Nuclear Christmas in 2025?

Christmas carols finally started playing the whole day in almost all the FM and AM radio stations on Christmas Day 2022 itself. It added some cheer to a spiritless December when for two weeks or three people often asked each other, “Have you heard the Christmas songs waft through the cool December air recently?”

This year’s holiday season have not been as buoyant as expected despite the fading of the pandemic crisis. No doubt the high inflation the multiple crises besetting the world and the Philippine today have had a massive dampening effect. Imagine P 300/kg onions, that can really take away the flavors of life!

Christmas week which started in the few days in the run-up to the vacation days has had its calming effects. The latest spate of “Evil China” scare stories spun to buttress support for additional foreign bases in the country and the renewal of the EDCA agreement come April of 2023 had also subsided, so it was a good intro to the respite days, Simbang Gabi, noche buena.

The only Christian country in Asia could simmer and cool down with the season’s climes, enjoy a week or two of silence and whatever holiness possible in this increasingly pressured world. We cannot say the same for the Western world where the geopolitical conflicts have been heating up in the midst of one of the coldest winters in America and Europe and war signs are increasingly daunting.
The past week was the first time that Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a December 23 speech to the public after a State Council meeting, used the term “war” to describe the conflict in Ukraine and made no mention of the “Special Military Operation” to limit the scope of the situation in Ukraine. To analyst lie me this is very significant.

This development must also be juxtaposed to the reports (the one I am using here is from Voltairenet.com of French intellectual Thierry Meyssan) that Putin announced that he would increase the number of troops involved in Ukraine up to 1.15-million. Putin has visited Belarusian president Lukashenko believed to be for preparations and to supply S-400 defense SAMs.

Russia’s winter offensive is believed to be ready to roll when the worse of winter arrives in Ukraine and the rivers and mud ices up enough for tanks and transports to roll on them. Speculation is that Russia will drive through Odessa to connect all the way to Russophone Transnistria, effectively sealing in Ukraine from the Black Sea.

On the other side of war zone rumors are rife of Poland mobilizing 200,000 troops for 2023, and on Dec. 22 Russia’s defense chief Sergei Shoigu said Russia’s armed forces are presently facing allied force of the West -- the US and its allies supply the Kiev regime with weapons, train its soldiers, provide intelligence...”

The latest is Zelensky’s visit to President Biden and spoke before the US Congress, while Biden pledges $2 billion more in aid and weapons -- and continued support. It’s clear the Ukraine War will be getting worse before it gets any better or not at all. By the middle of 2023 after the Russian winter offensive and push West we may just see only a skeleton of Ukraine left.

Asia today still seems to far from the war in Ukraine to believe that it can really spillover to the region, but it is actually closer than anyone can imagine. The writing is on the wall. The most significant lines are: Japan with US prodding is doubling its defense budget in the next five years and pumping up its offensive missile capacities; NATO planes and ships are paroling Asia and basing in Australia.

Of course, in our own backyard the Americans, aside for expanding its military base presence, are increasing the military exercises in the fronts facing Taiwan and the disputed South China Sea areas. China and Russia are presently holding naval drills in the East Sea, while North Korea had just fired off several ballistic missiles tests in the week that just passed.

If Asia is not careful, Asia could quickly be a flashpoint. If people are skeptical they just have to recall Christmas 1940 when the war in Europe was raging, it took only another 12 months before World War II expanded to Asia and put the region into flame. I am beginning to see the same trend today -- if the peoples of Asia don’t do anything to stop the West’s driver towards making the “Forever War” global.

ASEAN as a whole is acutely aware of the potential for a sudden shift of the winds of war to blow violently towards the East from the West, that is why for the decades past it already constructed the policy edifice to prevent such an eventuality by sealing two agreements amongst the 10 nations of ASEAN: the ZOPFAN and the SEANFZ Treaty.

The ZOPFAN is the ASEAN Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality, and the SEANFZ is the Southeast Asian Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, both intended to save ASEAN and even Asia from the ravages of war -- this time, nuclear war -- that may end all life as we know it today and in the eons past. This is my message for Christmas and New Year 2022, so we may have “forever Christmas” forever more.