IN HIS last act of cowardice, outgoing US President Joe Biden has done what he dreaded doing at the height of his comfort in office, authorising Ukraine to fire long-range missiles into Russia, an act the Kremlin has long described as a “red line”.
The question is, why now? So heavily are the dice loaded against the lame duck US president that his anointed heir, Kamala Harris, was mercilessly rejected by an overwhelming majority of the electorate.
This means that even if the soon-to-be ex-president Biden would have wished to rule from the grave, the brutal drubbing of the Democrats by the incoming President Donald Trump’s Republican Party has condemned whatever is left of the Biden administration to nothingness.
Trump will be inaugurated on January 20 next year, when his successor and imminent predecessor will officially vacate the White House.
Trump was the 45th President of the US and will become the 47th. In between, President Biden controlled the levers of power in Washington with an unmitigated penchant for warmongering. He chose to use Ukraine as bait for his proxy war against Russia and hoodwinked the entire NATO into the fray.
Now, left with a mere 60 days or so to leave the White House with tail between the legs, the macho element in his has caused him to risk the entire universe to a World War III, where the much-dreaded nuclear arsenals will be unleashed from both Moscow and Washington, decimating our planet.
Yet it has been oh so avoidable. All wars inevitably end in negotiations. How Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has been remotely controlled from afar to risk his countrymen and women to continue dying at astronomical numbers beggars belief.
Such is the self-centred, cruel nature of Biden.
I liken him to the Biblical Samson. He wants to go down with the pillars of the temple!
Looked at from another angle, I am inclined to conclude that President Biden’s last act on the international stage is tantamount to the last kicks of a dying horse.
He wants to create a bloody mess for the incoming anti-war President Trump. For indeed, what Biden has triggered – replete with the potential to balloon into the apocalypse – is something that he has absolutely no iota of chance to undo. It will be up to President Trump to clean up after his mess, an annoying act, for it was totally unnecessary.
Veteran US geopolitical analyst Scott Ritter, speaking to Britain’s leading leftist politician and broadcaster George Galloway, said he believed the ageing Biden was misled by the warmongers in the CIA to let loose. The warmongers around Biden want to take a chance, to gamble dangerously in the last few weeks of Biden’s days as a world leader. The aim is to benefit the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) that always maks a killing – pardon the pun – during wars.
Peace means hardship to such a lot. But unfortunately, their kind is found in the high echelons of Biden’s and Harris’ Democratic Party.
Biden’s exposition of the international community to the looming dangers of a global conflict of unprecedented degree that is so incomprehensible is not funny.
Within 24 hours of granting Zelensky the green light he had refused him for the past two years, Ukraine fired the US long-range missile deep into the Russian territory.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has steadfastly maintained that any use of foreign weapons by Ukraine into the Russian territory would be a declaration of war between the supplier country and Russia.
Predictably, the UK and France echoed Biden’s misplaced call for the escalation of the Ukraine war. Although Germany has already declared its opposition to the use of their supplied weapons inside the Russian territory, the bulk of the EU could emulate Washington’s misguided turn in policy.
After all, Europe’s foreign policy is sadly based on the dictate of “monkey-see, monkey-do”. Unwritten as their EU foreign policy might be, it was the great Shakespeare who opined that “by their actions shall ye see them”.
The dangers in the Biden-triggered escalation have been swift. Just a day after the Ukrainian forces used the US and UK long-range weapons against Moscow, Russia launched a trans-continental missile against Ukraine. It was the very first time the Russians had used the dangerous missile that has the capability to carry a nuclear warhead.
In fact, in response to Biden’s escalation miscalculation, the Kremlin announced that President Putin has signed into law an updated version of the use of nuclear weapons. Any perceived existential threat to Russia’s security will be dealt with through the country’s nuclear capability. Scary.
Ironically, the world’s only hope for averting the potential of a WWIII – led by both Russia and the US – is Donald Trump.
If Trump, and only “if”, he could use his aides to quickly reach out to President Putin and assure him of the absence of appetite for a nuclear war, could perhaps the Russians hold the fire.
While on his campaign trail for the November elections, Trump declared his unequivocal opposition to the Ukraine war. He promised to stop it on day one of his office term.
This promise, seemingly, is what has triggered Biden & Co into a hurried, last-ditch effort to fulfil what they thought an election victory that eluded them would have given them sufficient time to toy around with the idea of a world war.
The overwhelming majority of the global community, including the bulk majority that ejected Biden’s party from office, is pro-peace.
Power in the hands of rejected politicians can be a dangerous weapon. For it tends to turn even the best minds into suicidal acts of sheer folly, as Biden has proven.
* Abbey Makoe is founder and editor-in-chief of the Global South Media Network. The views expressed here are his own.