Chris Marsden
Liz Truss, foreign secretary and most likely the next Conservative prime minister of the UK, has declared that she would launch a nuclear strike on Russia, even though the result would be “global annihilation.”
During a Tory Party leadership husting in Birmingham Tuesday to determine who will replace Boris Johnson, John Pienaar of Times Radio told Truss that if she became prime minister, she would be quickly shown the procedures for launching nuclear missiles from Britain’s Trident submarines. “It would mean global annihilation,” Pienaar said. “I won’t ask you if you would press the button, you’ll say yes, but faced with that task I would feel physically sick. How does that thought make you feel?”
With dead eyes and an emotionless expression, Truss replied, “I think it’s an important duty of the Prime Minister and I’m ready to do that.”
“I’m ready to do that,” she repeated, soliciting a round of applause from the assembled Tories.
Truss’s robotic and instantaneous reply must sound a warning to workers throughout the world as to how close we now stand to nuclear Armageddon.
She speaks as one of the foremost hawks among the NATO powers in supporting the proxy war against Russia being waged by the Ukrainian regime and a leading propagandist for direct military conflict with Moscow. In February, Russian President Vladimir Putin put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov citing “unacceptable” remarks “by various representatives at various levels” about possible “clashes” between NATO and Moscow: “I would not call the authors of these statements by name, although it was the British foreign minister.”
Truss had recently told Sky News, “If we don’t stop Putin in Ukraine, we are going to see others under threat: the Baltics, Poland, Moldova, and it could end up in a conflict with NATO.”
But Truss also speaks on behalf of the entire British ruling class. Not only would her leadership rival Rishi Sunak have also replied in the affirmative, but so would any other member of the UK political establishment seeking the country’s highest office.
Ever since tensions with Russia and China began to be ratcheted up by London and Washington, it has become necessary to openly declare a readiness to start a nuclear war. This began in 2015, when Jeremy Corbyn first won leadership of the Labour Party, above all based on his opposition to the Iraq war and leadership of the Stop the War Coalition. When asked in an interview on September 15, 2015 whether he would instruct the UK’s defence chiefs to use the Trident nuclear weapons system if he became prime minister, Corbyn said no. He came under relentless attack, with the Tories, Blairites and military figures declaring him unfit for office, and he capitulated on all fronts.
In a July 18, 2016 debate, then-newly installed Tory Prime Minister Theresa May declared her own readiness to launch a nuclear strike framed as an attack on Corbyn. Corbyn’s replacement as Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, was also asked by the BBC on February 10 this year whether he would be willing to use nuclear weapons and replied, “Of course.” This was just 14 days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Starmer was speaking following a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, on which he commented, “Whatever challenges we have with the government, when it comes to Russian aggression we stand together.”
This is the broader international significance of Truss’s declaration for nuclear war. Not only is this the policy of British imperialism. It is the policy being actively pursued by all the NATO powers, led by the US.
The NATO summit in Madrid, Spain in June adopted a strategy document outlining plans to militarize the European continent, massively escalate the war with Russia, and prepare for war with China. It pledged specifically to “deliver the full range of forces” needed “for high-intensity, multi-domain warfighting against nuclear-armed peer-competitors.”
Russia and China were named respectively as a “threat” and a “challenge” to “our interests.” NATO’s “nuclear deterrence posture”, centred on US nuclear weapons “forward-deployed in Europe” is placed at the centre of a strategy to “deter, defend, contest and deny across all domains and directions”.
NATO military figures already feel free to openly discuss waging nuclear war. At a symposium in June, the head of the German Luftwaffe, Ingo Gerhartz, declared, “For credible deterrence, we need both the means and the political will to implement nuclear deterrence, if necessary,” before adding, “Putin, don’t mess with us!” On August 13, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, the former commanding officer of the UK’s Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment, wrote in the Telegraph to insist, “Britain should prepare for nuclear war.”
Truss translated these discussions into the fascistic barks and grunts that have made her the darling of the Tory Party.
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