BRITISH prime minister Winston Churchill commissioned the development of “Operation Unthinkable” as early as May 1945. The British General Staff was instructed to devise a plan for an attack on the Soviet Union, to be carried out jointly with US forces and 100,000 soldiers from the German Wehrmacht as early as July 1 1945.

Due to excessive risks, particularly doubts about whether British soldiers would even obey such an attack order, the plan — which was only made public in 1998 — was abandoned.

However, the plan was entirely in line with a quote falsely attributed to Winston Churchill: “We slaughtered the wrong pig.”

The speech by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference now stands fully in the tradition of Operation Unthinkable, but on a global political scale.

In Rubio’s Munich speech, the year 1945 is perceived as the year of the West’s defeat. He wants to return to that point in order to erase what he sees as the anti-colonialist defeat of 1945. This is also the real reason why the US administration wants to push the UN into the ditch.

Rubio’s colonial nostalgia

“For five centuries before the end of WWII, the West was expanding — its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers streamed from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending across the globe. But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, the West retreated,” reads Rubio’s historical lesson. Then the decline set in, “accelerated by godless communist revolutions and anti-colonial uprisings.”

The year 1945 is thus understood as a crisis of Western colonialism, with the US seeing itself as its leading power, though it also needs allies. Therefore, the US Secretary of State reaffirmed: “We do not want our allies to be weak, because that makes us weaker.”

Perhaps it was this promise of being needed to contribute to US strength that made the three Germans the first in the room to jump up.

It was Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, and Bavarian Minister President Markus Soder — all three parties of the governing coalition — who could hardly contain themselves as they stood and applauded.

Rubio’s speech was not only a nostalgia for 500 years of colonialism, involving mass murder, slavery, and exploitation unto death, but also a declaration of war against the powers that, from the US administration’s perspective, stand in the way of a recolonisation of the world in favor of a renewed US imperialism: Russia and, above all, China.

In loyal vassalage, Wadephul positioned himself in Munich within the US battle formation by declaring that he wanted to maintain good relations with all Brics states, except Russia and China.

Farewell to the United Nations

From the US perspective, the UN must be pushed into the ditch because Moscow and Beijing hold veto rights in the UN security council, and in the general assembly, a majority of the global South regularly votes against the US recolonisation policy of renewed imperialism, as in the case of the genocide in Gaza and the blockade against Cuba.

The UN “no longer plays a role,” according to Rubio. At best, they could be reformed.
This is nothing less than the revision of the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire in 1945.

Russia, as the successor state to the Soviet Union, and China should no longer be among the victors, as they are the source of resistance in the global South. Rubio gets very specific about where US imperialism has had to prevail against the UN.

He follows with a list of recent interventions. In complete historical distortion, the American explains: “They could not resolve the war in Gaza. Instead, it was American leadership that freed the hostages from barbarians and brought about a fragile ceasefire.”

Not a word about Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians, supported by the US administration and the German government. Not a word about the fact that the genocide continues.

Then Rubio lists Ukraine, Iran, Venezuela. Since the UN is incapable of action, the Americans must do it. The US violations of international law are meant to show the path to action. In doing so, they want to take the Europeans along. “It will give us back our place in the world,” is Rubio’s Munich promise. But this place must be fought for against all who dare to oppose the US.

War rhetoric for a new world war

Rubio’s speech is a war speech. The promise to wage a world war for the US that will restore its place as a great power.

The Europeans are promised to be taken along on this path, because one does not want to forgo them for strengthening the US.

The starvation of Cuba by the US may be just an initial taste of what is to come, in order to fulfill 500 years of shared colonial history of the West and renew the promise of domination.

Western civilisation, which must be helped to victory, is understood by Rubio both as a racial and as a cultural and faith community. In this sense, the viewing 1945 as a defeat can certainly be assumed to be understandable.

US President Donald Trump and his secretary of state are facing an unthinkable operation on a global scale. The risk of a world war seems to be part of the calculation. Who will stop US imperialism on this path?

Sevim Dagdelen was a member of the German Bundestag from 2005 to 2025 and is currently a member of the Federal Executive Board of the German party BSW (Bundnis Sahra Wagenknecht / The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance)