Peace on earth in Bongbong’s hands

Second of 3 parts

“WE have made it clearer and clearer that NATO’s further eastward movement is unacceptable,” declared Russian President Vladimir Putin about the “special military operation” by which he calls the Russian attack on Ukraine. “What is incomprehensible here? Are we placing missiles near the borders of the United States? No. It is the United States with its missiles that came to our house. They are already on the doorsteps of our house.”

Under those circumstances, what could we expect Putin to do?

I’d say, exactly what the late US president John F. Kennedy did when in 1962 America discovered the Soviet Union nuclear missiles emplacements in Cuba — on the doorsteps of the United States!

For sure, the rage manifested by Kennedy betrayed his readiness to unleash the US vaunted nuclear power at the mere touch of a finger. But Kennedy held back on this and reached an agreement with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev whereby Russia would remove its missiles from Cuba in exchange for a US pledge not to invade Cuba as well as to remove US missiles from Turkey.

With friendship between the United States and the Soviet Union deepening with the advent of the Mikhail Gorbachev administration, the Intermediate-Range

Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty was concluded between the two, banning themselves from “possessing, producing or flight-testing” a ground-launched cruise missile having a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers or “possessing or producing launchers of such missiles.” Necessarily covered by the agreement were the fragment nations of the Soviet Union which broke up at Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika in 1991, namely Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, together with Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. They all subjected their own treaty-range facilities to the provisions of the INF, short of attending meetings. Eventually, several European countries joined in the destruction of their respective INF treaty-range missiles since the end of the Cold War: Germany, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and finally Bulgaria. Each and every one of these nations destroyed their nuclear arsenals, with much prodding by either the United States or Russia.

The INF for a time appeared to augur the dawning of a nuclear-free world.

But the INF covered only the United States and Europe.

In the Indo-Pacific region, the Chinese star suddenly bursts with awesome brilliance that illuminates the entire facets of China’s socio-politico-economic growth. Certainly highlighted among such facets were outstanding showcases of its military might, men and women in splendid uniform, marching in brisk cadence, parading armaments that include, yes, nuclear missiles!

This show of force by China perforce prompted former US president Donald Trump to be alarmed by what he called China’s “unconstrained arsenal of INF Treaty-range missiles.” Much as the US would wish to match China’s nuclear arsenal, it cannot. It’s quite obvious that for the US to do it, it has to get out of the constraints of the INF Treaty. Finally, president Trump stuck to his increasing charges of treaty violations by Russia and used it in announcing the United States’ unilateral termination of the INF.

Thus did it come about that for wanting to increase its military engagement with China in the IndoPacific, the United States needed to break away from the peace alliance with Russia, ultimately leading now to what is threatening to be the final outbreak of its nuclear confrontation with Russia over Ukraine.

Nevertheless, as the whole world has seen, President Putin has all the while been exercising exquisite restraint. In 2000, he even humbled himself by applying for membership in NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). The application was turned down. President Bill Clinton did not explain his objection to the Russian application, but whatever the reason, it certainly must have been prompted by a reckoning that Russia was a strategic enemy, therefore had to be eliminated early on.

Russia is already bounded by NATO with a 754-mile-border across northern Norway, eastern Latvia and Estonia, and the borders with Poland and Lithuania around Russia’s Kaliningrad region. The minute the application for membership of Finland is approved, NATO will have an additional 830 miles of continuous border along northwestern Russia for a total of 1,584 miles. Imagine — there being no more the restrictions heretofore provided for by the INF Treaty — all throughout these borders are put up US-NATO nuclear missiles all aimed at Russia!

And yet, as though these were not enough, they still proceeded to try breaking the camel’s back with the last straw by getting Ukraine.

When despite President Putin’s repeated warnings Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pressed for acceptance into NATO, what else can we expect but hell breaking loose beginning that 24th of February 2022.

To be continued