By Paul Craig Roberts

June 18, 2014 "ICH" - I wish I had only good news to bring to readers, or even one item of good news. Alas, goodness has ceased to be a feature of US policy and simply cannot be found in any words or deeds emanating from Washington or the capitals of its European vassal states. The Western World has succumbed to evil.

In an article published by Op-Ed News, Eric Zuesse supports my reports of indications that Washington is preparing for a nuclear first strike against Russia.

US war doctrine has been changed. US nuclear weapons are no longer restricted to a retaliatory force, but have been elevated to the role of preemptive nuclear attack. Washington pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia and is developing and deploying an ABM shield. Washington is demonizing Russia and Russia’s President with shameless lies and propaganda, thus preparing the populations of the US and its client states for war with Russia.

Washington has been convinced by neoconservatives that Russian strategic nuclear forces are in run down and unprepared condition and are sitting ducks for attack. This false belief is based on out-of-date information, a decade old, such as the argument presented in “The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy” by Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press in the April 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, a publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, an organization of American elites.

Regardless of the condition of Russian nuclear forces, the success of Washington’s first strike and degree of protection provided by Washington’s ABM shield against retaliation, the article I posted by Steven Starr, “The Lethality of Nuclear Weapons,” makes clear that nuclear war has no winners. Everyone dies.

In an article published in the December 2008 issue of Physics Today, three atmospheric scientists point out that even the substantial reduction in nuclear arsenals that the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty hoped to achieve, from 70,000 warheads in 1986 to 1700-2200 warheads by the end of 2012, did not reduce the threat that nuclear war presents to life on earth. The authors conclude that in addition to the direct blast effects of hundreds of millions of human fatalities, “the indirect effects would likely eliminate the majority of the human population.” The stratospheric smoke from firestorms would cause nuclear winter and agricultural collapse. Those who did not perish from blast and radiation would starve to death. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev understood this. Unfortunately, no successor US government has. As far as Washington is concerned, death is what happens to others, not to “the exceptional people.” (The SORT agreement apparently failed. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the nine nuclear-armed states still possess a total of 16,300 nuclear weapons.)

It is a fact that Washington has policymakers who think, incorrectly, that nuclear war is winnable and who regard nuclear war as a means of preventing the rise of Russia and China as checks on Washington’s hegemony over the world. The US government, regardless of party in office, is a massive threat to life on earth. European governments, which think of themselves as civilized, are not, because they enable Washington’s pursuit of hegemony. It is this pursuit that threatens life with extinction. The ideology that grants “exceptional, indispensable America” supremacy is an enormous threat to the world.

The destruction of seven countries in whole or in part by the West in the 21st century, with the support of “Western civilization” and the Western media, comprises powerful evidence that the leadership of the Western world is devoid of moral conscience and human compassion. Now that Washington is armed with its false doctrine of “nuclear primacy,” the outlook for humanity is very bleak.

Washington has begun the run up to the Third World War, and Europeans seem to be on board. As recently as November 2012 NATO Secretary General Rasmussen said that NATO does not regard Russia as an enemy. Now that the White House Fool and his European vassals have convinced Russia that the West is an enemy, Rasmussen declared that “we must adapt to the fact that Russia now considers us its adversary” by beefing up Ukraine’s military along with those of Eastern and Central Europe.

Last month Alexander Vershbow, former US ambassador to Russia, currently NATO Deputy Secretary General, declared Russia to be the enemy and said that the American and European taxpayers need to fork over for the military modernization “not just of Ukraine, but also Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan.”

It is possible to see these calls for more military spending as just the normal functioning of agents for the US military/security complex. Having lost “the war on terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington needs a replacement and has set about resurrecting the Cold War.

This is probably how the armaments industry, its shills, and part of Washington sees it. But the neoconservatives are more ambitious. They are not pursuing merely more profits for the military/security complex. Their goal is Washington’s hegemony over the world, which means reckless actions such as the strategic threat that the Obama regime, with the complicity of its European vassals, has brought to Russia in Ukraine.

Since last autumn the US government has been lying through its teeth about Ukraine, blaming Russia for the consequences of Washington’s actions, and demonizing Putin exactly as Washington demonized Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Assad, the Taliban, and Iran. The presstitute media and the European capitals have seconded the lies and propaganda and repeat them endlessly. Consequently, the US public’s attitude toward Russia moved sharply negative.

How do you think Russia and China see this? Russia has witnessed NATO brought to its borders, a violation of the Reagan-Gorbachev understandings. Russia has witnessed the US pull out of the ABM treaty and develop a “star wars” shield. (Whether or not the shield would work is immaterial. The purpose of the shield is to convince the politicians and the public that Americans are safe.) Russia has witnessed Washington change the role of nuclear weapons in its war doctrine from deterrent to preemptive first strike. And now Russia listens to a daily stream of lies from the West and witnesses the slaughter by Washington’s vassal in Kiev of civilians in Russian Ukraine, branded “terrorists” by Washington, by such weapons as white phosphorus with not a peep of protest from the West.

Massive attacks by artillery and air strikes on homes and apartments in Russian Ukraine were conducted on the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, while Washington and its puppets condemned China for an event that did not happen. As we now know, there was no massacre in Tiananmen Square. It was just another Washington lie like Tonkin Gulf, Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Iranian nukes, etc. It is an amazing fact that the world lives in a false reality created by Washington’s lies.

The movie, The Matrix, is a true depiction of life in the West. The population lives in a false reality created for them by their rulers. A handful of humans have escaped the false existence and are committed to bringing humans back to reality. They rescue Neo, “The One,” who they believe correctly to have the power to free humans from the false reality in which they live. Morpheus, the leader of the rebels, explains to Neo:

“The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”

I experience this every time I write a column. Protests from those determined not to be unplugged arrive in emails and on those websites that expose their writers to slander by government trolls in comment sections. Don’t believe real reality, they insist, believe the false reality.

The Matrix even encompasses part of the Russian and Chinese population, especially those educated in the West and those susceptible to Western propaganda, but on the whole those populations know the difference between lies and truth. The problem for Washington is that the propaganda that prevails over the Western peoples does not prevail over the Russian and Chinese governments.

How do you think China reacts when Washington declares the South China Sea to be an area of US national interests, allocates 60 percent of its vast fleet to the Pacific, and constructs new US air and naval bases from the Philippines to Vietnam?

Suppose all Washington intends is to keep taxpayer funding alive for the military/security complex which launders some of the taxpayers’ money and returns it as political campaign contributions. Can Russia and China take the risk of viewing Washington’s words and deeds in this limited way?

So far the Russians, and only the Russians (and Chinese), have remained sensible. Lavrov, the Foreign Minister said: “At this stage, we want to give our partners a chance to calm down. We’ll see what happens next. If absolutely baseless accusations against Russia continue, it there are attempts to pressure us with economic leverage, then we may reevaluate the situation.”

If the White House Fool, Washington’s media whores and European vassals convince Russia that war is in the cards, war will be in the cards. As there is no prospect whatsoever of NATO being able to mount a conventional offensive threat against Russia anywhere near the size and power of the German invasion force in 1941 that met with destruction, the war will be nuclear, which will mean the end of all of us.

Keep that firmly in mind as Washington and its media whores continue to beat the drums for war. Keep in mind also that a long history proves beyond all doubt that everything Washington and the presstitute media tells you is a lie serving an undeclared agenda. You cannot rectify the situation by voting Democrat instead of Republican or by voting Republican instead of Democrat.

Thomas Jefferson told us his solution: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”

There are few patriots in Washington but many tyrants.