As the United States and its allies continue to levy one punitive measure after another on Russia as a result of its invasion of Ukraine, it feels more and more as though we've entered a new Cold War period. Scoot over, North Korea: in the space of about three weeks, Russia has been relegated to the status of pariah state.
Even Russian musicians (and 19th century composers!) are being canceled in our zeal to not have anything to do with Russians.
If the Cold War ended when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, then anyone under the age of 33 grew up in a post-Cold War world; anyone under the age of, say, 45 really has no appreciation for what it meant to live under the shadow of the Cold War. According to the Google machine, the median age for Americans is about 38, so that means that less than half of us have experienced the meaning of the Cold War.
May I just say: this is not the world I would have chosen for my children.
I find the anti-russian posturing to be another example of silly American hysterics. Opera singers are expected to denounce Putin or be banished. I wish the world had sanctioned OUR billionaires when we illegally invaded countries. Let's face it. Hot shot politicians pushed for NATO expansion and encirclement of Russia when none was necessary. I am disgusted with Putin but a little prudence from OUR leaders might have avoided this mess. And as usual, the US public was sleepwalking through the whole thing.
ReplyDeleteI really felt safer with the Soviet Union under Gorbachev than I do now with Mother Russia under Putin. Reagan's great triumph is turning out to be another case of be careful what you wish for.
Well I suppose we have a case of "woulda, coulda, shoulda", but I wonder if the US and Europe had given Russia a little help, in the form of financial investment and other things, if the world might have avoided a Putin coming to power. And it does seem as though Putin has become more embittered over the years. But given his KGB history, it was always there waiting to come out.
ReplyDeleteI was referring to help after the collapse of the old Soviet Union.
DeleteThis doesn't feel like the Cold War to me, when the Soviets were largely confined to smacking down insurrections behind the Iron Curtain and posturing with their nukes.
ReplyDeletePutin seems more dangerous than any of the Soviet leaders outside of Stalin. After Stalin, the Politburo did not allow one man to be invested with that much power. Premieres were forcibly removed and retired rather than summarily denounced and shot. But there is no Politburo to get rid of Putin for the good of the nation. The Duma is full of his stooges, and he has rigged all the elections. The protesters are rounded up by storm troopers and hauled away, so a popular uprising seems unlikely.
Stopping him seems to rely on three things: China's unwillingness to provide materiel, a breakdown in his economy, and the ground in Ukraine unfreezing so that mud gums up the tanks and heavy trucks.
I get why NATO is hanging back and wringing its hands for fear of World War III. But my pacifism ended when they started bombing maternity hospitals kids. If they need old ladies to make Molotov cocktails, somebody buy me the plane ticket over there. My kid is grown, I don't have a job, and what am I gonna do here besides knit blankets and read books until I die.
When these wars break out, I return to my idea of tbe ultimate nonlethal weapon. This is the scenario. Russian soldiers approach Kiev. As they near the city limits, division commanders start losing communication from their field units. Tanks fire their cannons but the barrels tear open, rendering them useless. Artillery batteries have stopped firing. Drone surveillance shows Russian infantry lying in the ground, motionless. The same with the artillery personnel. The attack has stopped. Ukrainian troops fan outward from the city. The russian infantry is not dead. They have been immobilized by 100 gram drones that landed on them, administered an injection of muscle relaxant and then monitored life signs to control the amount of antidote to keep them alive. The small drones were sequestered throughout the area surrounding the city and were triggered to go into action. The neutralized tanks' cannons were found to have clusters of small drones epoxied together to constrict the gun opening, causing overpressure and rupture to the barrel. As for the infantry, they slowly recover and are taken to confinement. No bloodshed except for the inevitable failures here and there. No pretense to push the nuclear button. Of course, countermeasures will be developed.
ReplyDeleteThat would be great.
DeleteI am heartened by reports that Belarusian troops are sabatoging their own tanks and trucks so they can't help Putin. I guess that border is very swampy and woodsy, and in a few weeks will be impassable if they can keep up their strategy.
No idea how much of this is accurate. Truth is always the first casualty in war.