In the news of late you will find a fresh start to the Cold War, the arms race, and a misguided nationalism from Russia that may actually save the United States of America from its dive into globalism. But at what cost?
Now granted that America has become so wayward in the past five years that many people would be okay with blowing up everything in order to start over!
Russia’s devolving retro-President Vladimir Putin – harkening back to the former arch enemy U.S.S.R. – would have us back to the glory days of espionage, direct and implied threats of total nuclear annihilation, and a boom time for defense contractors. Remember détente, M.A.D. “mutually assured destruction,” and CEP (circular error of probability) maps showing the destructive ranges of various warheads…. along with wind drift maps for the resulting radiation?
Just duck and cover…
The late United States Navy Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Elmo (Bud to his friends) Zumwalt once shared with my Dad – former business colleagues – the one place on our continent that would be safest after a full nuclear conflagration: Baja California. That’s it. Period.
I was very excited to get this information some years back, as I originated the question myself, and merely wanted to find the answer from the horse’s mouth, and to become one of the first to know. The bad news is that this spit of land south of California is nothing but barren wasteland, and surely no place to rebuild civilization from…
President Putin continues to ramp up his saber rattling, miffed over our involvement in Syria, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, the “Arab Spring,” and all of that. Well, maybe not about Afghanistan, as that involvement in this nether region of the world made “their Vietnam” look not-so-bad after all.
Recently Russian “over-flights” of Alaska by Backfire Strategic Nuclear Bombers had made news as folly. We intercept them as practice, of course.
Now Reuters is running a story about how Borei-class long range missile submarines are to begin trolling southern waters. Reportedly they had already been sent to the Med.
Why?
Originally what had been frequently termed “a balance of terror” during our Cold War resulted from the clash of political ideology that emerged from World War II with fangs, communism. Of course, war is the ultimate extension of politics, as mentioned by noted philosopher Sun Tzu.
Tzu was also famous for “know your enemy.” Why is Russia being driven back into a militant brand of nationalism? Why now?
Russia, the incredibly corrupt former Soviet Union, is having trouble containing itself in the global economy, where their only stability comes from natural gas reserves, and petro-dollars. By way of competition, America is regaining control over its own energy policy as we speak, and may even be slated to become a net-exporter of fossil fuels in the near-term.
Much of this is fueled by Republican pressures for American self-sufficiency in energy, flying in the face of the various green/renewable energy frauds. Fracking for oil with new technology, new pipelines, and discovery of vast natural gas reserves of our own have driven this result.
The questions is, exactly what is Russia seeking to protect by projecting distant military deployments? Its culture has devolved, and moral depravity seems to be reducing them culturally. (Separately, they also seem to have forgotten their own recent submarine disaster.)
The answer seems to be ultimately economic. By forcing a return to arms, their military exports will be encouraged and enhanced. A byproduct of this would be – if sustained – a positive impact upon General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, and all of the myriad defense giants of America; some of them now running out of contracts and with bleak prospects under sequestration.
Unfortunately the risk of this return to the Cold War in the name of economics will be that of accidental and unintended nuclear exchange, killing millions. We had two very close calls, one in October 1963, and a less reported one in November 1983, where the red button was almost pushed.
It has been estimated that a single nuclear detonation in a single mid-sized American city would absorb virtually all of the nation’s medical resources at once. Now multiply that one out and you will see why the “doomsday preppers” have their own cable TV show now.
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