Merkel is the most powerful and influential politician not only in Europe but in the world, today.

Yet she, herself, made arguably the greatest political and military error of the past 70 years by unilaterally agreeing to supply Israel’s tiny naval force with a fleet of German Dolphin-Class submarines that are now believed armed with cruise missiles tipped with 200kton nuclear warheads, and a range of 1500kms. They are assumed to be deployed in both the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. This huge arms transaction was subsidised by the German government and has given the Israeli state a ‘2nd strike capability’ which has dramatically altered the balance of power in Europe and the Middle East.

This act of military madness had helped drive the rise of the far Right not only in Germany itself but throughout Europe, the majority of EU states having no nuclear defence of their own and certainly no 2nd strike capability. In the event of a nuclear conflict against Europe, it does not need much imagination to calculate who will be ‘the last man standing’.

The state of Israel is the only undeclared nuclear weapon entity in the world and is probably the 4th most powerful after the US, Russia and France. She has an estimated stockpile of up to 400 nuclear warheads which is greater than that of China, Pakistan or India and, of course, still refuses to be a party to the global nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or any of the international treaties (CWC/ BWC) that outlaw both chemical and biological weapons.

Chancellor Merkel is now nearly halfway through her fourth and final term as Chancellor and her legacy is profound.

Empowering Israel to be one of only four so-called nuclear triad states in the world with a 2nd strike capability i.e. with air, land and undersea nuclear capabilities, was probably the defining act of profound irresponsibility ever delivered by any European leader.

A nuclear triad is a three-pronged military force structure that consists of land-launched nuclear missiles, nuclear-missile-armed submarines and strategic aircraft with nuclear bombs and missiles.

The ramifications of such a voluntary act of irresponsibility could resonate around the world for more than a hundred years. The most powerful politician in Europe for over the past decade will leave a continent of a half a billion people at the mercy of a small, troubled, nuclear-weaponised country in the Middle East with a population of less than nine million.

As Merkel prepares to leave office, she might reflect on the dangers that both NATO and the continent she has for so long dominated, now become so vulnerable to attack by foreign forces with both nuclear and chemical WMD. Tragically, that one deliberate action that made a mockery of the (NPT) nuclear Non Proliferation Act, can never be reversed. That die is now well and truly cast.

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Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst based in the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War”

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research!

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3

Year: 2012

Pages: 102

Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)

PDF Edition: $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”

–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”

-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.

–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute