Cold War reheat & rehash

For literally the first half of my living and breathing existence, the specter of war between the United States and the nation once known as the Soviet Union was never far down my list of worst fears in this life. What made that particular nightmare so petrifyingly frightening was the potential likelihood of a nuclear exchange between the two heavily armed belligerents if reason in superpower relations ever took a hiatus. Indeed, what kept the prospect of nuclear holocaust in check for most of the Cold War was the common understanding that Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) would be the result if either nation resorted to use of atomic weapons to resolve any military conflict. Despite this, the doctrine under which we operated for the first half of my twenty-two year naval career revolved around planning for the Soviet Union or proxy client state thereof to be an aggressor. When more reasonable leadership gained a foothold and expanded throughout the monolithic former Eastern Bloc nations in the late 1980s, I remember feeling a spark of hope for a more peaceful future. When the Berlin Wall finally came down in 1989, I along with most of the rest of my fellow service members on active duty intuitively knew that the Cold War as we had always known it was over and the dominos we had so feared tumbling over against us had fallen the other way. Even though it was apparent to the entire World that free market capitalism had emerged as the only viable and functional economic system when Soviet Communism collapsed under the weight of its own inefficiency, I DO NOT recall reacting like we in the West had just achieved a great victory. I do however remember thinking “What now” as we all waited for a great Peace Dividend. The benefits of that peace finally came over a period of years in the form of reduction in force, multiple base realignments and facility closures, a Navy reduced to 330 ships and a great deal of career uncertainty in moving forward.

On the other side, the fifteen territories that once comprised the now defunct Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR) were soon to become their own independent nations. Not everyone was happy about the new arrangement, particularly those in the leadership of a dissolving superpower. We must understand that the old USSR was once the largest nation on the planet stretching from the Baltic Sea all the way to the Pacific Ocean occupying nearly one seventh of the Earth’s land mass. Russia was the largest of those aforementioned fifteen former Soviet territories stretching from Eastern Europe all the way to the Pacific. Many in the leadership of the old USSR, mostly Russians, certainly must have felt the twinge of defeat at losing almost a quarter of their former country. Regaining as much of that lost territory as possible became a priority for certain powerful members of the government of the Russian Federation.

Given the number of times in its history that Russia has been invaded, the ubiquitous fear of it happening again certainly seems reasonable even to an outside observer. This fear is what fueled the suspicion of the West and NATO during the whole of the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact of 1955 added the territories of six nations as a de facto buffer zone between NATO and the USSR. Upon the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union that soon followed, the loss of territorial integrity has been a sore point with Russian leadership ever since. When the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania along most of the former Warsaw Pact nations joined NATO, a huge insult was added to injury. The public record is clear regarding the desire of the current Russian leadership to restore some of that lost territory. Doing so by force of arms is an acceptable means to that end as military actions the past month two months in Ukraine have demonstrated. Ukraine is but the latest Russian military adventure. Previous attempts are well documented in places like Chechnya and Crimea amongst others are matters of historical record.

20 Years of Putin in Power

Since 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has bound together the national interests of all members on both sides of the Atlantic. It was understood from the beginning that any outside attack on one member constituted an attack on all members. NATO or powers which eventually became members of it has been the organization that stood as a bulwark against potential Soviet aggression since the end of the Second World War in 1945. With the collapse of the USSR and the addition of more members, NATO has been a thorn in the side of Russia, especially its President, Vladimir Putin. It was every bit worth his while for a U.S. President to do all possible to weaken NATO via mismanagement and misguided policy. Mr. Putin did not have to do a thing to promote his own interests regarding Ukraine since another powerful world leader was in effect doing his bidding for him. When the 45th U.S. President was not reelected he was out of options which prompted the last choice available, that of military action.

As things have turned out, Mr. Putin’s ill-advised military adventure into Ukraine has been an unmitigated disaster on more fronts than one. It has been a humongous public relations debacle from its inception and has brought down much of the rest of the industrialized World’s wrath and condemnation upon his country and the Russian people in the form of international sanctions. Mr. Putin has done his best to stir up old Soviet era fears and patriotism to justify military intervention in order to de-Nazify Ukraine. As it turns out, the results produced by the armed forces with which he implemented said intervention indicate Russia’s military might is a far cry from the battle tested old Red Army that defeated the real Nazis in 1945. Despite having all the conscript manpower any army could ever want or need, the lack of adequate training and poor quality of leadership has been glaringly apparent. Given the comparative analysis of each belligerent’s state of military readiness pre-invasion, this was by all accounts thought to be a classic David and Goliath mismatch. A motivated nation of Ukrainian underdogs has lived up to the old adage, “it isn’t the size of the dog in the fight. It is the size of fight in the dog.” There are few things as humbling as a former military superpower having its weakness and impotence exposed before all eyes on the planet by weaker opposition. Typically, an invading armed force does not redefine the goals of its mission when it is winning. Losing the Cold War was the injury. Losing so much of its territory as a result was the added insult. Being stymied by then failing to impose its will by force of arms over a neighbor a fraction of its size in area and assets adds stinging humiliation to the other two.

As the awfulness of Putin’s war in Ukraine grinds on, the public relations nightmare it began as has gone from universally unsavory to criminally repulsive. Numerous details of Russian war crimes against Ukrainian civilians and non-military targets are emerging and the fallout they are generating does not bode well for a pleasant future. The international outcry over these atrocities will be so great that Putin/Russian whitewash and revisionism of them will hopefully be an impossibility.

War Crimes in the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine

The true hero of this latest convulsion of inhumanity is the President of Ukraine, one Volodymyr Zelenskyy. President Zelenskyy has become the Winston Churchill of Ukraine by his exemplary demonstration of how a leader conducts themself when their nation comes under a withering attack by a hostile armed force. His leadership has proven worthy of not only international public support but tangible help in the form of military weapons and technology provided by the U.S. and NATO. The Ukrainian President has comported himself in such a way as to become the quintessential image of a democratically elected chief executive of a peaceful nation under siege by that of a raging bully. It is the considered opinion of this outside observer that history will be very generous to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the example he has set and for all who have followed it.

Over the past thirty years the hope that brightly shone at the dissolution of the USSR has devolved into the same type and intensity of hostility by a different name. An ex-KGB colonel that has become autocrat-in-chief took losing the Cold War so personally that he had to assert his worn out relevance by reheating old bones of contention and rehashing old conflicts seeking different results at the expense of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples and most of the neighboring nations that will suffer the fallout. Vladimir Putin would be little more than a banana republic brand of caricature if it were not for his command of a nuclear arsenal. The most sobering part of this entire mess is to revisit and confront the specter of a disgruntled sore loser demanding a rematch that ends this time in multiple mushroom clouds.