Warnings of General War Danger by Senior U.S. Figures Spread

Veteran U.S. State Department official William R. Polk’s Aug. 28 warning, “Pushing The Edge of Nuclear War,” raises alarm bells over the extreme danger inherent in the U.S. and NATO’s moving towards confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, when there is no JFK in the White House to ensure there is no nuclear war. Initially in Consortium News, it is being re-posted by many, starting with the widely-read Antiwar.com the next day. It was the lead item posted yesterday morning on the “Sic Semper Tyrannis” blog of respected retired Defense Intelligence Agency Col. Patrick Lang. Headlined starkly “Polk on Danger of Nuclear War,” and leading with Polk’s statement that “I fear that we are again heading into dangerous times,” Lang called the attention of his active readership of retired and active duty U.S. military officers to the immediate danger of nuclear war.

Sputnik’s story two days ago on Polk’s column, titled “Doomsday Countdown: U.S. Hawks Pushing World to the Brink of Nuclear War,” generated a whole other round of coverage on U.S. and international sites. The Russian news site gave its story the sharp lead-in:
“U.S. neocons are deliberately aggravating tensions with nuclear-armed Russia and thoughtlessly pushing the world to the brink of an all-out nuclear war, U.S. veteran foreign policy consultant Dr. William R. Polk warns. Washington is moving back toward a Cold War-style confrontation with Moscow over Ukraine, apparently forgetting that Russia still possesses a nuclear arsenal as large and as deployable as the U.S.”

Retired Lt. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff, added his voice to the growing warnings that the world stands on the brink of a new global conflict, in a recent interview with the Latvian radio station, Radio Baltkom. Sputnik ran an August 30 story on that interview, “Russia Has No Plans to Attack Any NATO member,” in many languages, also picked up by others. Sputnik reported:

“Those Western officials, both past and present, who blame Russia for the Ukrainian civil war, often present Moscow as an imminent threat to NATO member states, especially the Baltic nations. These concerns have no ground, Lawrence B. Wilkerson maintains. Russia has no plans to attack Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia or any member of the North Atlantic Alliance for that matter, the former senior U.S. official told Radio Baltkom….

“Yet Wilkerson is wary that a major conflict could grow out of an accident or a misunderstanding. The Republican warned leaders in Washington, Paris, Berlin, London, Moscow and elsewhere against sparking a war, and urged them to adhere to diplomacy. A new global conflict would be a catastrophe for the whole world, including the ones who provoked it.”