WELL before the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7, scholars and respected geopolitical analysts were already writing pieces asking this question.

Indeed, the famous Doomsday Clock started in 1947 by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved its hands back in January to 90 seconds to “midnight,” or the end of the world, mainly because of the “mounting dangers of the war in Ukraine.”

I bet the Israel-Hamas conflict would have it moved to 30 seconds to midnight, the closest to global catastrophe the clock has ever been.

That superpowers and near-superpowers could stumble into war was deemed a high possibility then, mainly because Russia could decide, because its invasion of Ukraine seemed to have bogged down after 19 months, to use tactical (i.e., weaker than the Hiroshima killer) nuclear bombs against the Ukrainian armies.

That would force the US — despite the conventional wisdom that the American president won’t go to war during an election period — to retaliate also by tactically nuking Russian forces or even a minor Russian city.

But that tit-for-tat response could escalate into a total Armageddon war, as China will almost definitely go to Russia’s defense by invading American bases in the Pacific — which, thanks to Aquino 3rd and Marcos Jr., would include us with the nine “temporary” American military bases all over the archipelago.

Ignoramuses

With these developments, I hope that ignoramuses like Jonathan Malaya and his boss National Security Adviser Eduardo Año start to realize that writers like me aren’t pro-China because we love China (and therefore traitors, he claims) but actually are the real — and discerning patriots — who want to prevent our country from being used by the US in their last-ditch effort to maintain its hegemony in Asia, to the point of being involved in a war we have no business in.

China’s intervention won’t, of course, be out of sheer friendship for the Russians. The crisis will be the big opportunity for China to invade and take over Taiwan, which they have been threatening to do for 75 years ever since they defeated and drove the Kuomintang forces out of the mainland. Anti-China analysts even cite that unverified but often quoted statement of Mao Zedong in 1964: “What if they killed 300 million of us [in a nuclear war]? We would still have many people left.” That could be a cruel but hard reality: China now has 1.4 billion people, the US 340 million, and its main ally Europe 450 million.

But Mao might not have been properly briefed that a total nuclear war could lead to the extinction of all humanity because of diseases resulting from the radiation, the catastrophic cooling of the globe because of the fallout, and the sheer chaos resulting from the closure of entire economies.

12,800 bombs

We forget that from just 50 nuclear bombs existing in 1948, held by the US, the UK and the USSR, there are now 12,800 more powerful nuclear bombs in the possession of nine countries, enough to kill all of humanity many times over. The big problem with the nuclear-deterrent model is that the superpowers’ military machines, by design, would have to be fast in pressing their red buttons to ensure their survival.

Fears that the Ukraine war could trigger World War 3, however, have abated a bit. The US propaganda that the Ukrainians are beating Russia has been debunked. Russia, with its industrial might and bigger population from which to draw soldiers, is gradually wearing down the Ukrainian army, which is depleting even the US military stockpile of weapons. Russia and Ukraine, pressured by the US, will agree to a “frozen war” in which the former will be occupying areas in the latter country considered ethnically Russian, and willing to be under Kremlin rule.

But a more serious threat to peace broke out when Hamas fighters invaded Israeli areas in early October and committed the most atrocious of crimes against civilians. That has given Israel the justification and propaganda fuel to do what it has dreamed of doing for 36 years, ever since the first intifada (uprising) broke out by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in 1987. This is to drive out all of the troublesome, murderous Palestinians out of that area and totally convert it as part of a “Greater Israel.” The Israelis are simply following the Torah, which says that it is OK to wipe out entire cities — and with them their innocents — like Jericho, and Sodom and Gomorrah.

Indeed, there is a biblical déjà vu to the extermination by Israel of 7,000 Palestinian in Gaza, half of whom were children, to avenge the killing of 1,538 Israelis by Hamas soldiers since October 7. Those figures will certainly increase after the Palestinians manage to dig up those buried in the tons of rubble that were the result of thousands of Israeli bombs and artillery.

Disaster

A portent of the humanitarian disaster still to come is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamín Netanyahu’s statement last week, three weeks after his armed forces’ nonstop bombing of the Gaza Strip: “This is our second War of Independence. We shall fight to defend our homeland.”

Israel’s first war of independence was in May 1948, when four Arab countries invaded it to nip in the bud the creation of the Jewish state, declared just the day before. Israel was victorious, killing over 10,000 of the Arab nations’ soldiers and Palestinians. Israel consolidated its colonization of what was Palestine, later creating what is called the biggest modern ghetto for Palestinians, the Gaza Strip. Israel’s “second war of independence” would make troublesome Gaza an uninhabited desert and a gigantic parking lot for Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers.

The big risk now is that first, the Iran-backed Hezbollah (Party of God) of Palestine mujahidin at the opposite Lebanese border of Israel would go to the aid of Hamas. This will mean a historic first time that followers of Islam’s Shia denomination (the former) will be uniting with their bitter rival Sunnis (the latter) in a common endeavor to defeat the evil Zionists. That would inspire the Arab world to try crushing Israel once and for all. Iran, considered to have the most technologically advanced military in the Middle East, will be aiding the Hezbollah, which after all is the creation of its Revolutionary Guards. The US, of course, will go to the defense of Israel, to the extent of invading even Egypt and Lebanon.

China

Russia and China will not just watch their client states trampled by their archenemy. In fact, they would see it as a huge opportunity, a turning point for the end of American hegemony — if there is still a world, that is.

Niall Ferguson, one of America’s respected mainstream historians, recently wrote an article which ended with a dire warning: “Today, I increasingly fear we may be re-running the 1930s (which led to World War 2). If Israel finds it cannot contend with a three-front war in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, and turns to the United States for military help against Iran, we shall have reached one of history’s hinges. The future of the world will turn on it.”

Now, do you still see the nine US temporary bases here as “deterrents” to Chinese aggression? Isn’t it clear these were American strategists’ long-term preparations for a world war, and our country will be a magnet for nuclear bombs targeting these sites?

For the first time ever, I’ll be praying to the gods — that is, the world’s elite, the real permanent rulers of the superpower nations. A nuclear war will be the greatest equalizer ever, killing even the elites unless they have already secret colonies on the Moon or Mars. They should move heaven and earth to end this march to Armageddon. Perhaps Facebook, X and Instagram devoted a month solely to a call to end the insanity? Or just for the two warmongers Biden and Netanyahu to resign?

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