The Cold War Is Back

When the American media isn’t showing celebrities walking down the street or promoting stories based on corporations paying them to do so (Coming up @ 11, we’ll show you the 5 face creams you didn’t know you needed!), they talk about the ever-growing tension between the United States and Russia.

There’s no doubt that America and Russia are pointing fingers for who’s to blame, but there is a lot of back story as to why it is going on. On the surface, the American public will look at the invasion of Crimea as a baseless invasion that cannot stand, but if you’re watching the Russian news, you might get the idea that it’s America that should mind their own business. Well, as with most matters, it’s complicated.

Let’s get to some history on the matter:

As you know, when the Soviet Union fell, many countries that were behind the Iron Curtain fell and became their own nations again. Sure, this sounds great, but what happened was that all of the arms that were in each country were now up for grabs. Countries literally scrambled on starting their own Governments because it was a snap of a finger that quickly changed the game.

It was called a “cold war” because neither Soviet Union or the United States actually had direct conflicts with each other. Instead they had proxy wars where they backed forces battling against each other. When the US fought in the Vietnam war, the Soviets supported them by giving them money and arms. When the Soviets were fighting in Afghanistan, the US armed the mujahideen to fight back and hold off the Soviets. As we know, the US lost Vietnam and the Soviets lost in Afghanistan. Both wars had long-lasting effects, but none as bad as the US arming the mujahideen, but that’s a whole story by itself.

In 1991, the cold war ended when the Soviet Union collapsed and a new sense of safety and peace between the nations was forged. But in the past few years, it seems that we have gone backwards with major events between the two countries with an upping of cold war rhetoric.

When the Soviet Union dissolved, the Warsaw Pact dissolved as well. The Warsaw Pact (formally, the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation, and Mutual Assistance, sometimes, informally WarPac, akin in format to NATO) was a collective defense treaty among eight communist states of Central and Eastern Europe in existence during the Cold War, led by the USSR. When that happened, NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) didn’t have to dissolve. Instead, it got stronger and started gobbling up alliances with former Soviet Union countries to increase the size of NATO. Can you guess which major country was about to join NATO in the past few years? Ukraine.

Russia sees Ukraine as an important country which they still have a lot of interests in. The people of Ukraine are split. The western areas of Ukraine feel as though they are a part of Europe, whereas the eastern half still consider themselves that still feel loyal to Russia.

In February of 2014, major riots and protests broke out in Kiev (located in eastern Ukraine) when the former President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, decided to stop the integration of Ukraine into the European Union to gain better relations with the Russian Federation. Since the eastern half of Ukraine was for the integration into the E.U., they protested for months in Kiev and managed to kick Viktor Yanukovych out of office. Yanukovych was thought to be a Russian bought politician by the Russians to allow this sudden change of loyalties during his Presidency.

During the sudden lack of Government in Ukraine, Putin finally jumped into Crimea and annexed it from the Ukraine. This act ignited the civil war currently being waged in eastern Ukraine. One of the major cities that dealt with fighting between Ukrainian forces and the pro-russian separatists is a city called Donetsk.

What makes this city so strategically important to both sides is that it has the only International airport in the region. The people who suffer the most are the innocents in the neighborhoods of Donetsk. They have been caught in the middle of what is considered the front lines of the civil war happening in the Eastern Ukraine.

In response to the annexation of Crimea, The US, Canada and Europe began a round of sanctions against Russia. Russia then started sanctioning the US, which didn’t have much of an effect. As you may have heard, this led to a dramatic drop in oil prices and led the Russian currency to drop dramatically. The Russian economy soon followed by dropping into a major recession due to the sanction. This Russian recession has led to a huge impact to the regular citizens of Russia.

If you noticed what people tried to do during the American recession of getting people to put their money in gold, the Russian people started buying as much electronics as possible. As with buying gold, as the prices rose for both electronics and gold when the recession hit, the lack of want for either decreased. No one could afford those lavish things the more impoverished they got.

This new cold war has been fought using sanctions and economic warfare. Both the Russians and NATO have been arming both sides of the conflict: Both sides has risen their rhetoric and propaganda against each other since this start of this whole situation. The same thing about it all is that it’s the people who suffer. Neighborhoods are getting destroyed, innocents are being killed, people are starving, and thousand upon thousands of food sent to Ukraine and Russia is being simply thrown away.

“Tonnes of pork tossed into incinerators, truckloads of cheese bulldozed into the ground, and an orchard’s worth of apples buried in a shallow grave. The visuals of Russia’s stepped-up fight against sanctioned foodstuffs have been dramatic, and left many Russians wondering why so much is being destroyed in a country where millions of people live below the poverty line.

Moscow’s reciprocal measures against countries that sanctioned Russia over its actions in Ukraine have been in place for a year, but the new law stipulating the destruction of contraband shipments at the border came into force on Thursday.

Importing fruit, vegetables, meat and cheeses from the EU and other countries that instituted sanctions against Russia is banned. Moscow says importers have tried to get round the ban by putting fake labels on produce, claiming it is made in Brazil, Belarus or another sanction-free country. (Via)”

This whole situation is basically another proxy war between the two nations. Both sides get more and more defiant when there is a constant back and forth between the two nations. It can only get worse as you see daily intimidation tactics by having full-armed war planes skim the borders of both NATO allies and Russian borders.

This collection of news story that cover the situation should bring even more information to light on the new cold war between the two countries that have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world hundreds of times over. Hopefully we can come together and ease the tension so that the people of Ukraine and Russia don’t starve to death.

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Jeff Sorensen is an author, writer and occasional comedian living in Detroit, Michigan. You can look for more of his work on The Huffington Post, UPROXX, BGR and by just looking up his name.

Contact: jeff@socialunderground.com