<\/p>\n
By\u00a0Thomas Gaist<\/p>\n
(WSWS<\/a>) –\u00a0During their second day of discussions in the resort town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the German Alps on Monday, the leaders of the major imperialist powers affirmed their commitment to a policy of escalating strategic and military pressure against Russia.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to keep pushing Russia,\u201d Obama said. \u201cRussian forces continue to operate in eastern Ukraine, violating Ukraine\u2019s sovereignty and territorial integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe G7 is making it clear that if necessary we stand ready to impose additional significant sanctions against Russia,\u201d Obama declared.<\/p>\n An official communiqu\u00c3\u00a9 released by the G7 powers\u2013the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, and Canada\u2013reaffirmed Obama\u2019s anti-Russia comments. It warned that the assembled powers would devise \u201cfurther restrictive measures in order to increase cost on Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n The hypocrisy and recklessness of Obama and his G7 counterparts is breathtaking. They are denouncing Russian \u201caggression\u201d in Ukraine, which they plunged into civil war by backing a fascist-led putsch last year that toppled a pro-Russian government. Now, US and NATO armed forces are conducting air, sea and ground exercises all along Russia\u2019s borders. In Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Scandinavia, the Baltic Sea, and the Black Sea, the US and its allies are rehearsing the opening stages of an all-out war with Russia.<\/p>\n Last week, US defense officials testifying before the US House of Representatives indicated that the Pentagon is considering launching pre-emptive strikes against Russian targets, including with nuclear weapons (see: US officials consider nuclear strikes against Russia<\/a>). These statements are no doubt now being carefully studied by the Russian military.<\/p>\n NATO\u2019s recently-formed Rapid Response Force, which has been assembled to serve as the spearhead of a NATO ground war against Russian forces, is set to conduct military exercises in Poland starting today. The so-called \u201cBaltops\u201d exercises are to involve thousands of US-NATO troops and will take place simultaneously in Sweden, Germany and the Baltic Sea.<\/p>\n A quarter century after the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the \u201cCold War,\u201d Washington is preparing new forward-deployments of its nuclear arsenal to Europe. In an interview with the BBC given the preceding day, British Foreign Minister Philip Hammond made clear that plans for new US nuclear deployments to Europe are far advanced.<\/p>\n Hammond told the BBC Sunday that Britain may soon withdraw from the INF treaty, clearing the way for Britain to serve as a staging area for an American nuclear build-up against Russia, just as it did prior to 1991, when US nuclear weapons were stationed at the Royal Air Force\u2019s Greenham Common base.<\/p>\n \u201cThere have been some worrying signs of stepping up levels of activity both by Russian forces and by Russian-controlled separatist forces,\u201d Hammond said. \u201cWe have got to send a clear signal to Russia that we will not allow them to transgress our red lines.\u201d<\/p>\n The US and European ruling elites\u2019 strategy of endlessly bullying Russia by threatening it with war and nuclear strikes poses immense dangers to the world\u2019s population. Even assuming that the ruling elites of the NATO powers are not immediately seeking to provoke outright war with Russia, the constant drumbeat of NATO threats and military exercises immensely heightens the danger of war breaking out accidentally.<\/p>\n With thousands of jet fighters, warships, and armored units on heightened alert throughout the region, the world is only a few miscalculations away from a clash between NATO and Russian forces that could rapidly escalate into war.<\/p>\n The immense dangers posed to the world\u2019s population arising from the US and NATO war drive against Russia are being hidden from masses of workers in the United States and worldwide. No one in the official media is asking how many people would die if the military maneuvers being practiced by Russian and NATO forces in their exercises turned into the real thing. Instead, much of the media coverage of the G7 summit focused on controversy over whether Obama was drinking alcohol-free beer yesterday.<\/p>\n The relentless military escalation at this G7 summit testifies to the breakdown and historic bankruptcy of capitalism. Without the unification and mobilization of the international working class in revolutionary struggle against imperialism and war, it is not only likely, but inevitable, that NATO war threats will at some point unleash all-out war.<\/p>\n