August 5, 2015 — It is high time to break the most dangerous taboo of the
present: to know and act on the acute possibility, that mankind may be
annihilated within days or weeks.
On the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world
stands closer to the brink of thermonuclear war than at any time since the Cuban
Missile Crisis of 1962. The Obama Administration and NATO have placed mankind in
jeopardy of sudden extinction through a series of senseless provocations
directed against Russia, primarily, and China second.
When the Iron Curtain came down, an understanding was reached that, in return
for Soviet acceptance of German re-unification within NATO, there would be no
further eastward expansion of NATO. Those who looked forward to a post-Cold War
Europe of stability and cooperation, hoped that nations with potentially
powerful industrial economies, such as Poland and then-Czechoslovakia, as well
as — after the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union — Ukraine, would serve as a
bridge between the European Union and an emerging Eurasian economic bloc.
All of those fundamental war-prevention agreements have now been violated.
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland,
publicly boasted in December 2013 that the US had spent $5 billion on "color
revolutions" to draw Ukraine into the European Union, and, eventually, into
NATO.
The US unilaterally withdrew from the ABM Treaty in order to deploy a missile
defense system in Eastern and Southern Europe, ostensibly aimed at Iran, but
actually targeted at Russia. Last week, the Obama Administration confirmed this
reality by announcing the deployment would go forward, despite the P5+1 deal
with Iran. Russian officials have charged, all along, that the US unilateral BMD
in Europe was part of a plan for a pre-emptive thermonuclear strike capability
against Russia.
Deployment of that ABM system is well underway in Romania and Poland, and the
first three ship-based AEGIS missile defense systems are already in place and
have conducted maneuvers in the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, both bordering
Russian territory.
Now reports have surfaced that the upcoming Trident Juncture 15 NATO
exercises will include rehearsals of use of nuclear weapons against Russia.
Washington is moving ahead with production and deployment of a new generation of
tactical nuclear weapons, the B-61-12, which can reach targets inside Russian
territory from F-35 stealth fighter jets. An estimated 500 of the B-61-12
nuclear weapons are to be produced, with current plans calling for about 200 of
them to be deployed on continental Europe.
These unmistakable provocations have not gone unnoticed in the East and West.
Since the onset of the Ukraine coup in November 2013, Russia has gone through
major upgrading of its entire thermonuclear strategic force. Russian defense
officials have publicly warned that they have developed and deployed an
undefeatable nuclear second strike. To demonstrate this, Russian strategic
bombers and submarines have engaged in exercises in international waters near
NATO territories.
During the duration of the month of August, there is a grave danger of
provocations against Russia by President Obama, who could use the occasion of
the Congressional recess to launch a war. A wide range of influential figures
has already voiced these concerns, including retired Russian and American flag
officers. The decision of Obama, to change the rules of engagement of the US Air
Force in Syria without Congressional approval three days after Congress went
into recess, bringing about the immediate danger of an escalation into a war
against Syria, which the Congress voted against two years ago, underlines the
acuteness of the danger.
In 1914 the world was sleepwalking into the catastrophe. Today, with arsenals
of thermonuclear weapons sufficient to extinguish civilization dozens of times
over, the world is sleepwalking again to the abyss.
We, the undersigned, demand the immediate stop of the confrontation against
Russia and China and a return to political solutions of all conflicts.
(In signing this statement, I authorize my name to appear in its
publication.)
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