Slouching Toward World War III

Darrell Castle talks about how the world, prodded along by the most powerful, seems to be moving inevitably toward a superpower war. Transcription / Notes SLOUCHING TOWARD WORLD WAR lll Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 1st day of July in the year of our Lord 2022, and I will be talking about how the world, prodded along by the most powerful, seems to be moving inevitably toward a superpower war. This war, when it begins in earnest will be fought between the most powerful nuclear armed countries that have existed in all of history. I have talked in the past about how the world is dividing into armed camps of nations as both sides scramble last minute to find allies to bolster their teams. The war is mostly cold right now as it is being waged economically, but ominous clouds have appeared over the cold war that tell me it could go hot at any moment. Not much appears to be happening from either side to reverse this road to World War lll. What makes any of the world’s leaders think this coming war will not go nuclear, I don’t know. Do they really think that a nation with thousands of nuclear missiles will lose a war or allow itself to suffer defeat with those missiles still in their silos? Apparently, they do think so, or at least I hope they think so, because the alternative is even more terrifying. How do world wars begin? We know for certain because we have two examples to choose from. They begin one step at a time, one provocation at a time, one insult at a time, until finally the camel’s back is broken and it’s too late. The economic sanctions against Russia have not worked as well as had been hoped so new kinds of sanctions have to be found to ratchet up the pressure. When sanctions fail to accomplish the desired result then escalation is the natural response. Recently the small, but NATO and EU member state, Lithuania blocked all the items sanctioned by the EU from being transported from Russia, through the safe passage zone in Lithuania, to the Russian conclave of Kaliningrad. That was a provocation the Russians say they are not willing to live with and Russian language was strong enough to cause the EU, but mostly France and Germany, to tell Lithuania to back off. Apparently though, the Lithuanians have given them all the middle finger on that order for now. The world waits for a country of 2.5 million people to plunge it into nuclear war. It is understandable on the part of the Lithuanians because they suffered for decades under Soviet Communism with its concrete building blocks and its lines to get potatoes etc. They don’t want to go back and who could blame them, but now they have Article 5 of the NATO charter which would permit or even require NATO to respond to a Russian attack so perhaps they are confidant enough to be reckless. The Russians responded first with strong diplomatic language, but recently they announced that they would put nuclear weapons into Belarus on the border of Lithuania and Poland. That was a pretty clear indication of the intent to use those weapons if Russian survival was at issue. Russia has also begun cyber-attacks against Lithuania. Putin, in his speech at the Russian Economic Summit in St. Petersburg, spoke as if Russia and Belarus were the same country and in fact, they are. Russian speakers, diplomats, etc. have started referring to Russia as “The Union.” These are all ominous signs, and no one seems interested in turning down the rhetoric. This past week there were two meetings on the Western side of the world and one on the Eastern side. The G-7 nations consists of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States—plus the European Union. They met in Germany for discussions on Ukraine, but much of the talk centered on inflation and energy prices. The decision was made not to sanction Russian energy any further as the Europeans are probably worried about winter and empty gas lines.