Europe Must Not Be a Vassal to Trump’s USA
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 19 Dec 2016
John Scales Avery – TRANSCEND Media Service
15 Dec 2016 – Today human civilization and the biosphere face two existential threats: catastrophic climate change, and thermonuclear war. Each of these disasters could cause mass extinctions, and each could make large portions of the earth permanently uninhabitable. The hubris of oligarchic leaders in the United States is leading the world directly towards both these threats; and this is particularly true after the nightmarish 2016 November election, which brought an unstable, violence-advocating, racist, narcissistic, climate change denier to the White House.
Donald Trump’s proposed Cabinet is heavy with aggressive retired generals, and for Secretary of State, he has picked Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson. In his campaign speeches, Trump promised that of elected, he would pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement. As President-Elect he has said that he would end NASA’s climate research, and he has threateningly demanded a list of all scientists who worked with the Obama Administration on the issue of climate change.
Meanwhile, the Arctic is warming at a completely unprecedented rate. If the shallow polar seas become ice-free in the summers, there is a danger that the enormous amounts methane, stored on sea floors in the form of hydrate crystals, will be released into the atmosphere, triggering a feed-back loop leading to even more rapidly accelerated warming. If Arctic warming continues, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet will produce sea level rises that will eventually drown coastal regions throughout the world.
In the long run, feedback-driven climate change could lead to a massive loss of life, comparable to the Permian-Triasic Extinction, during which 90% of all marine species and 70% of all land-based vertebrate species vanished forever.
http://www.countercurrents.org/avery020514.htm
Equally worrying are the hubristic attempts of US oligarchs to dominate the world through military force. Both Russia and China are seen as threats to US military and economic dominance, and each of these enormous nuclear-armed countires has been surrounded by threatening rings of US bases, themselves armed with nuclear weapons. It is doubtful that leaders of any country actually wish to initiate a catastrophic nuclear war, but when such omnicidal weapons are used as threats in the power games of governments, there is a grave danger that they will actually be used. The documentary film maker John Pilger has recently released a film entitled “The Coming War With China”, which will hopefully make the public more aware of these dangers.
https://www.transcend.org/tms/2016/12/the-coming-war-on-china-2/
If we wish to understand how the Russians and Chinese feel when surrounded by aggressive nuclear-armed US bases on their very doorsteps, we can remember the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the Kennedy Administration was thrown into a panic by the fact that nuclear missiles had been brought close to the United States. Do not the Russians feel similarly threatened by the US-supported coup in Ukraine, and by massive NATO military exercises on their borders? Does not China feel threatened by the US bases and naval buildup in the South China Sea?
https://human-wrongs-watch.net/2015/03/30/europe-must-not-be-forced-into-a-nuclear-war-with-russia/
European countries have been in the habit of blindly following US leadership. This habit dates back to World War I and especially to II, when Europe owed its deliverance from fascism to American military and economic power. Today, however, the United States itself has a government that might be described as neofascist; and the old habit has become a very bad habit indeed. We must declare our independence. Europe must not be a vassal to Trump’s USA!
Some suggestions for further reading:
http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/12/14/trump-trumpets-his-real-plans/
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46020.htm
http://www.ipsnews.net/author/john-scales-avery/
https://human-wrongs-watch.net/2015/03/30/europe-must-not-be-forced-into-a-nuclear-war-with-russia/
https://www.transcend.org/tms/2016/12/this-is-what-american-fascism-is-going-to-look-like/
https://human-wrongs-watch.net/2016/03/15/peace/
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John Scales Avery, Ph.D., who was part of a group that shared the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize for their work in organizing the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network and Associate Professor Emeritus at the H.C. Ørsted Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is chairman of both the Danish National Pugwash Group and the Danish Peace Academy and received his training in theoretical physics and theoretical chemistry at M.I.T., the University of Chicago and the University of London. He is the author of numerous books and articles both on scientific topics and on broader social questions. His most recent book is Civilization’s Crisis in the 21st Century (pdf).
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 19 Dec 2016.
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