Guest
Ambassador Jack Matlock addresses the Oct. 2 Schiller Institute conference, “Another Step Closer to Nuclear Armageddon — Germany Needs a New Security Architecture.“ Watch the full proceedings here: It seems as if the memory of the destruction and suffering of two World Wars has been wiped out. Ever more powerful and wider-ranging weapons are being supplied for the war against Russia, as if there were no red lines in the fight against the nuclear power that is Russia. Vladimir Putin’s patience is being interpreted as weakness, which is a potentially fatal miscalculation! Should permission be given to use American and British long-range missiles to attack deep into Russian territory, the risk of escalation to nuclear war would be greater than during the Cuban missile crisis. President Putin has warned that the use of such weapons would mean that NATO countries are at war with Russia, and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov has announced a revision of Russia’s nuclear doctrine, which at this point provides for the use of Russian nuclear weapons only in the event of a threat to the existence of Russian territory. On August 26, the New York Times announced that President Biden had already changed the U.S. nuclear doctrine back in March of this year, to anticipate the threat of a three-front war against Russia, China and North Korea. The U.S. (!) decision to station American medium-range missiles in Germany from 2026 on, announced by the German Chancellor in July, must be seen in this strategic context. There was no debate on the issue in the Bundestag or in public. Now it’s reported that the Pentagon has commissioned a study on the effects of radioactive fallout on global agriculture, and in particular in Eastern Europe. Should it come to war, Germany will be the prime target for attack, and if nuclear weapons are used, nothing will be left of Germany, no industry, no cities, no infrastructure – and no people. In other words, we are trapped in a military strategy, in which there will be no survival in the worst case. Is that in Germany’s interest? At the end of the Cold War and German reunification, there was an opportunity to establish a peace order for the 21st century. This great opportunity for mankind was missed due to the West’s unparalleled triumphalism, all the promises made to Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin were broken, and today, we are on the brink of a global nuclear war that threatens to wipe out all life on this planet. A nuclear war cannot be won and must therefore never be waged. John F. Kennedy warned the world after the Cuban Missile Crisis that a nuclear superpower should never be put in a position where it had to choose between “either a humiliating defeat or nuclear war”. Never has it been more urgent to resolve a conflict through diplomacy than today. These issues will be discussed in a zoom seminar by the following witnesses and scientists, whose life’s work and expertise make them eminently qualified to initiate the urgently needed public discussion which is now lacking in Germany.
