The Western World Retreats Deeper Into Unreality
Paul Craig Roberts

Don’t you think it is strange that humanity faces the possibility of extinction and there is no peace movement?  Does our insouciance extend so far that we are indifferent to our existence?  Even alternative media sites such as Simplicius downplay the threat

On November 18, 2024, the US and NATO fired from Ukrainian soil missiles into Russia despite the Russian government’s clear announcement that such reckless action would initiate war between the West and Russia.  The Western presstitutes reported that Ukraine fired the US and UK supplied missiles, but this is a lie.  The Ukrainians are not trained to operate the missile system and do not have the capability to target them.  The missiles have to be operated by US/NATO personnel.

The missiles were intercepted by Russian air defense.  However, their firing placed the US and NATO at war with Russia.  Russia responded by demonstrating a new missile, for which the West has no counterpart or ability to deter, to completely destroy a Ukrainian military production facility. Putin’s hope was that the demonstration of the new hypersonic Russian missile would deter further attacks.  But it did not.  It is ironic that Putin’s attempt to limit conflict by confining it to Donbas gave the West the opportunity to greatly widen the war.

On November 23 and November 25 the US/NATO again fired missiles into Russia.  We are awaiting the Russian response.

Putin, a democratically elected leader with popular support unmatched by any Western leader, Trump included, is disadvantaged in his dealing with the West by his humanitarianism.  He is slow to recognize evil, and responds after the event to the Western threat to Russia’s existence  rather than in a proactive way.  All the initiative rests with the West.

It is likely that Putin has noticed that every new reckless action floated by the West as a way of aiding Ukraine was first denied and then approved. Step by step initially denied weapon system after system has been approved, including long-range missiles that Washington said would never be sent.  When they were sent, Washington said the missiles would never be permitted to be used beyond the battlefield.

Now the missiles, that would never be sent or used beyond the battlefield, have been used 3 times to strike inside Mother Russia herself.  This irresponsible, reckless action by the Biden regime and NATO has been done in the face of the clear statement by the Russian government that it means the US and NATO are at war with Russia, and it is in defiance of revised Russian military doctrine that now permits Russia to attack any country, regardless of whether it is a nuclear power, with nuclear weapons if the country attacks Russia with conventional weapons. The doctrine allows all NATO countries, including the US, to be attacked with nuclear weapons if any country allied with them, such as Ukraine, attacks Russia with conventional weapons. In the context of the conflict in Ukraine, attacking Russia means beyond the battlefield area itself.

With the three missile attacks inside Mother Russia beyond the battlefield itself, Washington and NATO have made it legal under Russian war doctrine for the West to receive a Russian nuclear attack.  As I have previously written, only an insane government in Washington would open the door to nuclear war. It is Putin’s patience with the West that is preventing nuclear war.

Putin is likely to keep his patience with the insanity of the West until Trump is in office and Putin determines whether a mutual defense treaty, denied by the insane Biden regime, is possible with the Trump regime. If not, there is no basis for Putin’s hope of avoiding a major war. Sooner or later Putin will have to move from a reactive mode to a proactive mode, if Russia is to be protected. Indeed, determined to poison the relationship for Trump, Washington could target the Kursk nuclear plant and send radioactivity over Russia or target Moscow itself. Either of these could terminate Putin’s patience.

Not many of Trump’s appointments are very promising in regard to ending the conflict. The director of the Russian Federal Security Service has said that Trump’s election “is unlikely to lead to radical changes in Washington’s foreign policy.” He expects more provocations.

The ignored question is how many more provocations will Putin accept before his humanity is overruled by his commitment to Russia?

When we witness, as we clearly do, the West pushing Putin into this decision, how can we conclude anything else but that the West is pushing the world into nuclear armageddon? According to Tass, the Russian news service, President-elect Trump has not contacted Putin. Consequently, Trump might never get his 24 hours during which to end the conflict. The world might be over by then.  I find it extraordinary that Trump has made no attempt to defuse the dangerous situation.

There are in Poland and Romania US missile bases on Russia’s border with missile systems that can fire nuclear weapons into Russia.  Putin has complained about the threat these US bases present for many years. Washington has not removed them, and Putin has  done nothing about them.  If the US and NATO continue firing missiles from Ukraine into Russia in the face of Putin’s clear warnings, Putin, if he is realistic, must recognize that the Polish and Romanian US missile bases are threats of the highest order.  Both, as the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman recently said, are on Russia’s target list for elimination.

The US response as voiced by White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby  is:  “We take our Article 5 commitments to our NATO Allies incredibly seriously. It’s rock-solid, and that’s not going to change.”  In other words, if Russia protects herself from the possibility of US nuclear attack, Washington will launch WW III.  The Washington morons believe that having nuclear capable missile bases on Russia’s borders with Poland and Romania are worth a nuclear war.  Tell me this is not insanity.

Which is extreme, my fact-based warning, or the irresponsible actions of delusional people in Washington lost in their own false narratives, in their own hubris and mistaken belief in their invincibility and righteousness?

And delusion it is.  Here is Frederick Starr, chairman of the Central Asia Caucasus Institute at the American Foreign Policy Council, proclaiming that Putin has lost the conflict with  Ukraine and faces internal overthrow. Putin’s home front is collapsing, he says:  https://nationalinterest.org/feature/ukraine-and-russia’s-collapsing-home-front-213869 

What are the facts?  The Ukrainian front is collapsing.  The collapse is so complete that NATO is discussing supplying Ukraine with nuclear weapons.   Putin has the strongest public support of all leaders on Earth, reelected to office for 25 years with margins that no Western leader can hope for, not even Trump. But according to Frederick Starr “Putin has already lost the war and the only question is what face-saving measures can be extracted through a settlement.”  Starr reports that Putin’s defeat is so complete that his presidency is at risk.

Next we have The Telegraph, once a reasonable English Tory newspaper,  speaking hyper-nonsense. The Telegraph reports a week after Russia demonstrates in action a new weapon system of which  the “advanced” West has not even dreamed that “Putin would be crazy to take on the West because modern weapons production in Russia is impossible without Western components.” So where did the Oreshnik missile come from?

I do not know of any Western weapon system that does not have a superior Russian counterpart.  Clearly in Ukraine the vaunted Western weapons have been easily defeated.  Indeed, driven off the field of battle. 

The “leaders” of the Western world live in belief in their own lies and propaganda.  Their propaganda has taken control of their own thinking, making them ignorant of reality. Something is seriously wrong with Western peoples that they elect to office utterly stupid people capable of destroying life of earth simply on the basis of the ignorance resulting from their self-indoctrination.

Unless Trump can survive the Deep State, rise to the challenge and make peace the victory to be achieved, the world seems doomed.

Hon. Paul Craig Roberts is the John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. A former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service, he is a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles and a columnist for Investor's Business Daily. In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists.

He was Distinguished Fellow at the Cato Institute from 1993 to 1996. From 1982 through 1993, he held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. During 1981-82 he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. President Reagan and Treasury Secretary Regan credited him with a major role in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, and he was awarded the Treasury Department's Meritorious Service Award for "his outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy." From 1975 to 1978, Dr. Roberts served on the congressional staff where he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill and played a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy.

In 1987 the French government recognized him as "the artisan of a renewal in economic science and policy after half a century of state interventionism" and inducted him into the Legion of Honor.

Dr. Roberts' latest books are The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with IPE Fellow Lawrence Stratton, and published by Prima Publishing in May 2000, and Chile: Two Visions - The Allende-Pinochet Era, co-authored with IPE Fellow Karen Araujo, and published in Spanish by Universidad Nacional Andres Bello in Santiago, Chile, in November 2000. The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America, co-authored with IPE Fellow Karen LaFollette Araujo, was published by Oxford University Press in 1997. A Spanish language edition was published by Oxford in 1999. The New Colorline: How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, was published by Regnery in 1995. A paperback edition was published in 1997. Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, co-authored with Karen LaFollette, was published by the Cato Institute in 1990. Harvard University Press published his book, The Supply-Side Revolution, in 1984. Widely reviewed and favorably received, the book was praised by Forbes as "a timely masterpiece that will have real impact on economic thinking in the years ahead." Dr. Roberts is the author of Alienation and the Soviet Economy, published in 1971 and republished in 1990. He is the author of Marx's Theory of Exchange, Alienation and Crisis, published in 1973 and republished in 1983. A Spanish language edition was published in 1974.

Dr. Roberts has held numerous academic appointments. He has contributed chapters to numerous books and has published many articles in journals of scholarship, including the Journal of Political Economy, Oxford Economic Papers, Journal of Law and Economics, Studies in Banking and Finance, Journal of Monetary Economics, Public Finance Quarterly, Public Choice, Classica et Mediaevalia, Ethics, Slavic Review, Soviet Studies, Rivista de Political Economica, and Zeitschrift fur Wirtschafspolitik. He has entries in the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Economics and the New Palgrave Dictionary of Money and Finance. He has contributed to Commentary, The Public Interest, The National Interest, Harper's, the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Fortune, London Times, The Financial Times, TLS, The Spectator, Il Sole 24 Ore, Le Figaro, Liberation, and the Nihon Keizai Shimbun. He has testified before committees of Congress on 30 occasions.

Dr. Roberts was educated at the Georgia Institute of Technology (B.S.), the University of Virginia (Ph.D.), the University of California at Berkeley and Oxford University where he was a member of Merton College.

He is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the World, The Dictionary of International Biography, Outstanding People of the Twentieth Century, and 1000 Leaders of World Influence. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: [email protected]

www.paulcraigroberts.org