COLD WAR UNDERWAY AND ESCALATING
NOT JUST 2 PLAYERS, BUT MANY
No one can deny that a new cold war is now underway. This time it is often hotter, enlisting more players and hence much more dangerous. In fact, we could say that we are in the midst of a global cold war that could turn extremely hot at any moment.
The former cold war, that older folks like myself remember, and sadly most of younger generations do not, was mostly an ideological contest between Totalitarian Communism and Democracy, a very simplified description. It was the status quo for 45 years, a contest between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies. It started out with the quiet understanding that nuclear war was probable and kept everyone tip toeing around, fearful of triggering such a conflagration.
The United States engaged in limited wars in Korea and Vietnam, in an effort to contain the spread of Communist ideology. The Soviet Union supported communist governments and communist movements in many places. At the same time there was an ongoing effort to keep up militarily with preparedness for any conflict arising from this competition. The continual fear of nuclear war kept the arms industry fat and happy without any major all out war taking place.
That all changed in 1991 with the dissolution the Soviet Union, a major turning point in the geopolitical history, an unprecedented event, that while the west declared victory in the cold war, the former Soviet Union struggled to transition from totalitarian communism into a hoped for member of the world community. While it was a mostly peaceful transition, it caused great suffering and pain to the all those involved in the transition. It was a period of optimism around the world. In the U.S. we welcomed the new Peace dividend and the Russian federation proposed and cooperated in many significant arms reduction treaties that promised a more peaceful world. Russia, after disbanding the Warsaw pact and granting independence to those eastern European countries, even proposed Russia becoming part of NATO. The Soviet Union, the leader of the worldwide communist movement for 75 years was no more and it was rejecting communist economics and moving to a hybrid democratic free market.
The West with its massive defense network was now adrift, looking for relevance and a unifying threat to keep up the now dominant motivation for many. We saw a short lived focus of fighting drug cartels in Columbia, Panama and other places, but it just did not have the potential for a major unifying defense strategy. It was not long until a new enemy was to emerge to provide the threat and reason for the existence of maintaining a massive defense industry. The Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 was the beginning of the new threat, Islamic fundamentalism and protecting the oil resources of the Mideast.
The Iranian revolution with the nationalization of their oil reserves controlled by British and U.S. oil companies and the holding of U.S. embassy staff as hostage's was the beginning of the new focus for the nest 45 years. One can speculate that the Iranians did the hostage affair, knowing that they could expect that military action was imminent, and the 1 year gave them time to organize a government.
The next event or action was the Iran/Iraq war which began in1980 with Iraq encouraged and supported by the west. the war lasted until 1988 and claimed the lives of over 500,000 with between 1 and 2 million casualties. Final peace did not take place until 1990. One must wonder if this was the beginning of a series of proxy wars in the global political game.
Saddam Hussein, leader of Iraq spent 10 years with the war with Iran and some suspect that he was made promises by the West, mostly by the U.S. and British. There is documented proof that April Glaspie, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told Saddam that the west would not get involved in land disputes in the region. Iraq had lost much of its oil fields by the British creation of Kuwait in an effort to control the oil reserves in that region. One can then speculate that possibly because Saddam had not defeated Iran and he also may have been the first to be baited into war. Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991 and he soon found out that Glaspie or her masters had lied. This brought about a huge movement of U.S. troops to the middle east and the first Gulf war with the destruction and slaughter of the Iraqi military.
In 1979 Russia, who has advisers in Afghanistan, invaded in response to the public execution of 20 Russian advisers in Herat. The Russians were tied up until 1989 and it ended its support for other communist movements worldwide. The opposition was massively funded and supported by the U.S. and other western countries. The Islamic forces then became a proxy force that was used more times in the future, including Syria, Libya and Africa. It is estimated that 80% of the forces in Afghanistan were foreign.
All this coincided with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which actually may have created a void in the international balance of powers. This void was openly embraced by the war advocates in the U.S. who claimed the U.S. was the sole super power and began to use that reality to behave in a fashion not present in former U.S. history.
While Russia was immersed in chaos, poverty and struggling to transition to a new political and economic system the U.S. hoped to transform the world into its view of a "New World Order " to many, that phrase used by George Bush 1, awakened fears of world government and encouraged political opposition in the U.S.
The first gulf war resulted in the permanent formation of U.S. bases in the middle east. An anathema to Muslims in the region and eventually was the reason for the 911 attack on the U.S. in 2001. This attack was organized by Osama Bin Laudon a former Afghanistan fighter against the Soviets. Bin Lauden prophetically predicted that if the U.S. continued to meddle in the middle east they would "BLEED" the U.S. to its eventual collapse. While the U.S. is still in the region and continues to exert its power, it is shadow of the economic and military power force that it was in 1991.
While Russia struggled in its transition, the U.S. and NATO set out the process of extending NATO membership to countries from the former Soviet Union. Russia protested, but took no action. With the election of Vladimir Putin to the presidency of the Russian federation 2000, the first elected president, Russia was able to focus on the stabilization of the country. Putin is a nationalist with a nationalist view of Russia as a sovereign and independent country. I suspect that fact is one reason why he has been hated by western leaders, who all seem to be more interested in some global end game, even if it is damaging to their own people. That and as the former leader of the world communist movement, that rejected communism, is hated by those Marxists who still exist in those same western countries. The escalation really took off when George Bush 11announced in 2008, that Ukraine and Georgia would be invited to join NATO.
While the propagandists in the west claimed that Putin wanted to reestablish the former Soviet Union, the reality is NATO expansion is a plan to encircle and eventually dismember Russia, a plan originating in the 1970's and now understood clearly by Russia. It is clear as to the intentions and it is clear that Russia will resist NATO expansion, as an existential threat to its sovereignty. There will not be a settlement that ends with Ukraine in NATO or western troops in Ukraine, even if it leads to nuclear confrontation.
So while the war in Ukraine became hot, and some believe this was the plan, bait Russia into war and then destroy it economically and militarily, it is not working out as planned, so far at least.
The U.S went on with war against Iraq under the false premise of nuclear weapons and then proxy wars with Libya, Syria and failed attempts in Egypt and Tunisia. We also support conflicts in Chechia, Georgia and Africa provide massive military support to Taiwan and Israel. Much of our national debt is directly related to new peace we discovered post 1991. That and a diminishing of our image around the world.
While this conflict is between NATO and Russia, we also have the desire to hamstring China economically, force fence sitters like India to become economic and military allies of the west and at the same time insure the protection of Israel by eliminating any power that can challenge its supremacy. This is the new Cold war, a global conflict in the hope of sustaining the supremacy of the western powers, economically, politically and militarily. a hope that may have already expired in reality.
After WW2 the U.S. was the undisputed leader economically, politically and militarily and also with an image of fair play and trustworthiness. The country is no longer the leader in manufacturing capacity, a must to be supreme. It is economically bankrupt, with massive debts, as is the whole western world. It is severely divided politically with no remedy in the near future. While still having equity in nuclear weapons, the reality of the 21st century that third world countries, while not nuclear, are sufficiently educated technically that rebels in Yemen can stave off the U.S. fleet and air defenses in Venezuela could cause serious damage to U.S. air power. It is no longer the case that nations are unwilling to challenge the Western powers.
While the EU talks about preparing for war, but has no economic base for such an undertaking, Russia has been preparing for war in reality. A war that no one in their right mind should even contemplate. The U.S. still a world power, but unlikely to do well in an extended long term conflict, would likely need to resort to nuclear weapons in a peer power conflict. So this is again, the new Cold war, a series of threats, intimidation, economically, militarily that serious people do not want to escalate to a real hot war. The resolution cannot come from war, but facing the new reality that world has changed, it can no longer be sustained as it has for the last 80 years. Only the realization that real peace is the only solution. A peace based on mutual respect and a similar realization that was present during the former cold war, that confrontation into real war will not end well for anyone.
