If you’re not terrified by this new Cold War, then you haven’t paid attention to history

IN 1984, the BBC aired a docudrama called ‘Threads’ – and promptly terrified a generation. A brutally uncompromising account of the aftermath of a nuclear war, the most terrifying elements were the fake news reports at the beginning of the programme.

An escalation of tensions in the Middle East, in this case involving Iran, resulted in the two super powers engaging in a game of atomic brinkmanship as they struggled for strategic superiority in the region.

Then, with a grim inevitability, events escalated beyond either side’s control and after a conventional clash between the two armies, a tactical nuclear exchange quickly ramped up to a full scale atomic war.

The events we’ve been witnessing in the Middle East lately, in this case centred around Syria, won’t lead us into a nuclear conflagration, but it was impossible to listen to news reports and not be transported back to the dark, pessimistic days of the mid-1980s, when it felt as if Armageddon was only ever one mistake away.

We’re now seven years into the monstrous civil war in Syria, which has claimed half-a-million lives and dragged the entire region to the edge of a perilous precipice.

But even though Isil has now been degraded to the extent that outside a few last stubborn redoubts it is no longer a viable force, the area is a more dangerous powder keg now than it has ever been.

Many of us would have spent much of the last week going about our business, occasionally listening to the latest broadcasts, and just like those indifferent or bored characters in ‘Threads’, assumed it was just another case of geopolitical sabre rattling by the big boys. But it’s much worse than that. The fact that so many observers, who have become used to the daily horror stories emanating from the region, are genuinely worried about the direction this latest standoff has taken should concern us all.

The attack on Syria’s chemical weapons factories in Damascus in the early hours of Saturday morning may have been milder than expected, and we should all breathe a sigh of relief that the Russians chose not to employ their own anti-missile defence systems. But with Putin issuing dire warnings of ‘chaos’ if such an event happens again, with a senior Russian general already warning that his forces reserve the right to attack any ship which launches cruise missiles at Syrian targets, there can be no doubt that the heat has been turned up in this latest chapter of the new Cold War.

Russia already feels that the West has declared diplomatic war, with the expulsion of dozens of its diplomats (including one from this country) from their embassies around the world. While that provides an extra dose of vinegar to an already sour taste in Russian mouths, there are other, more pertinent developments, which have been largely ignored in the West.

For example, an estimated 200 Russian ‘mercenaries’ are believed to have been killed in a clash last month with the US-backed Syrian Defence Forces and while both sides have been keen to outsource their fighting, while keeping a minimal presence on the ground, the possibility of an accidental encounter between regular forces spiralling out of control seems closer now than it has been at any time since the chaos began.

The marked increase in both the rhetoric and ordnance being employed by the Western powers fails to hide one important question – just what are they fighting for?

Nobody wants to go to war over a minor dictator in the Middle East, but nobody wanted to go war over the assassination of a minor European royal in 1914, yet the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand ignited a conflagration that would claim millions of lives and change the world forever.

For a man who loudly trumpeted his non-interventionist stance

– a stance which won him many

Russia already feels the West has declared diplomatic war

unlikely admirers in a war weary America – Trump has been increasingly bellicose, and the fact that he admits to being swayed in his decision to launch the missiles by a picture of a young girl crying after a gas attack shows how quickly emotions can cloud logic.

IT’S unlikely, at this stage, that they will topple Assad. Not because the appetite isn’t there, but because the vacuum left behind would make the last seven years look like Utopia.

Short of razing the city of Damascus to the ground, all they can hope to do is contain him. That brings us to the most interesting moral question of the whole conflict – why is it OK to kill with barrel bombs full of explosives but beyond the pale to kill those same people with barrel bombs full of chlorine?

We all have an inherent revulsion towards nerve and chemical weapons, but the vast majority of the half-million dead people were killed by conventional weapons and their deaths aren’t worth any less just because they ‘only’ died by bullet or bomb or bayonet.

This attack has been described in some circles as ‘virtue bombing’ – an exercise designed to placate domestic outrage at the use of illegal chemical weapons, but conducted so late at night and with such advance warning that it actually had minimal material impact.

The fact that some airlines have withdrawn their scheduled flights from Rafiki airport in Beirut, while the Israelis have also launched their own air strikes against Iranian forces in Syria, shows that this is now a game of intractable multidimensional chess where none of the players knows the rules.

Our own Foreign Minister Simon Coveney tried to have it both ways when he condemned the chemical attack while also insisting that the US, France and the UK (which only played a symbolic role in the attack) should have gone through appropriate UN channels – which would have been immediately vetoed by the Russians, anyway.

In fairness to Coveney, it’s hard to know what else he could have said without giving a full-throated endorsement of the action, which was never going to be happen.

In fact, the Irish Government, like all the other democratic governments around the West, seems paralysed with indecision as it watches on with growing unease, while the dreaded aphorism ‘events, dear boy, events’ rings in their ear.

It’s impossible to predict where this latest crisis is going, but there’s no doubt we have seen a genuinely worrying escalation which could quickly develop beyond anyone’s control.

Yes, it’s beginning to feel a lot like the 1980s all over again...