Climbing the Escalation Ladder
It's not too late to climb down, but the managers of the US empire have no intention of doing so.
Over the last few years, the United States government has regularly engaged in provocative and escalatory behavior toward its perceived adversaries. This behavior, which is often done ostensibly out of deterrence, tends to heighten tensions and spark conflicts all across the globe.
While this is happening in many different places and takes many different forms, there are three major theaters where it is most pronounced.
Those are:
Ukraine, where the US and NATO are engaged in an ongoing proxy war against Russia; the Middle East, where the US emphatically supports Israel’s ethnic cleansing and mass murder campaign in Gaza, which has caused tensions to rise all across the region; and the Indo-Pacific, where the US is engaged in an increasingly hostile cold war against China.
In each of these theaters, it is the US and its allies that are responsible for the vast majority of any escalations that have taken place in recent years. This behavior, which has largely gone unchecked, is reckless and dangerous. The possibility of things going cataclysmic exists in each situation as the US, Russia, China, and Israel are all nuclear powers, and any use of nuclear weapons by any one of these countries could potentially set off a series of events that would end life on Earth as we know it.
It’s not too late to climb down from this escalatory ladder, but it seems that the managers of the US empire have no intention of doing so.
Ukraine
Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022, the US and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have ruled out giving Ukraine specific forms of military aid just to later provide that aid anyway — despite the previous statements to the contrary.
There are so many examples of this that I’m unable to recount each one here (or even remember them all) but a few notable examples include the US and other NATO countries providing Ukraine with tanks, F-16 fighter jets, long-range missiles, and cluster bombs.
In each instance, the risk of this conflict escalating into a hot war between NATO and Russia increased significantly. While Russia has yet to attack a NATO ally directly or use nuclear weapons inside Ukraine in response to these provocations, that doesn’t mean the US and NATO should continue rolling the dice on that possibility.
That’s exactly what western leaders have done, however.
In recent months, there have been several escalations in the West’s posture toward Russia — some of which have been incredibly provocative. A few examples include French President Emmanuel Macron repeatedly pushing the idea of sending NATO troops to fight in the war in the Ukraine, NATO setting up land corridors to reach Russia, and NATO claiming to have placed 500,000 troops on high readiness.
Another recent escalation was the Biden administration’s decision to give Ukraine permission to use US-provided weapons to strike inside Russian territory.
As Politico reported back in May:
The Biden administration has quietly given Ukraine permission to strike inside Russia — solely near the area of Kharkiv — using U.S.-provided weapons, three U.S. officials and two other people familiar with the move said…a major reversal that will help Ukraine to better defend its second-largest city.
While Ukraine obviously has the right to directly attack the country that is currently invading it, doing so with weapons provided by the US or other NATO countries — with permission, no less — could very likely cause Russia to view those countries as legitimate targets in this conflict.
Very shortly after it became public knowledge that the Biden administration gave Ukraine permission to use US weapons to hit Russian soil, the Associated Press reported that Ukraine had done exactly that.
More recently, it was reported by TASS, Russia’s top news agency, that four people — including a two-year old and a nine-year old — were killed and over 150 people were injured in an attack on Sevastopol, the largest city in the Crimean Peninsula, which has been under Russian control since 2014.
According to a statement provided to TASS by the Russian Foreign Ministry, the attack was conducted by Ukraine using US-provided long-range missiles and cluster bombs, and the “flight paths were entered by US specialists based on their own satellite reconnaissance data.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry also said the US’s involvement in the attack is “beyond any doubt,” and that a response “will certainly follow”.
This is not the first time Ukraine has launched an attack inside of Crimea, nor is it the first time US weapons have been used in such an attack. However, with the US’s latest shift in policy toward Ukraine hitting Russia directly and the fact that this attack killed civilians, it’s possible that this instance will elicit more of a response from Russia than similar attacks have in the past — though they have all been seen as provocative.
This has not been the only warning Russia has given the West in response to these recent escalations, either.
Considering that keeping certain areas of Ukraine under the control of Kiev rather than Moscow has nothing to do with the US’s national interest — that is, the interest of the average US citizen, not the US empire — and also that Ukraine has no real chance of achieving victory, the West’s continued support for this war is increasingly risking the fate of the entire planet for very little — if any — benefit.
The Middle East
After the unprecedented attack on Israel by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas on October 7, 2023, Israel began waging a devastating assault on the Gaza Strip that continues to this day. The Israeli bombardment, invasion, and siege of Gaza has killed nearly 38,000 people — most of which have been innocent civilians — and is also leading to widespread famine.
According to a recent report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), nearly 500,000 people in Gaza will soon be facing “catastrophic” levels of food insecurity.
As CNN reports:
Nearly half a million are projected to face catastrophic levels of hunger, the most severe level on the IPC scale where people “experience an extreme lack of food, starvation, and exhaustion of coping capacities,” according to the report.
…
The United States, Israel’s closest ally, has repeatedly called on the Netanyahu government to do more to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. US President Joe Biden warned in early April that Israel had to take immediate concrete steps or risk changes in US policy. Thus far, there have been no such changes in policy. [Emphasis mine.]
Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip has also included the frequent targeting of humanitarian aid workers, as well as aid being blocked by both the Israeli government and Israeli citizens.
While Israel’s assault on Gaza has gone on largely unabated and with full US support for nearly nine months, the risk of escalation doesn’t necessarily come from Hamas or any other group within the Gaza Strip but rather from other countries and groups in the region.
Back in April it was reported that Israel conducted an airstrike on an Iranian consulate building in Syria, which killed several Iranian military advisors. This blatant war crime sparked concerns that a war between Israel and Iran was imminent — and should that ever happen, it is very likely that the US would become directly involved.
Iran responded a couple of weeks later by attacking Israel with a barrage of drones and missiles. As Will Porter wrote for Antiwar.com at the time, the Israeli military “claimed ‘most’ of the Iranian projectiles had been intercepted by allied states even before reaching Israeli airspace,” but “it acknowledged ‘minor damage to the infrastructure’ of an unspecified military base in southern Israel, as well as ‘a few injuries.’”
Days later, Israel responded by launching its own attack on Iran, and Iranian media reported that Iran’s air defenses had intercepted three “micro air vehicles”. This fortunately seemed to be the end of the back-and-forth between Israel and Iran, but for those few weeks a war between the two countries seemed all too likely — and the possibility of one eventually taking place still exists.
Another tripwire for escalation in the region is Yemen, where the de facto government, Ansar Allah, often referred to as the Houthis, has been attacking Israeli-linked commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea and causing a disruption to global trade. Ansar Allah has made it clear that these actions are in direct response to Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, and it claims the attacks will end once a ceasefire is negotiated.
I wrote an article breaking this situation down back in January:
Another War in Yemen
In the months since Ansar Allah began attacking ships in the Red Sea, the US and the UK have been launching airstrikes in Yemen. Those strikes have failed to deter the Houthis, however, and in response Ansar Allah has begun attacking ships with American and British ties as well, drawing the West even further into this volatile region.
While the recent back-and-forth with Israel and Iran was an extremely dangerous escalation and the ongoing Houthi attacks on ships traversing the Red Sea could very well escalate further, the group that seems the most likely to be involved in a wider war with Israel is Hezbollah, an Islamist paramilitary group that operates out of southern Lebanon, a country on Israel’s northern border.
Throughout Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, Hezbollah has engaged in tit-for-tat strikes with Israel. Although the fighting has remained relatively mild so far, the potential for a massive escalation seems to be increasing.
Over the last few months, the Israeli government has been flirting with the idea of launching a full scale war on Hezbollah, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently telling Israeli media that once the “intense phase” of the war in Gaza is finished, Israel “will have the possibility to move part of the forces north.” Netanyahu went on to say “If we can, we will do this diplomatically. If not, we will do it another way.”
It has been reported that the Biden administration has indicated to Lebanon that the US would support Israel if it chooses to go to war with Hezbollah, but at the same time, the administration has also claimed it desires to prevent such an outcome.
Should that war take place, it’s very likely that Iran would intervene on behalf of Hezbollah. That possibility, coupled with the likelihood that the US would join the conflict on the side of Israel, is a major cause for concern.
Had the Biden administration leveraged the enormous amount of military aid the US gives to Israel at the beginning of this conflict — or made any meaningful attempt to rein in Israel’s mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza at any point over the last nine months — perhaps all of these recent escalations in the region could’ve been avoided entirely.
The Indo-Pacific
The current tension between the US and China began during the Obama administration in what was called the “pivot to Asia”, a policy which has continued under the Biden administration. A key architect of that policy, Kurt Campbell, served as coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs in the National Security Council for the first few years of Biden’s presidency, and he now serves as the deputy secretary of state.
The Trump administration was also very hawkish toward China, and it was recently reported by Reuters that under Trump the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) launched “a clandestine campaign on Chinese social media aimed at turning public opinion in China against its government”. This also took place in areas such as “Southeast Asia, Africa and the South Pacific.”
A large portion of the tension between the US and China has centered around Taiwan, a self-governed island off of China’s coast that has long been considered by China to be part of its territory. This has also been the US’s official stance on Taiwan for decades, but recently, that seems to be changing.
A major escalation of the tension over Taiwan occurred back in 2022, when then-Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, visited the island.
As I wrote at the time:
Pelosi, who as the Speaker of the House is third in line for the presidency, is the highest ranking U.S. official to visit Taiwan in 25 years. That is why the trip was viewed by the Chinese government as a major break in the U.S.’s one-China policy, despite the Biden administration as well as Pelosi herself insisting that that is not the case.
Nancy Pelosi's Reckless Trip to Taiwan
Recent escalations involving Taiwan also include the US increasing military and diplomatic ties to the island, the US deploying troops to Taiwan and military advisors to Taiwanese-controlled islands just a few miles off of China’s coast, and President Biden publicly stating several times that the US would defend Taiwan should China invade — which is counter to the US’s longstanding policy of “strategic ambiguity” on the issue.
Another country in the region that is a tripwire for conflict that gets far less attention than Taiwan is the Philippines. China and the Philippines have been involved in several skirmishes recently over territorial disputes in the South China Sea. This may sound like it’s none of the US’s concern (and frankly, it shouldn’t be) but the US and the Philippines have a mutual defense pact which means the US is obligated to become involved if a conflict between China and the Philippines erupts.
As Antiwar’s Kyle Anzalone recently wrote:
Throughout the Biden administration, top US officials have invoked the 1953 US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty as a warning to China to back off from territorial disputes with Manila.
Tensions between Manila and Beijing in the South China Sea have escalated since Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. took office two years ago. He has since increased military ties with the US.
All of this is compounded with US officials openly suggesting a war between the US and China could happen soon, and the US military has been preparing for that possibility. While some of those officials have claimed they want to prevent a war from happening, the US’s actions in the region say otherwise — such as the US’s ongoing attempts to form stronger alliances with some of China’s immediate neighbors with the deliberate intention of countering China.
It’s difficult to overstate how dangerous the US’s provocations toward China are, as a direct war between the two countries could very quickly turn nuclear. Disputes between China and Taiwan or China and the Philippines have no impact on the average US citizen, and members of the US military should not be expected to go fight and die in a war over those disputes.
Conclusion
All of this goes to show just how quickly decisions made in Washington DC can lead to very real and very intense escalation in conflicts that have already escalated to extremely dangerous levels.
The interests of the US empire are not the same as the interests of the average American — I would actually argue they often contradict each other. The mangers of the US empire don’t seem to have our best interest in mind when they provoke major powers, heighten regional tensions, and spark conflicts all across the globe. Their interest is maintaining US hegemony — and their own power — at all costs, and in their attempts to do so they are leading us all down a very dangerous path.
Each escalation caused by the US and its allies is another rung on a ladder that we have already been climbing for far too long. One day that ladder will eventually tip over, and when it does, the result could be a series of mushroom clouds.
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