The Failure of Russia and Iran to Recognize Existential Threats Are Leading to Nuclear War
Paul Craig Roberts
Since the beginning of Washington’s use of Ukraine as the proxy for Washington’s war against Russia, I have made the point that Putin’s limited and restrained response to an existential threat is reality-denying and unrealistic. Russia is under direct strategic assault and Putin has refused to recognize this fact and to respond appropriately.
Gilbert Doctorow and John Helmer have joined me in this conclusion, and now comes Phil Butler writing in Global Research. Butler concludes:
“The thesis of what you are about to read is simple and uncompromising: the era of the “limited war” is a Western fantasy. If Moscow is to survive this existential proxy assault, it cannot respond with half-measures or symmetrical restraint. The only rational, historically grounded response is total mobilization and the systematic, comprehensive neutralization of Ukraine’s remaining critical infrastructure. Endless attrition is a losing game. Victory is not a preference; it is an operational necessity.”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/what-victory-looks-like/5934726
What Putin’s beating around the bush is leading to is rising escalation ending in nuclear war.
I am concerned that Iran is repeating Putin’s mistake and is playing a tit-for-tat game with a proxy enemy–Washington–and not engaging its real enemy–Israel. The Iranian leadership seem to believe that a peace deal with Washington, if one is possible, would resolve the issue. If this is the Iranian belief, then Iran has failed, like Putin, to recognize an existential threat.