Whether or not it actually happened, the story of Babe Ruth’s famous “called shot” in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series has become one of the great legends of baseball’s Golden Age.
The Chicago Cubs fans in Wrigley Field had been relentlessly hectoring the renowned Yankee slugger and the cat-calls and insults intensified as he came to bat in the fifth inning with the score tied 4-4, especially after he took a first strike. At that point, the Bambino raised his hand, pointed to the bleachers, then hit the next pitch as a towering home run to deep center field, the same spot he had just indicated. Or at least so goes the legend. Details aside, that homer helped the Yankees win the game, eventually leading to their 4-0 sweep of the entire series, and Ruth later included the tale as a centerpiece of his 1948 autobiography.
Calling your shot before you take it seems a very effective means of intimidating your opponents by demonstrating your effortless superiority. So perhaps Russian President Vladimir Putin should consider doing something similar in his current confrontation with NATO over the Ukraine war.
As everyone knows, the Western mainstream media has spent more than two years demonizing Russia and its president following the February 2022 outbreak of the Ukraine war, with Putin having become the most reviled world leader since Adolf Hitler more than three generations ago. And although Russia’s military attack only came after many years of the most extreme military and political provocations by America and its NATO allies, our astonishingly dishonest media outlets have uniformly plastered the word “unprovoked” on all their accounts of the conflict.
Prof. John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago ranks as one of our most distinguished political scientists and his 2016 lecture on those Western provocations and the major risks of a future war has now been viewed some 29 million times on YouTube, quite possibly more than any other academic lecture in the history of the Internet.
Then late last week, Politico reported that President Joseph Biden had secretly agreed to allow the missiles we were providing Ukraine to be used in deep strikes against Russian territory, multiplying these dangers. It also appears likely that any actual Ukrainian involvement in use of these advanced missile systems is relatively minimal, with their control and targeting remaining in the hands of American or other NATO personnel. Another Mike Whitney column a couple of days ago usefully summarized these crucial facts:
The long-range precision weapons (missiles) are provided by NATO countries
The long-range precision weapons are manned by experts or contractors from the country of origin
The long-range precision weapons must be linked to space reconnaissance data provide by the US or NATO
The targets in Russia are also provided by space reconnaissance data provide by the US or NATO
The point that Putin is trying to make is that the long-range missiles are made by NATO, furnished by NATO, operated and launched by NATO contractors, whose targets are selected by NATO experts using space reconnaissance data provided by NATO. In every respect, the prospective firing of long-range precision weapons at targets in Russia, is a NATO-US operation. Thus, there should be no confusion about who is responsible. NATO is responsible which means that NATO is effectively declaring war on Russia. Putin’s lengthy comments merely underscore this critical point.
Thus, NATO is on the verge of firing a barrage of advanced missiles deep into Russian territory, an obvious act of war against a country possessing an arsenal of some six thousand strategic nuclear warheads, a decision of extraordinary recklessness. The leaders of some NATO members have even explicitly declared that they believe that Russia must be destroyed, exceptionally provocative public statements.
Unlike his Western counterparts, President Putin certainly recognizes the extreme gravity of this situation and Whitney quoted the threatening remarks he made at a press conference in Tashkent:
So, these officials from NATO countries, especially the ones based in Europe, particularly in small European countries, should be fully aware of what is at stake. They should keep in mind that theirs are small and densely populated countries, which is a factor to reckon with before they start talking about striking deep into the Russian territory. It is a serious matter and, without a doubt, we are watching this very carefully.
The Russians have also expressed considerable alarm that Ukrainian forces may soon be bolstered by the addition of Western F-16s. Those aircraft are nuclear-weapons capable, and the Russians have indicated that they may be forced to assume that they are so armed.
Thus, both America and its NATO vassals seem to be sleepwalking into a potential Third World War fought with strategic nuclear weapons. This recalls the extreme hubris of their European political predecessors more than a century ago who led their continent into the First World War.
The main focus of Whitney’s most recent column was to argue that President Putin needed to take some sufficiently strong public steps to awaken the Western leaders from their slumber and force them to recognize the terrible dangers that they and the rest of the world faced, perhaps causing them to abandon their extremely dangerous and reckless behavior. Put in baseball terms, he believed that Russia needed to throw the sort of “brushback pitch” intended to intimidate a batter.
To Avoid Nuclear War, Putin Needs to be a Little Crazier
Mike Whitney • The Unz Review • May 31, 2024 • 1,900 Words
This suggestion seems a very reasonable one. So the issue now becomes what sort of Russian action would be most advisable.
NATO troops may soon be firing NATO missiles guided by NATO reconnaissance data against military targets deep within Russia so there remains only the thinnest of Ukrainian fig-leafs to camouflage what is actually taking place. Hence the Russians should take forceful steps to convince NATO that such actions are totally unacceptable and must be stopped. However, any such Russian military response should be carefully calibrated to thread the needle, neither being so mild that it fails to bring American and NATO leaders to their senses nor so severe that it risks triggering a direct, full-scale war with NATO, with such a war probably being the intended goal of those provocations.
If such deep strikes into Russia take place, the Russians could target the firing locations in Ukraine with retaliatory missile attacks, perhaps killing some of the NATO servicemen responsible, professionals who had been “sheep dipped” and deployed there under the guise of being independent contractors or trainers. However, Russia has already done this in the past, and there are credible claims that substantial numbers of such NATO personnel have already died in Ukraine with no evidence that such losses had deterred escalating NATO provocations. The same problem applies if Russia merely intensified its bombardment of Ukrainian command and control facilities or critical infrastructure. Both America and NATO political leaders seem to have ignored such Russian responses in the past and would probably continue to do so.
Recognizing this problem, the Russians have begun raising the temperature. A couple of weeks ago, Russia publicized an important training drill for their potential use of tactical nuclear weapons and this produced a great deal of coverage in the global media. But it seemed to have had little impact upon Western leaders, who are probably very skeptical that the Russians would actually break the seven-decade-long nuclear taboo by resorting to first use of such destructive weapons. So any Russian use seems unlikely and if it did occur, there might be a serious risk of nuclear escalation. Therefore, I think that any Russian threats or actual use of battlefield nuclear weapons would be very ill-advised.
But I think that an even stronger reason for the Russians to avoid focusing on their nuclear arsenal is that their superiority is actually considerably greater on the conventional level. Over the last few years, the Russians have deployed a full suite of powerful hypersonic missiles, an important weapons system that the Americans have so far been unable to match. From everything I’ve read, these hypersonic delivery systems are almost unstoppable by any existing American or NATO defenses, which currently gives the Russians escalation-dominance on the conventional level. So the question is how the Russians can best exploit this existing advantage and force NATO to back down without risking a wider war.
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