Has Trump’s relationship with Russia pushed Biden towards nuclear war?

By Robert Inlakesh

Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer and political analyst, who has lived in and reported from the occupied Palestinian West Bank. He has written for publications such as Mint Press, Mondoweiss, MEMO, and various other outlets. He specializes in analysis of the Middle East, in particular Palestine-Israel. He also works for Press TV as a European correspondent.

The United States Trump Administration has withdrawn from major deals with regional/world powers, which may put incoming President Elect, Joe Biden, on the warpath.

Despite US Republican Party rhetoric seemingly painting the withdrawal from the JCPOA - or Iran Nuclear deal - as a move to prevent a nuclear war, the reality that has been worked towards is rather the opposite. For those familiar with the tactic, the United States had essentially enacted a policy of applying “maximum pressure” on Iran’s civilian population, whilst simultaneously attempting groups within Iran to overthrow the government.

Whilst Donald Trump was peddling anti-Iran rhetoric, in an attempt to justify sanctions which targeted the average Iranian, he was also busy creating a scenario with Russia, ushering the world into a new Cold War type international struggle between East and West.

Last year in September, the Trump administration announced its full withdrawal from the 1987 ‘Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces’ (INF) Treaty, signed with Soviet Russia. The treaty’s significance comes in that it prevented both the US and Russia, from launching Nuclear strikes at each other, by taking away the most efficient means of delivering a nuclear warhead to its target.

Then, earlier this May, Donald Trump also pulled out of the ‘Open Skies Treaty’ with Russia, signed three decades ago. The Open Skies Treaty essentially allowed for the two sides [The US and Russia] to perform flyovers of each other's territories, in order to instal confidence between the two parties that a surprise nuclear attack was not on its way.

Due to the withdrawal of the US from these treaties, there is only one treaty of the kind left in place, the Obama era ‘New START’ (Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaty), which is set to expire in February of 2021. This means that Joe Biden as US President, being in an anti-Russian neo-liberal government, will have no Nuclear buffer treaties between his administration and Russia. The severity of this current situation cannot be overstated, as the treaties which were all put in place to prevent Nuclear war have been wiped out by Donald J. Trump and as it currently stands, the Democratic Party does not seem any more diplomatic that the Republican Party.

If Joe Biden does not act immediately to re-negotiate these deals with Russia, it is extremely foreseeable that with the war-hawk Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, the United States could head to war over Nuclear Weapons.

The situation we currently face, shows the implications of red-scare new-mcCarthyism. Since Trump was elected into office, he has been the hardest US President on Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet despite his countless aggressive moves, more aggressive than Obama ever was, he was painted as a puppet of Putin, with no evidence whatsoever to back it up. The more alarming thing, is that now that Trump is nearing the end of his term in office, the anti-Russia baseless claims are still coming. The Democratic Party, soon to take the oval office, has been pushing Trump to prove how anti-Russia he is, which he has overdone, yet they still do not know when to stop.

As Westerners feel largely safe from the possibility of the US using nuclear weapons, the rest of the world sees a real threat, as the US is the only country on earth to have ever used them on people. This sort of behavior from, what is dubbed, the world's no.1 military superpower, is beyond excusable, especially when it’s propaganda machine cannot stop criticizing Iran over its non-existent nuclear weapons program, after withdrawing from a treaty designed to control nuclear enrichment.

If we see a nuclear arms race under Joe Biden, it will confirm that the United States government has not moved on at all or learnt any lessons from its various catastrophic mistakes during the Cold War.

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