I think I speak for many when I say that for “boomers” like myself—those
of us who grew up in the Cold War years of the post-World War II era—it is
singularly disturbing to witness how quickly the world appears capable of regressing
from the time of relative peace and cooperation painstakingly forged after the
fall of the Berlin Wall at the end of the 1980s to a frightening and paranoid climate
of East-West power struggles and the general panic that they engender. And just
let me say to those who aren’t
panicked and afraid, you probably should
be. 
As I have stated a number of times in both essays and public
presentations, I believe that we are currently facing the most dangerous time
for world peace since the Cold War era. And the development of this new—yet
old—climate of impending world violence has come at an absolutely dizzying
rate, since the collapse of tolerably good relations between Russia and the
West over the Ukrainian crisis—underscored by superpower rivalry in Syria and
the Middle East—following Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in March of last year.
People of my generation grew up in the shadow of potential nuclear
holocaust. After the United States leveled two Japanese cities at the end of
World War II and vaporized significant portions of their populations, it became
clear that the doomsday bombs weren’t just a “boogie man” invented to scare
would-be aggressors into maintaining peace, but a very real and devastating war
threat, capable of wiping out entire peoples, and, indeed, the human race, if
it ever came to a showdown between any of the most powerful countries on earth.
And every time we saw Russia, the United States and China flexing their
military muscles and refusing to back down from their intransigent stances—the
Cuban Missile Crisis (13 days in October 1962, when the US and Russia went toe to
toe over Russian ballistic missiles deployed in pro-Russian Cuba) is a graphic
example—we would become acutely aware of just how vulnerable the world was to
the whims and diplomatic tantrums of superpower leaders.
That basic fear, which had people digging “fallout shelters” and
practicing drills for “what to do in case of a nuclear attack” was quelled
after the breakup of the Soviet Union a quarter-century ago and the advent of a
new period of cooperation, not only between Russia and the West, but also between
still-Communist China and the Western nations. Of course there were still
nuclear warheads sitting in their silos and on board nuclear submarines “just
in case”, but we tried to learn not to worry about that, or about possible
mistaken signals setting off a nuclear exchange and so too, the end of the
human experiment. But we trusted that the Cold War was over and that we were
living in a saner and safer world, where, yes, there were wars, but proxy wars
fought by third parties with lower-tech weapons provided by the most powerful nations
on earth, not any potential clash among superpowers, the thought of which, only
a short time ago, seemed almost ludicrous.
But just over the course of the past 20 months, the superpower war
threat that we “boomers” grew up with and that most of us thought had been
banished forever, has been rearing its ugly head once again. And on analyzing
it, I fear that it is a much more volatile threat than in our more naïve past.
Or perhaps it’s that these current times that appear so overblown with
information are actually the naïve times, times in which certain world leaders
are delusional enough to actually believe that a clash among superpowers could
end in anything but disaster, or that anyone could come out of such a conflict
as anything like “a winner”.
 |
| Russian air raids in Syria |
Proof of this dangerous new trend has been in evidence for the last year
and a half or more. But it has become a whole lot more compelling over the past
few weeks and months. Russia’s October decision to take an active role in Syria
by running withering aerial and naval attacks on anyone opposing the
pro-Russian dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. The refusal of both Russia and the
US to coordinate their air actions over Syrian territory, thus prompting a
situation in which the two countries’ pilots could end up facing off in Syrian
airspace. Russia’s disregard for the sanctity of Turkish airspace in carrying
out its attacks on Assad’s enemies, and the immediate response from not only
Turkey but also NATO, saying that violation of the airspace of a NATO country
is a violation against NATO as a whole and will not be tolerated. The decision
of the US, in the face of Russia’s new and decidedly more aggressive role, to
vastly increase its aid to Syrian nationalist irregulars fighting to overthrow
Assad. Moscow’s sudden and anxious courting of the government of Iraq, a US
ally since the fall of Saddam Hussein, in its fight against Islamic State terrorists.
China’s construction of islands that amount to permanent aircraft carriers and remote
military supply bases in the South China Sea and a provocative move by the
United States to use warships and warplanes to patrol those newly inaugurated islands
and to send an aggressive message to Beijing to stop building up its strategic
readiness. Similarly, China’s barely veiled threats of a military response if
the US doesn’t butt out of its affairs. Japan’s new signs of a desire to return
to being a military power after nearly three-quarters of a century of being a world
symbol and paragon of peace, following the horrendous lessons learned in
Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And NATO’s recent emergency meeting to take concrete
steps to prepare for new Russian imperialist designs—measures that include
doubling (from 20,000 troops to 40,000 troops) the Alliance’s rapid
intervention forces.
 |
| US warships in the South China Sea |
All of these indicators are clues to the dangerous turn the international
climate is taking, a climate that is an eerie reminder of the state of
upheaval, distrust and lack of willingness to communicate and compromise in
which the world found itself precisely 100 years ago at the start of World War
I. But this is not the world of the
First World War. In today’s world the rules of engagement are no longer based
on honor but on winning at any cost. And the weapons of war today are
unconscionably more devastating, as witnessed in the crime scene photos—they
can be called nothing else—posted on the Internet of one of two Doctors Without
Borders hospitals “accidentally targeted” in airstrikes over the past week by
the US-led coalition in the Middle East and in which one saw paltry and only
partial skeletal remains of patients literally vaporized where they lay in
their beds during that airstrike.
 |
| US fighters over the Middle East |
Dead civilians are no longer referred to, under the new rules of engagement,
as victims, but as “collateral damage.” Compelling statistical trends show that
in the great majority of wars since the Vietnam War era, between five and nine
out of every ten victims of contemporary conflicts are innocent civilians. That’s
a whole lot of “collateral damage”. And to my mind, that ratio today makes any
war whatsoever a war of aggression and, as such, a crime against humanity.
On a final note, let’s be clear about what the reckless behavior that
world leaders are currently displaying in drawing lines in the sand and daring
each other to cross them means to people like you and me. What it signifies is
that the human race as a whole is potentially in danger of becoming “collateral
damage” and until we start taking action to strip our leaders of the power to
involve us in war, we will continue to be accomplices in our own destruction
and hapless victims of our own apathy.
Comments
Post a Comment