Tag: cuban-missile-crisis

We are Escalating Towards World War Three

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (25.08.2026), trying to evade the censors whilst raising the issue of the Ukraine War. So many on the Left, as well as everyone else, supports Ukraine against Russia. I, too, feel for the Ukrainian working class experiencing such barbarism and powerlessness. But I find any identification of the Ukrainian State being a beleaguered victim against Russian totalitarianism so devoid of historic understanding as to be without any foundation. In short, Western governments provided Ukraine with economic, political, and military assistance, especially after 2014 and heavily after 2022. NATO expanded eastward after the Cold War and pressed hard, with NATO expansion including countries such as Poland and the Baltic states seeking membership. It was intended place NATO bases with nuclear weapons on the borders with Russia, now about to happen. This is a provocation not unlike the lead-up to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 after Turkey accepted US nuclear-capable Jupiter missiles and Russia tried similar placements. We came close to nuclear Armageddon back then. Of course, Russia was a Communist State-Capitalist regime at the time and is now an authoritarian gangster-capitalist regime, both situations representing war between rival imperialisms. Socialists do not support Russia’s full scale invasion in 2022 but can explain it. Challenging NATO does not imply support for the Russian State. This unwinable war is engaging wider forces towards terrifying scenarios. My problem is, when I try to have this discussion let alone put the facts into print I am censored. Mainstream media censors not only any criticism of Ukraine’s role as proxy for NATO in this war, but also the more simple call for Peace, ceasefire or negotiations. I’m surprised this even got into print. Whatever your analysis, the UK Prime Minister has just ramped-up the anti and pulled Britain into the conflict. Idiot!

My unedited version below, or expand the picture of the newspaper article to read the acceptable version (carefully crafted):

The years ahead are largely uncharted. There is little if any certainty. This may evoke thoughts of disruption caused by climate change or the AI technology revolution. Or the global economic debt crisis, USA’s $4TN debt, record personal debt across the UK, or inflation rising so much faster than the officially distorted CPI figures. Public services deprioritised, privatised and crumbling. And the rise of a new and heavily financed far-Right, being fast-tracked internationally.

Any talk of the future evokes a wholly different emotion from 20 years ago.

One vision dominates above all others. War. 

War is in every headline every day, the Prime Minister offering blueprints for Storm Shadow SCALP missiles to Ukraine, the Russian Ambassador being recalled from Britain, and Putin threatening UK cities due to the use of British-made drones on civilian targets inside Russia. 

Images of today’s war highlights, should we choose to watch them, are of civilian blood and gore, massive fireballs, collapsed homes and smoking lands. The narrative is of military expansion, widening and worsening violence, displacement and immiserisation. 

The politicians and administrators who seek to create our future a first priority – rearmament. And fast. It is almost impossible to enter a war overnight. You need more guns, and as Trump has learnt, to establish the arsenals to produce more missiles than you fire. Indeed, a complete infrastructure is required as a “war economy”.

War preparations are well under way: virement of taxes from every social need to fund military hardware; state propaganda shifting from community cohesion to emergency alerts of “enemies without” and “enemies within”. We are coached to believe that the Russian hoards are set to invade, despite Russia struggling to find the soldiers required for the current front lines.

At the moment, most people in Britain don’t want anything to do with war. But this can change very quickly. Between 1911 and 1914 Britain saw the Great Unrest workers suffering not much more than the cost-of-living crisis we are experiencing today. But workers took mass strike action, and had collective confidence and consequential power back then. War did a job for the government, nationalism and patriotism defeating all calls for decent pay, conditions and services. Amongst other things, the First World War sought to crush working class resistance to raw exploitation and authoritarian governance. In fact it led to revolution.

Can we expect a similar historic period? Workers in Britain are overwhelmingly dissatisfied, disenchanted with government and fearful for the future. There is an ideological battle in full swing for hearts and minds – the rebuilding of social welfare and workers rights versus a descent into the self-sacrifice of national (and racial) supremacy through bloody warfare.   

Across Europe, plans are afoot for the return of conscription. The tech propaganda encouraging the future of war imagines battles between robots from each side. It’s a nonsense! Through the four-and-a-half years of the Ukraine War, more than a million deaths prove the lie. The Nations are seeking to provide enlarged armies of human soldiers ready to die. 

Volunteers applying to fight have dried-up on both sides. Snatch squads on Ukrainian streets are grabbing civilians to go to the front. The desertions and draft avoidance, and the continuing conscription of ordinary Ukrainians as cannon fodder is causing social discord. Russia is equally desperate, recruiting African mercenaries on false promises and battalions from North Korea ahead of the inevitable Autumn offensive. 

Such war fatigue should offer opportunities for a negotiated peace. Instead, Europe and the UK are preparing to join in. 

Germany is debating conscription and stopping young men from leaving the country for more than three months, the number of young men applying to be conscientious objectors and refuse armed military service increasing rapidly. 

Britain last operated conscription of civilians into a period in the armed forces back in 1960. Ten European countries still do with others now considering its reintroduction. Various British political parties are debating the potential here, the shocking number of one million young people unemployed being an excuse for the warmonger’s arguments. General Sir Patrick Sanders is calling for a “citizen army”, reservists now on call until 65 years of age. 

Russia has threatened revenge against Britain this week after Ukraine used British-made drones to target Russian oil refineries and transport networks. Britain is directly engaged in endless war over Ukraine and it makes us all a target. The war in Europe is intensifying and expanding. Lithuania and Finland are preparing to accept NATO nuclear weapons following on from Belarus’s readiness to accept Russian nukes. The stage is being set for nuclear warfare.

Germany is rearming faster than Britain, and everywhere there are signs of wider military engagement against Russia. What might the conclusion look like? Mutually Assured Destruction? Why is no-one discussing de-escalation? Why is there no planning for an end to the war, indeed no plan at all, just demands for more tax money to produce more heavy weapons, sponsored by arms manufacturers such as the MBDA multinational corporations that owns the SCALP technology? They have the government’s ear.  Why is there no democratic process to ensure that the collective voices of citizens are considered, measured and accepted?

The Third World War will be even more barbaric  than the First or the Second.  Only the urgent quest for Peace can possibly stop it. Oppose conscription. Oppose War!

reStart START!

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

An additional comment on an historically significant day. The end of the START Treaty on nuclear arms limitation. Please share and publicise our meeting on 17th February. We have to get organised!

START Treaty

We are very likely to hear of a nuclear explosion somewhere, soon. It is not just that Strategic Arms Reduction Talks on nuclear weapons came to an abrupt end last Thursday, it is that nuclear proliferation is part of the New World Order, deregulated, un-inspected. 

The START Treaty, regulating and controlling the numbers and development of the nuclear weapons of Russia and the United States of America, has expired. Trump is not bothered. Russia has said it will keep to it, for now. This is the last remaining agreement to mutually prevent nuclear weapons testing and limit the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal – Russia and the USA own and control at least 87% of all nuclear warheads, many fired-up and ready to launch.

There has been nuclear arms controls for over 50 years, as part of the rules-based international order established after the second world war, the first treaty signed in 1963 after the horror of the Bay of Pigs crisis where US warheads sited in Turkey and retaliatory Russian nuclear missiles placed in Cuba very nearly sparked a global nuclear war. 

The old cliche is that “the world stepped-back from the brink”. Well, we’re back at the brink again today. There are at least nine nuclear powers including Israel and North Korea, in a world where there are no restrictions on nuclear weapons whatsoever. 

There is now no agreement that morally or legally can deter any State from developing or using nuclear weapons. Cynics may suggest that Treaties aren’t really worth the paper they’re written on, but START has certainly been raised in the midst of any and all tensions and negotiations as the basis for de-escalation in recent history.

It is now the case that the traditional axiom of “Mutually Assured Destruction” no longer applies. The UK is at the forefront of global research and development of new nuclear warheads and the infrastructure with which to launch them, focussed upon “battlefield nuclear weapons”, “low-yield” and “useable”. 

The Trident replacement programme is effectively a project to prove nuclear weapons can be exploded in war and the world will not end. It represents humanity’s greatest gamble, and a Great Lie from beginning to end. The lowest yield nuclear warhead designed for battlefield use has the power and intensity of the first bomb dropped by the USA upon Hiroshima in 1945. That’s their definition of “useable”: 85,000 humans killed by one bomb, and tens of thousands more left unwell with shortened lives caused by the radiation that one explosion spread trans-generational toxic contamination.

The entire Trident launch system is owned by the United States and leased to the UK, any notion of Britain having an “independent nuclear weapon” a complete fallacy of public relations spin.

Now, Starmer, in his final days, has agreed to the Royal Air Force carrying US nuclear-armed missiles, making the UK Europe’s frontline of US offensive forces, with navy and airforce ready to fire Trump’s nuclear weapons.

Trump may agree a new nuclear treaty if it has his name on it and it includes China. But that’s not the point. The regulation and inspection of nuclear facilities has prevented accidental launch or detonation of nuclear weapons. The technology is intricate, and the litany of accidents across the nuclear industry, releasing deadly radioactive contamination into our land, air and waters, too long to list here. But inspection has prevented explosion, to our knowledge.

The Treaty and its protocols can be said to have prevented accidental nuclear war between the super-powers. Nuclear weapons are on hair-trigger standby at all times, the timing of launch and counter-launch measured in seconds rather than minutes and managed primarily by computers armed with Artificial Intelligence. To prevent the machines taking-over, there were international agreements on the human element in decision making, checks and double-checks, giving time for reflection and negotiation before the launch of Armageddon.

No need for all that woke health-and-safety nonsense now. Let’s just get on with it! The new Arms Race has been unleashed. The new nuclear countries outside of the obvious top three have no tradition of Treaty or constraint. They have never adopted the protocols for nuclear war. They have no constraints. And without START even the big players have no witness or knowledge of what their competitors are doing. No checks and balances. 

The simplest solution is to not make anymore nuclear warheads and to disarm. Nuclear Weapons are already, according to the totally debunked United Nations, illegal under international law as weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction. They obliterate everything and everyone. There’s little point in firing back once the other side has launched except as an act of vengeful mass suicide.

In the meantime we have to campaign for a new Treaty as soon as possible, as some form of safeguard without any illusion in it preventing the possibility of nuclear war. The end of START opens-up fresh and immediate possibilities for nuclear escalation in Ukraine and the Middle East. In Plymouth we have the infrastructure and machinery that carries the US’s Trident nuclear warheads. This is not someone else’s problem. 

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, with our world famous CND Peace Sign and seventy years of active campaigning, is at the forefront of challenging nuclear weapons. We will protest at Marham Royal Airforce Base on February 28th where the F35A Lightning II fighter jets will be loaded with US nuclear missiles, and at Lakenheath US Airforce Base on 4th April where Trump’s B-2 Spirit and B-52 Stratofortress Bombers carry B61 nuclear bombs.   

At the very least let’s get US Nukes off our soil, and campaign to scrap the £210billion Trident Replacement programme in the UK. Please attend our CND meeting in Plymouth at 7pm at the Quaker Centre, 74 Mutley Plain, PL4 6LF and on Zoom, Tuesday 17th February 2026.

Screenshot