Imminent World War threat looms as NATO continues reckless policy

Note from LifeSiteNews co-founder Steve Jalsevac: Please spread this article far and wide to encourage an international prayer campaign and action for peace. The current situation is more serious than the Cuban missile crisis, but the West does not currently have a skilled President John F. Kennedy diplomat to diffuse the crisis.

Those Trump has nominated to the crucial positions of Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, UN ambassador, Ambassador to Israel and several other key positions are extreme war hawks. Pray that Trump replaces them with far more skilled and appropriate people.

However, that may be too late since the neocon Democrats, Republicans and especially European NATO members seem determined to provoke a major war to prevent or cripple the Trump presidency and force the US into major wars against Russia and Iran.

(LifeSiteNews) — The recent escalation in Ukraine has seen warnings of World War Three from independent and mainstream media commentators, with the former Ukrainian General Zaluzhny claiming it has already broken out. 

“I believe that in 2024 we can absolutely believe that the Third World War has begun,” said the former commander of Ukraine’s military, in remarks published by Politico on November 21st.  

Yet his analysis relies on the dubious claim that Russia is already fielding “North Korean troops” and using Iranian missiles. Zaluzhny, as a Ukrainian war leader, has an obvious interest in promoting a war which drags the US-led NATO in on his side.  

The wider concern is not what the Russians have been doing, but what they will do next, in the face of repeated provocations from a liberal global order fighting for its life.  

‘This could go nuclear,’ warns Colonel Macgregor  

Though Russia has a second-strike nuclear doctrine, meaning it says it will only respond to and never initiate a nuclear attack, the recent escalation has been said to bring the world closer to nuclear war than it has ever been, according to retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor.  

Former British Intelligence officer Alastair Crooke’s opinion is that the West has failed to recognize the significance of the new Russian weapon system.  

The New York Times in its November 23 report appears to confirm Crooke’s view, as it described the brinkmanship as a series of “tit for tat” strikes, saying only that the Russians have responded with a “test-fired intermediate-range missile” in response to the authorization of long-range strikes into Russia using NATO supplied and guided ATACMS (U.S.) and Storm Shadow cruise missiles (provided by the U.K).  

Yet Crooke offered more nuance, saying the new Russian system had “checkmated” the Western escalation, led largely by the U.K. government. 

Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter gave a detailed account of the new missile, noting its hypersonic capability made it impossible to counter, and that it could also carry a nuclear payload in future. 

Called “Oreshnik,” the medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) had never been seen before, and its maiden mission was described in a video address given by President Vladimir Putin, following its use in a strike in Ukraine.  

The main points of Putin’s statements at the session of the CSTO Collective Security Council:

About “Oreshnik” and other Russian weapons:

▪️ In the event of a massive use of Oreshnik missiles in one strike, its power will be comparable to the use of nuclear weapons.

▪️ Russia… pic.twitter.com/imTBgruxvI

— — GEROMAN — time will tell – 👀 — (@GeromanAT) November 28, 2024

Ritter has stressed, along with others, that the new Russian missile is not simply another bomb but changes the balance of power. Russia can now attack and destroy any target it chooses with a non-nuclear weapon which cannot be stopped and has the impact of an in-theater, or small, nuclear bomb without the accompanying radiation harm. 

Only escalation remaining is nuclear war 

How did they respond to Russia’s demonstration? The next day, more U.S.-supplied ATACMs were fired into Russia. The U.K. will send “dozens more” Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine and the French have said they permit Ukraine to use their SCALP cruise missiles to launch attacks into Russia, too.  

The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, has repeatedly stressed that Russia wishes to avoid a nuclear war, and that its military doctrine states it will use them only in response to a nuclear attack. 

Yet a revision to this nuclear doctrine appeared days after U.S. President Joe Biden finally gave permission for the use of NATO weapons to strike deep into Russia. 

This clause, announced in September but made official last week, states that Russia reserves the right to respond with nuclear weapons to a strike made on its territory by “[a] non-nuclear state backed by a nuclear power.”  

Ukraine, of course, answers this description. Yet this warning from Russia has been dismissed as “bluff and bluster.”

After the new Russian nuclear doctrine was proposed in September, the Carnegie Institute argued in October that the West can continue to pursue aggression “below that threshold,” as it maintained the U.S. could go on “trying to nudge Russia’s red lines as carefully as possible.” 

Why do U.S. and NATO war leaders believe this is wise? According to “the world’s leading experts on Russia and the wider region” at Carnegie, “The war has shown that Russia does not have a sufficient arsenal of high-precision conventional weapons to mitigate many of the threats to it, or to break the resistance of a country as large as Ukraine.” 

So, what is a threat? “Threats form where there is a combination of will and capability,” as expert Dr. Sumantra Maitra has pointed out.  

With the demonstration of its new capability, Russian threats have been replaced with a promise. The new Oreshnik missile breaks the Western strategy in this war entirely. Carnegie explained how this strategy began. 

“Washington… began to test the red lines that Moscow had initially proclaimed. Russia continued to threaten the West with a high price for intervention in the war, but in practice there was little it [Russia] could do…” 

As Responsible Statecraft’s Ian Proud surmised, the game has changed – and the West cannot – or will not – see this.  

Western commentators have noted with derision that many Russian “red lines” have been crossed in the past, to no serious effect. This dismissive attitude is being applied to what is suggested to be Putin’s “final warning” by Crooke, Macgregor, Larry Wilkerson, Ritter and others. 

The danger of escalation to nuclear war is clear and present, they say. Why is this happening now – and what is the likelihood it will result in Armageddon? 

The British policy of escalation

None of this should come as a surprise. In an interview in late June, the former British Foreign Minister David Cameron explained it was the strategy of the U.K. to pursue escalation in the Ukraine war in order to persuade Donald Trump to remain committed to it.  

READ: UK’s David Cameron tricked by Russian pranksters into admitting he pressures Trump, GOP on Ukraine

Since the intervention of then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson in April 2022 to prevent a peace deal, Britain has done more than any other nation to escalate and prolong the war.   

READ: The UK is getting dangerously close to full-scale war with Russia

This British policy on Ukraine was “fixed,” said Cameron – and would not change with a change of government. The government did change in July, but the strategy of escalation did not.  

Why is the British government leading efforts to escalate the war? Along with NATO itself, and the other liberal-global governments in Europe, the British state is heavily invested in the war in Ukraine. It has propagandized its people to accept higher costs and lower living standards to maintain its support for the war. Why?  

When the war stops the real problems for the liberal globalists begin. Current British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who says his loyalties lie with the Davos of the World Economic Forum rather than with his own Westminster Parliament, has been funding one of the most corrupt regimes on earth, according to Boris Johnson’s former adviser Dominic Cummings. Starmer knows that a Russian victory will see daylight shone upon the murky financial dealings under the Zelensky regime in Ukraine.  

A true cost analysis of this war would destroy many political careers – and governments – as it appears to have done so with the dissolving of the German ruling coalition. 

The U.K. is desperate to prevent a U.S. drawdown from Europe, and so is NATO, which will be put to sleep under Trump. If the war can be widened – or simply prolonged – this can could be kicked down the road. 

Peace is a death sentence to this liberal-global order. Peace threatens the revelation of its deep state corruption, and how the propaganda and plunder system of permanent war has corrupted our own states at home. The liberal-globalists take Trump seriously when he says he wants to end this.  

READ: Why are the US and UK continuing to prevent peace in Ukraine?

This is the reason some talk of the danger of World War Three, and of a threat to Trump’s life. The entire business model of regime change is threatened by the collapse of Project Ukraine, which aside from becoming the major money-laundering center of the empire as former Trump State Department staffer Mike Benz documents, was also about Project Russia.  

With Lindsey Graham’s blunt admission that Ukraine was a war about money, it is worth remembering that Russia’s near limitless mineral resources also remain outside the liberal-global system with a Russian victory. The U.S. “needs Ukraine’s rare earth metals,” said the Russian Foreign Minister last week. 

Project Russia was best outlined in a 2019 RAND Corporation paper, which was a blueprint for destabilizing Russia through “cost-imposing options.” By “overextending” Russia economically, isolating it diplomatically, and beating it militarily – Russia could be “regime changed” – and its wealth absorbed. 

All these outcomes have come to pass – but not for Russia. It is NATO, the U.S. and Europe who are unstable now, and whose ruling elite face collapse precipitated by once-optional costs. From the point of view of grand strategy nuclear escalation makes no sense whatsoever if you have won your war, your enemy is dissolving, and you seek to gain enormously from a postwar revision of the regional security architecture. This is the Russian position. 

This is also the reason sober judges of military and foreign affairs are warning of nuclear war. The liberal global order, of which NATO is the military arm, faces defeat. Starmer has said the threat of nuclear war will not stop his escalatory efforts. 

This machine also produces advertisements for counterfeit products. Escalation to war is another instance – being the marketing of destruction as the highest moral duty. Whose duty – and to whom? This war, and the one in the Middle East, are not wars in the interests of the American people, nor in the interests of people generally. 

They are a serious indication of whose interests are being served, Elon Musk made the following announcement on X.  

Vindman is on the payroll of Ukrainian oligarchs and has committed treason against the United States, for which he will pay the appropriate penalty

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 27, 2024

The penalty for treason includes death. 

The regime is now selling mass destruction as a lifeline – but the system it seeks to preserve is an industry of death which has captured our civilization. How far they will go to prevent a peace that is fatal to their power is the question which will decide whether we have a future at all. 

What all of this highlights, above all, is the great, urgent need for a worldwide prayer campaign for peace.