Fernando Alcoforado*
This article aims to demonstrate that the world is ruled by madmen who, dominated by blindness, lead the world towards a new world war. William Shakespeare, one of the greatest playwrights in history, born in the United Kingdom in 1564 and died in 1616, is the author of the phrase “Tis the time’s plague when madmen lead the blind” in a line from his play King Lear and, also, from the phrase “What goes through the minds of these people who play with death?” in his play Hamlet. These two Shakespearean phrases reflect the time in which we live, in which the mad rulers of Russia and the United States guide the blind rulers of most countries in the world, allied to them who feed the possibility of facing the outbreak of a world war by radicalizing their actions in the war between Russia and Ukraine. I repeat Shakespeare’s phrase asking what goes through the minds of these people who play with death or the end of the human species with the outbreak of nuclear war?
The mad rulers of the United States and the countries of the European Union radicalized by unleashing an economic war against Russia that could contribute to the political weakening of Wladimir Putin in power, either by defections of the internal ruling classes that, harmed by economic sanctions and financial forces of the great western powers, disagree with his war strategy in Ukraine and overthrow him, or also by the action of opposition political forces, which can lead to a change in the political command of the country with the removal of Putin from power. However, this situation can make Putin, on the other hand, radicalize in the confrontation with the United States, the European Union and NATO in an attempt to maintain himself in power and impose himself in the face of the power of the great Western powers. Faced with this fact, Putin can make use of his nuclear arsenal that can trigger a new world war. The consequences for humanity would be harmful in the latter case because there would be the end of the human species.
The mad rulers of Russia, Wladimir Putin, and of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, radicalized their positions that led to the outbreak of war and the devastation to which Ukraine was subjected. Zelensky’s madness resided in the fact that he did not comply with the Minsky Agreement on the emancipation of Donetsk and Luhansk and that he incorporated into the Ukrainian Constitution the intention to incorporate the country into the European Union and NATO, which is considered a military threat to Russia, given the the siege that was built after the end of the Soviet Union with the accession to this western military alliance and to the European Union by the countries that made up the socialist system of Eastern Europe. Add to all this Zelensky’s manifest desire for NATO to carry out a no-fly in Ukrainian airspace that would contribute to triggering a new world war. Putin’s madness is manifested in the fact that he invaded Ukraine in disregard of the United Nations Charter and admitted the possibility of using nuclear weapons in this conflict in retaliation for the action of Western powers in support of Ukraine.
What goes through the minds of these people who play with death and the end of humanity? The crazy leaders of the United States, the European Union and NATO are forgetting that by unleashing an economic war like the one they are carrying out against Russia, they can turn it into a real world-wide war because it can make Wladimir Putin radicalize his actions in the confrontation against his enemies becauses, it is clear that for him and for Russia it is a game of life and death. The future of Putin and Russia depends on the outcome in their favor of the war between Russia and Ukraine and on the fulfillment of their demands by Ukraine for the recognition of Crimea as Russian territory and the independence of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, the abandonment of its claim to integrate the European Union and NATO and the demilitarization of the country. Russia’s victory in the war is inevitable, but the biggest problem will come in the post-war period because Russia will have to bear the political and military costs of maintaining its domination of Ukraine, in addition to having to face the guerrilla war of the defeated in war that will have the support of Western powers and NATO.
Putin also knows that the integration of Russia into the globalized capitalist economy was definitely compromised with his permanence at the head of Russia because the world powers of capitalism has turned this country into an international pariah. To survive economically, Russia will have to deepen its trade relations with China. It is necessary to know if the commercial relations with China will compensate the losses that it will have with the end of the commercial exchange with the western powers. If economic relations with China compensate for the loss it will have with the end of trade with Western powers, Russia will be able to recover from the current crisis. If this does not happen, Russia could suffer economic regression and will have to face serious internal political, economic and social problems that could shake the country’s power structure. This scenario could contribute to Putin’s fall from power in the future.
The world is not just made up of mad and blind rulers. Madness and blindness hit the leaders of companies that stopped establishing business relations with Russia, such as Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Spotfy, YouTube, Boeing, Airbus, Ford, General Motors, Toyota, Shell , British Petroleum, Mastercard, Visa, Amex and McDonald’s, among others, fueling the process of radicalization against Russia. Madness and blindness also reached the rulers of most countries in the world who, as a herd, took almost unanimous decisions to condemn Russia for the invasion of Ukraine at the UN General Assembly instead of acting in the sense of seeking a negotiated solution for the conflict. The UN, which was supposed to mediate the conflict, was also dominated by madness and blindness as it stopped being an instrument for building world peace and became an instrument for promoting war. Repeating Shakespeare “what goes through the minds of these people who play with death?” I ask: what goes through the minds of these people who play with the end of the human species?
Crazy and blind are also the manufacturers of armaments, that is, the war industry in the world, especially in the United States, who foment wars to make money. It is no coincidence that the United States is one of the countries that benefit most economically from armed confrontations, as the largest arms exporters in the world are Americans. Of the 10 largest arms manufacturers in the world, six are North American, and five of them are leaders in the global arms industry. Could they be exhibited in broad daylight, we would see that the main sponsors of this fratricidal war are the arms industry, on both sides of the trenches. The arms industry sponsors the war in Ukraine as it has promoted other wars in the past to make money. The record production of weapons, increasingly lethal and surgical, needs to be put to work in practice. In the hands of madmen, these deadly technologies end up promoting the show of horrors that TV stations broadcast live and in color.
The crazy rulers of the Western powers and other countries of the world and the leaders of the companies that boycott Russia blindly adopt economic and financial sanctions against Russia, underestimating that it can use its nuclear weapons, carry out cyber attacks and destabilize the world economy with the cessation of oil and natural gas supplies. Regardless of the use of nuclear weapons, things can get much worse if Putin wants to. Russia could unleash cyberattacks that could target banks, companies, individuals and even key national infrastructure, and as one of the world’s major producers of energy inputs, it could cease the supply of oil and natural gas that could affect the growth of the world economy. in 2022 thanks to the impact of inflation, which could rise with the possibility of oil and natural gas prices rising dramatically.
The outbreak of a new world war could occur if Russia’s economic and financial suffocation threatens to destabilize Putin’s power at home. Putin is already considering the economic and financial sanctions imposed on her by the United States and the European Union as a declaration of war. In turn, the red line for NATO to intervene in the conflict is if Russia threatens any of its member states when the western military alliance will be obligated to defend any member state that is attacked under NATO’s Article 5. This situation could occur at any time given the territorial proximity between Russia and NATO countries. It should be noted that Russia and the United States jointly have more than 8,000 nuclear warheads. The stakes are extremely high for humanity. The future existence of human beings is in the hands of these madmen.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 82, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is author of the books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018), Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019) and A humanidade ameaçada e as estratégias para sua sobrevivência (Editora Dialética, São Paulo, 2021) .
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