US at Mercy of Neoconservative ‘Death Wish’ Amid Dearth of Responsible Leadership

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The future of humanity lies in the hands of US President Joe Biden, according to one analyst, an historically hawkish figure within the Democratic Party.

US Vice President Kamala Harris raised eyebrows last week when her 2024 presidential campaign received one highly unusual vote of confidence.

Former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney, often considered the hawkish power behind the throne during George W. Bush’s stint in the White House, revealed he would be voting for Harris in November in an announcement made by his daughter, former Congresswoman Liz Cheney.

The unexpected cross-party endorsement – unthinkable during the highly-partisan early 2000s – represented the latest sign that Harris is consolidating support from the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party. Cheney joins hawkish figures such as Cindy McCain and Iraq War architect Bill Kristol who have thrown their lot in with the Democrats in recent years amid former President Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership of the GOP.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) - Sputnik International, 1920, 25.09.2022

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The development promises to boost Harris’s support from moderate Republicans but also speaks to the lack of ideological diversity among America’s foreign policy establishment argues Peter Kuznick, a professor of history and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University. Kuznick joined Sputnik’s Fault Lines program Friday to discuss prospects for peace as the United States backs military operations in Ukraine and Palestine’s Gaza Strip.

“It is kind of stunning that we are actually on the brink of a third world war and it’s not being discussed by everybody everywhere,” said Kuznick, who co-authored the documentary film series The Untold History of the United States with director Oliver Stone. “During the Cold War we respected each other’s red lines. And when the Soviets crossed America’s red line in 1962 and put those missiles in Cuba, the world stopped and we figured out a way.”

“But Kennedy and Khrushchev did everything they could, and they still realized that they had lost control, which is why right after the Cuban Missile Crisis ended, largely by luck, Khrushchev wrote a letter to Kennedy and said, ‘from evil, some good must come,’” Kuznick highlighted.

“The good is that now people have felt more tangibly the… burning flames of thermonuclear war and have a more clear realization of the threat looming over them if the arms race is not stopped,” wrote the Soviet leader in his famous missive to the young US president. Khrushchev proposed disarmament, a nonaggression treaty between NATO and the Warsaw Pact and the elimination of “everything in our relations capable of generating a new crisis.”

Kennedy, although not willing to go so far, still understood the world had only narrowly avoided nuclear armageddon. He took steps to permanently reduce tensions, establishing new channels of communication between the US and Russia and declaring that the two world superpowers must never again allow tensions to escalate in such fashion.

Testing the Burevestnik nuclear cruise missile - Sputnik International, 1920, 12.09.2024

Will ‘Insane’ Biden Provoke World War III Before November Election?

“Khrushchev said, ‘what difference would it make if we’re communist or capitalist or Christians or Jews or Muslims or Buddhists?’” Kuznick noted. “‘What difference would it make if there’s a war? Who could tell us apart after we’re all dead?’”

“It looks like we have a collective death wish for the human species right now,” the historian lamented. “It’s, to me, horrifying. The world rests in the hands, in many senses, of Biden, who’s really not all there and has very hawkish instincts. He’s an old cold warrior and initially denies every new weapon system that the Ukrainians ask for but then caves into the pressure. And it looks like he’s already caved into the pressure again on using the ATACMS missiles to strike deep inside of Russia.”

“And the fact that the Democrats are so happy to embrace Dick Cheney of all people – they have turned into the new neocons!” Kuznick claimed. “When it comes to foreign policy, they may even be more hawkish… So we don’t have any adults in the room right now. There’s no Jack Kennedy.”

“It’s part of a lesson which is why we have to wake people up and mobilize because this is just too dangerous, too precarious a situation to allow this to keep going the way it’s going.”