IT BEGGARS BELIEF that in a world where we have by no means emerged from the end of the Covid pandemic, the major powers are talking up war. But it has now reached a pitch with various pronouncements in and around the Munich Nato conference.

When does talk about war turn into war? We may be on the edge of finding out this week. The past two months have seen the talking reach an intense pitch. US President Joe Biden predicted that Russia would invade Ukraine last Wednesday. That didn’t happen — but now he is certain that it will happen this week. 

Biden also said that any attack that looked like it was by Ukraine on the Russian-supported republics of Donetsk and Lugansk would in fact be a false-flag operation set up by Russia in order to create a pretext for invasion and war. This is a no-win situation for Russia: it is to blame for war regardless of how it looks or who fires the first shot. 

US intelligence claims include the likelihood of a false-flag attack, a possible air assault on Kiev, the installation of a puppet government — yet there has been no public evidence for such claims and they have not been shared in detail with European governments, to the latter’s increasing frustration.

While it is impossible to verify such claims, we should remember that the US has a record second to none in its own false flags. These include:   

• The Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, where the US trained and backed Cuban exiles who launched a failed offensive against Castro’s government
 

• The Gulf of Tonkin in 1964, where a supposed attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on a US ship led to passage of a law allowing the involvement of the US in full conventional war against Vietnam