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  Title	‘World War III' and Putin's solar cult
  ID	4742780
  External ID	7361805009
  Author	Telewizja Polska
  Published Date	Dec. 4, 2024, 9:48 a.m.
  Summary	Nuclear world war is like monsters from horror movies. Movies about them are very popular and successful at the box office, sometimes they even carry a message, but they are just movies. In reality -
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  URL	https://en.belsat.eu/83821712/world-war-iii-and-putins-solar-cult
  Sentiment	Negative: 0.20128    Neutral: 0.76788    Positive: 0.03084
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  Content ID	2844444
  Key	05ec5ae9-8657-4ea8-ab15-db0ac8926792
  Content	Nuclear world war is like monsters from horror movies. Movies about them are very popular and successful at the box office, sometimes they even carry a message, but they are just movies. In reality - nuclear war does not threaten us, and world war has been here for a long time. Do monsters exist? Yes and no. In the real sense - of course they don't exist. In the spiritual, psychological, or cultural sense - yes, they do. As a projection of the collective unconscious. A monster is a great, untamed, murderous force. A creature from hell. The image of the monster is made up of all the fears that humanity can have. Fear of death, of the destructive forces of nature, of other people, of the self, of transcendence. One could go on and on. The banality of evil Of course, there is no shortage of evil in the world. People sometimes talk about "monsters in human skin," tyrants or serial killers. But the truth is one that Hannah Arendt articulated long ago. Real evil is trivial. And so it is with wars. Man, especially modern man, tends to see them as a rare, unexpected catastrophe, an element. Something absolutely unique that you don't know where it comes from. And he is especially afraid of a war that, like a monster, has never existed. That is, nuclear war. He is fascinated and terrified by the great power of a nuclear explosion and its aftermath. He gives this weapon an almost "sacred" character. In today's secular world, people are all the more inclined to see something "sacred" everywhere. This applies to politicians, scientists, and entire societies. The truth, however, is that the human condition has changed little over the centuries. Wars have been, are, and will be. This is very sad, but such are the banal realities. Of course, this doesn't mean that one should accept it, but fears are not going to help build a peaceful world. After the Second World War, a large part of humanity somewhat forgot about wars, succumbing to the illusion that a time of peace had come. But it was an illusion. For the more people clung to the belief that there was peace, the greater the fear of war, and especially of nuclear weapons. Yes, the horrific scenes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not "fake news." But more people died from conventional bombing of European cities during World War II than from nuclear weapons. Not to mention war crimes and genocide. The world has had continuous armed conflicts without the use of nuclear weapons, and this fact is mostly denied (because we don't remember the wars at all, or only sometimes and some). Instead of focusing on how to build a more just world in which wars will actually be rare, it is easier to feed fears. In the same way that it's easier to let go of a horror movie than a serious artistic film that requires some effort on the part of the viewer to inspire a change in life. Especially since politicians, and especially dictators, take great care to make people live in fear. Now, once again, the Kremlin has resorted to threats of mass destruction and the "World War III" card. Mars attacks It has been doing this periodically since the 1940s. It threatens various nations with mass destruction because... it pays off. Threats of nuclear annihilation have always landed and still do. As a result, Moscow means more than it would have without this factor. Vladimir Putin is convinced that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe. As a great "historical reconstructionist," he is trying to take the world back to the times of great nuclear crises, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Only in a repeat of history, he would like Russia, not the US, to win the game of nerves. The Kremlin's host is not a madman, although he would like to be seen in the West as someone they fear. Instead, he has many complexes. T he policy of intimidation has always found fertile ground. Recall the mood and Western culture during the Cold War, the fear of nuclear annihilation, whether explicitly or symbolically expressed. Movies like "The Last Shore", "The Day After" or "Dr. Strangelove". Countless C-grade movies from the 1950s and 1960s about an alien attack on the US. Or "Terminator," where nuclear annihilation is caused by computers. Pacifists promoted the slogan "better red than dead" ("better to be a communist than dead"). This was picked up by Western, democratic politicians to score electoral points. Especially left-wing ones at the time, but not only. Of course, Soviet agents of influence were also active, but to tell the truth, they didn't have to try very hard, people were afraid of themselves. And the more prosperity there was in the West, the better life was, the more fear grew. This did not disappear with the end of the Cold War. People only stopped fearing nuclear war a little. Russia did not stop scaring people with it. Even the weaker, supposedly pro-Western and weak Russia of the Yeltsin era in the 1990s tried to use nuclear blackmail to prevent NATO expansion. And even then it had some effect, as Moscow received an informal promise that the Alliance's troops and facilities would not be built in Central European countries. It must be admitted that the West kept this promise until the first aggression against Ukraine in 2014-15. All the more reason for Putin to resort to nuclear blackmail. The full-scale war in Ukraine is the culmination of this blackmail. Kremlin propagandists have talked countless times about reducing not only Ukrainian cities to ashes, but also NATO countries. Paradoxically, the West is less subject to this than it used to be. This may be because these threats have suddenly become less relevant. If Western elites are somehow "sparing" Russia, for example by not giving Ukraine everything it needs to win, it is not out of fear of nuclear war, but out of fear of what will happen if chaos reigns in Russia. For they are already thinking ahead to a future confrontation with China. There is a growing realization that nuclear weapons are not very effective weapons from a military point of view. They gave the U.S. an advantage only when it had them as the only one and under the specific conditions of the war with the then Japan. When the USSR, China, and other countries acquired nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons basically ceased to make military sense. When there was a nuclear balance between the US and the USSR, the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) doctrine was in effect. The use of nuclear weapons (even tactical ones) by any country is military, strategic and political nonsense. Wars are not fought to reduce everything to ashes, but to win, to gain resources, territory. Nobody wins with nuclear weapons. Not even a nuclear superpower in a conflict with a country without such weapons. The war in Ukraine is a war of a non-nuclear country against a nuclear one. In the past, nuclear countries have lost wars against non-nuclear countries, such as the US against Vietnam or the USSR against Afghanistan. Russia is well aware that NATO has a huge advantage over it in conventional forces, and if a conventional war were to break out, the West (even without US involvement) could destroy the Russian army by conventional means alone with few losses of its own. What is different is the hypothetical transfer of the confrontation to the nuclear level. Today, the U.S., Britain, and France have a very large nuclear advantage over Russia, but what if they could destroy Russia while being half destroyed themselves? Ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads are difficult to shoot down even by modern missile defense systems. Nuclear weapons are useful only as a political factor, more precisely, they are useful to scare. They also increase prestige in the international arena. Individual countries wanted to acquire them only because strategic rivals had them. On the other hand, nuclear weapons cost a lot. Maintenance, production, depreciation, security. This money is better spent on developing a conventional army. A good example is Turkey. This superpower, resurgent after more than 100 years, does not care at all that it does not have nuclear weapons. It "only" needs a strong conventional army. Enter the Oreshnik missile Kremlin trolls and bots, agents of influence, "useful idiots," and political and media cynics playing on people's fears after the shelling of Dnipro with an alleged new ballistic missile actively sowed panic. Politicians like the leaders of Slovakia, Hungary and Serbia came to the rescue. In Poland, too, there are politicians who want to capitalize on the fear of nuclear weapons. Unlike during the Cold War, in the West today it is politicians and circles on the right rather than the left (if you don't count the far left) who are promoting pseudo-pacifism based on fear of Russia. Once again, the well-known American "conservative" videoblogger Tucker Carlson went to Moscow. To say that the world is facing a nuclear war and a new Cuban missile crisis. S o in recent days the pseudo-sacred narrative of World War III has returned. But this time there is a new element. For Putin himself ... has begun to disavow the use of nuclear weapons (although his propaganda is still in nuclear scare mode). It's as if he's realized that nuclear threats are beginning to devalue. Instead, he upped the ante. He said that the alleged new Oriesznik missile could be armed with a mysterious payload with an explosion temperature close to that of the sun. It's not clear what kind of payload it is, it's a matter of faith. It's no longer a threat of destruction with nuclear energy, it's a threat of destruction with energy with the power of the sun. It's hard not to notice once again the pseudo-mystical nature of this propaganda. It is all designed, as usual, to make us, like the free world, afraid, to give way to Russia, to allow more wars and genocides to the tyrants of this world. So that we have to deal with imaginary evils (like monsters) and not with the real, banal, everyday evils of this world. World War III or what? Pseudo-sacrilegious is the very name "World War III" as it is colloquially understood. Many imaginary meanings are given to this Roman numeral and two words. It inspires fear, horror. It is one of the imaginary monsters of this universe of fear and trembling in question. However, Russian journalist and émigré Stanislav Belkovsky , author of important investigative books on Putin and modern Russia, argues that World War III has already happened, and World War IV has been going on for a long time anyway. So there is no need to fear the unknown, but to deal with reality. According to him, World War III was the Cold War. True, from a European perspective it may seem that it was only a "cold" war. But there is an extreme Eurocentrism in this. Because the confrontation between the communist bloc and the free world was accompanied by numerous "proxy wars" in other regions of the world. Millions of people died in them. For the local populations, these wars were as terrible as World War II was for Europeans. Civilians died en masse, soldiers died by the thousands, sometimes American (Korea, Vietnam) or Soviet (Afghanistan). This World War III was not only fought on different fronts, but also had a hybrid character. Moscow supported terrorists or various extreme movements in the West, the Middle East or Latin America. The West supported the democratic opposition in the Eastern bloc or supplied arms to Moscow's enemies in the world, including actors far from democracy, such as dictators or the Afghan mujahideen. World War III, according to Belkovsky's classification, ended in 1989-91 with a victory for the West. According to the expert, World War IV is currently underway, which began with Putin's first aggression against Ukraine. The violation of borders in Europe was accompanied by the launch of hybrid attacks against the West. Elites and ordinary people in the West (except perhaps in the countries of "New Europe") thought that we were still at peace and that nothing special was happening. But this was self-deception. On February 24, 2022, World War IV entered a new, hotter and bloodier stage. In Ukraine we are witnessing a war of intensity and cruelty comparable to the Second World War or the Korean or Vietnam wars. Mariupol has been destroyed to the same extent as Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but with conventional weapons. In the West, Russian hybrid attacks have intensified and become more brazen and dangerous. With close cooperation between Russia and Iran, armed conflicts have spread to the Middle East (attack on Israel, Gaza, war in Lebanon, now the resumption of the war in Syria). There is a danger that it will spread to the Far East, as China openly threatens Taiwan, North Korea again threatens South Korea and Japan, and has joined the war in Ukraine. More countries are joining World War IV. Like Turkey, which many observers believe is trying to take advantage of a moment of weakness in Syria for Russia and Iran. There is no end to the conflicts in sight. Even a ceasefire in Ukraine will not stop World War IV. It can be stopped by a new major peace conference, at least involving the northern hemisphere. Or by the defeat of tyrants, as in the Cold War, when the USSR collapsed. And a new order, new rules - as after every world war. World War IV, like every world war, could have been prevented, but the West was asleep. But let's go back to history. Counting the world wars only from the war of 1914-1918 is also questionable. People were rightly shocked by the scale of industrial killing and the scope of modern wars, brought about by the development of technology and various ideologies, especially totalitarian ones. That is why they first called World War I the Great War, and then, when another great war occurred, they began to talk about World Wars I and II. And about the third - that it never happened. However, there is no lack of contemporary historians who propose to treat the period 1914-1945 as the period of the Great European War, which moved to other continents, since there were still European colonies. There is no denying the logic of this argument. There is also no shortage of historians who point out that wars that can be called world wars took place even earlier. What do we consider the criteria for a world war? The amount of killing? Perhaps the 20th century did indeed kill the most people and in the most gruesome ways. But the more important criteria for calling it a world war are the involvement of the world's major powers and the coverage of a significant area of the known world. From this perspective, the Thirty Years' War in the 17th century can be considered the first world war, as Europe was then at the center of the world. Formally or informally, all of the great powers that were then centered in Europe participated in this war. For the first time in history, civilians suffered greatly. This war led to epochal changes in Europe, led to a general change in the understanding of the state, nation, religion, international relations, borders. The next war that had a scope that could be called global was also the Napoleonic Wars. They say wars, but they refer to the period of the reign of the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and his expansion from 1800-1815. The major world powers of the time clashed. Military actions took place at sea and on land, from the Iberian Peninsula to Moscow. They involved vast numbers of people. Battles were also fought in Africa. The Napoleonic Wars led to major changes in Europe, culminating in the Congress of Vienna, which created a new security architecture and philosophy of international relations. The Crimean War (1853-86) can also be considered a world war. It was fought across several seas (including the Baltic) and two continents. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were killed. It involved the major powers of the time. It also led to major changes in the balance of power in the world. The aforementioned 1964 black comedy by Stanley Kubrick is fully titled "Dr. Strangelove, or How I Stopped Worrying and Loved the Bomb". In this movie, made shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis, a nuclear war is triggered by the stupidity of American and Soviet politicians and military officers. Years later, wiser by decades of experience, perhaps we should not "love the bomb" because we know that war is indeed a terrible thing, but we should still stop worrying. Today we know that it is foolish to succumb to blackmail and fear of the unknown. Blackmail and fear are the weapons of warmongers. Marcin Herman/belsat.eu Editors may not share the author's views.
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