We are just a few days shy of the 60th anniversary of a momentous speech by President John F. Kennedy. The U.S. discovered that the Soviet Union had installed nuclear-capable ballistic missiles on the island of Cuba, just 90 miles from Florida. I was just a few weeks shy of my 16th birthday in Canada when the world seemed to stop as everyone tuned in to this primetime speech. Here is an excerpt.
I recall a gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach. There was a genuine fear that the Cuban Missile Crisis could result in a nuclear war that would decimate humanity.
The U.S. was applying the Monroe Doctrine as justification for its strong stance against Russia and Cuba. The doctrine basically emphasized that the U.S. would not allow any foreign actor to gain influence or strategic advantage in the Americas.
Thankfully, despite the aggressiveness of Nikita Kruschev, the Soviet Premier, cooler heads prevailed, and the Soviets relented and removed their missiles from Cuba. Many people didn’t realize at the time that as part of the deal, the Americans would remove their nuclear missiles from Turkey aimed at Russian cities. It was a give-and-take situation, but ultimately was a win-win for everyone involved.
In the ensuing years, the Soviets and the U.S. cooperated in various talks, despite each pushing the boundaries and expanding their influence in multiple countries. Soviet expansionism was particularly successful for several decades. At the same time, each superpower had nuclear weapons with the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction. It meant that no one was going to cross the line and engage in a potentially humanity-ending event.
In the real world, sometimes you have to make temporary friendships with your enemies. One of the monsters in human history was Joseph Stalin. He was the head of the Soviet Union during the Second World War. Millions of deaths of his own citizens are attributed to Stalin.
The Soviets had a pact with Nazi Germany; however, that fell apart when Hitler’s forces invaded Russia. Stalin then joined the Allied powers, and it’s a good thing that he did because Germany was so preoccupied with the invasion of the Soviet Union in the east. That allowed the Allied forces to gain the upper hand on Germany in Western Europe.
The famous Yalta Conference in early 1945 had Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin sitting together as they discussed what would happen to Germany at the war's end.
So now we come to the war in Ukraine. Could it have been avoided? Absolutely. Vladimir Putin repeatedly warned the West against NATO's expansion into Ukraine. That was a red line for Putin. He would not tolerate American missiles on Russia's border. Putin already saw the predominantly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine as more closely aligned with Russia than with the West. So Putin, in effect, was asserting his own Monroe Doctrine.
Unfortunately, Biden and the Washington class were so obsessed with anti-Trump and anti-Russia sentiment that it clouded their judgement. For years the Democrats and their media brethren accused Trump of being Putin's stooge or accused Russia of stealing the election for Trump. They even accused Russia of planting incriminating data on Hunter Biden's laptop—totally false.
So here we are after seven months of the Ukraine war. Rather than toning down the rhetoric, America has inflamed the situation with its rhetoric and sent seemingly unlimited amounts of money and weaponry to Ukraine. Europe is now in a precarious position concerning its dependence on Russian energy supplies. Meanwhile, Ukraine has suffered untold devastation of towns and cities, civilian deaths and a loss of some of its population, trying to escape the ravages of war.
Ukraine is not a totally innocent player in the proceedings.
The Silence of American Hawks About Kyiv's Atrocities
For years, Professor Stephen Cohen, an expert in Russian affairs, described far-right ultranationalist groups operating in Ukraine. They murdered members of the Russian ethnic community in eastern Ukraine. Few in the West have been aware nor cared about this internal war on civilians.
This is what Cohen said in 2017:
"I think this is the most dangerous moment in American-Russian relations, at least since the Cuban missile crisis," Cohen told Democracy Now in 2017. "And arguably, it's more dangerous, because it's more complex. Therefore, we — and then, meanwhile, we have in Washington these — and, in my judgment, factless accusations that Trump has somehow been compromised by the Kremlin. So, at this worst moment in American-Russian relations, we have an American president who's being politically crippled by the worst imaginable — it's unprecedented. Let's stop and think. No American president has ever been accused, essentially, of treason. This is what we're talking about here, or that his associates have committed treason."
"A recurring theme of my recently published book War with Russia? is that the new Cold War is more dangerous, more fraught with hot war, than the one we survived,"
Was Cohen prescient? We shall see.
It's easy for the American elitists to fly Ukrainian flags and exhort their Ukraine' brothers' to fight on. It's not costing American lives. I suspect though that many Americans are growing weary of spending billions on a far-off war. Amazingly, the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan left billions in armaments for the Taliban. These could have been transferred to Ukraine. Of course, the military-industrial complex would not be happy. They need to sell more armaments courtesy of the American taxpayer.
Here we are today, the same people who gave us the debacle of Covid policy and the disaster of Afghanistan, which cost American lives, are running Ukraine policy. Isn't it funny all the complaining about Trump during his four years? Putin did not invade Ukraine, and North Korea stopped firing missiles in the vicinity of Japan during Trumps time in office. Those days are over as North Korea has resumed its belligerence.
Now to elevate things to the next level talk of nuclear weapons and nuclear war has entered the discussion. Instead of toning things down, they are ramping up the rhetoric, like General Petreaus stating that if the Russians use tactical nukes, we can take our Black Sea Fleet. I seriously think these people have lost their minds. It looks like they actually want war.
The inept Biden administration doesn't know who they're playing with. Do they think Putin is going to take his ball and go home? Russia has some 6200 nuclear warheads, more than any other country on the planet. In 1961, they detonated the most powerful nuclear weapon ever, which was 4000 times the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb. They are not a country to be taken lightly. They also have supersonic missiles that America does not have, like the new Zircon.
Let’s hope some sanity prevails and soon, because the ramping up of threats, tit-for-tat on both sides could lead to a nuclear calamity. It was unthinkable for decades, now it’s very much a possibility.
I just wonder when normal people will grow weary of burying their dead and accept that the best wars are usually those that aren't fought at all. May you live in peaceful times indeed!
This is what you get with rigged elections that select an incoherent person with dementia combined with mass media that is 100% propagandistic and engages in insane rhetoric 24/7. This is topped of by politcal representation that is non-representative.
The Ukraine conflict has its roots in the US medling in Ukrainian politics back in 2014 and working to overthrow the legitimately elected leader at the time, Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych.
Presently, rather than the working for peace with the Russians, the US government is fanning the flames of war by pouring in billions of dollars of heavy armaments into to the corrupt political cesspool of Ukraine. Because of all of the above, the average non critical thinking American, Democrat and Republican alike, have been completely brain washed and believe Putin is an evil dude who must be removed from the Russian presidency.
The problem I see is that the US is very good at starting wars but has not won a single one in my lifetime. The best they do is to rubblelize various countries around the world with absolutely no positive long term results.
Afghanistan is a great example: 20 years of US involvement in the county left the country much as it was before. The Taliban is back in charge, with a massive amount of US scrap metal that they can now salvage over the next few decades.
One person who now seems to be missing in action is Tulsi Gabbard. Apparently even she is unwilling to speak out any longer given the downward spiral of insanity by the RINO warmongers like Lady Lindsey Graham.
https://whistleblowernewsroom.com/episodes/the-whistleblower-newsroom-dr-naomi-wolf-and-the-big-techgovernment-censorship-machine-764