No one wants another Cold War
Do we really want to go through another Cold War with Russia (or possibly a hot one)? I distinctly recall hiding under my desk as a child, fearful a devastating nuclear war was beginning. Now, knowing these drills and fallout shelters would not save us from extinction in an actual war, we should think twice about our war-mongering behavior. Russia is second in the world with possession of nuclear weapons. We are naive if we believe there will be no repercussions to our supplying Ukraine with military weapons, pressuring Germany to pause its acceptance of the Nordstrom 2 pipeline and enacting other sanctions. Our motives are primarily to force Europe to purchase our oil and natural gas at a higher price, and to use our weapons so the military-industrial complex will have an excuse to produce more at the taxpayers’ expense.
When the USSR was dissolved, NATO should also have been dissolved since its purpose was to stop the USSR’s expansion. There was also a verbal agreement between Gorbachev and Baker that NATO would never expand eastward beyond the German border. This was ignored. In 2014, a violent coup ousted duly elected President Yanukovych in Ukraine. Since that time, the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions have engaged in a civil war with the pro-Western government to separate from them — 14,000 have been killed. Russian requests that Ukraine be neutral and not join NATO have been ignored. We have surrounded Russia with our bases, some with nuclear weapons. Memory serves, that in 1962 when Russia supplied Cuba with missiles, we threatened nuclear war unless they were removed.
Fake news has precipitated most of the wars we have fought. Our media has engaged in inflammatory reporting for weeks. We must attempt to solve the problem diplomatically with Russia, rather than having a Cold War mentality. If we do not, oil and natural gas prices will go sky-high making the price of food and other goods rise dramatically. (We already have high inflation.) We can probably expect cyber-attacks, among other consequences. Do we really want to go into another Cold War?
Nancy Eberg North Haven