in the closing days of World War II.
Now, in the midst of a civil war that could escalate into World War III,
pitting NATO against Russia, planet Earth has never been closer to nuclear
annihilation. The warring sides have enough nuclear warheads between
them – NATO has 8,175 and Russia has 8,420 -- to fry the world into radioactive
smithereens. And all it would take is for Putin to press
the “doomsday button.”
From Munich to
Minsk
In retrospect, one wonders if the Minsk Agreement was an attempt
to appease Putin by acceding to his demands including the “division” of Ukraine
into several autonomous states within a federation. But once the
Ukrainian Federation is created, what would prevent the pro-Russian autonomous
states – Donetsk and Lugansk -- from seceding, ala Crimea, from Ukraine in the
future? Which makes one wonder if the Minsk Agreement of 2015 had
the hallmark of the Munich Agreement of 1938? That was when the
United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy signed a settlement allowing
Germany’s annexation of parts of Czechoslovakia in return for peace. But
less than six months later, Germany invaded the rest of
Czechoslovakia. World War II had begun.
For as long as the U.S. and her NATO allies stay out of Ukraine
and refrain from sending lethal weapons to Ukraine, Putin is
appeased. But what if the ceasefire were broken? Would
the U.S. provide Ukraine with the weapons needed to defend her
territory? Or would Obama throw Poroshenko under the bus and turn a
blind eye to the pillage that would follow the collapse of Ukraine? Or…
and here is the big IF… If Obama decides to send all the weapons
Ukraine needs, what would Putin do? Would he make good of his
promise to go nuclear? And just the thought of Putin going
ballistic, that alone would set the “Doomsday Clock” to 11:59 PM… or one minute
to midnight. God forbid!(PerryDiaz@gmail.com)
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