Once upon a time there was a man. A man with a plan, a plan to save the world from the threat of nuclear annihilation. Or so he once claimed, not so long ago. His name? Barack Obama, President of the United States. Yet today, thousands of American soldiers are engaging in provocative war games with our allies on the Russian border, that risk a military confrontation just prior Trump's inauguration.

What happened to that man who called for nuclear disarmament in the name of peace and security? Here are his own words from an April 5, 2009 speech given in Prague calling for exactly that:

Today, the Cold War has disappeared but thousands of those weapons have not. In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up. More nations have acquired these weapons. Testing has continued. Black market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materials abound. The technology to build a bomb has spread. Some argue that the spread of these weapons cannot be stopped, cannot be checked -– that we are destined to live in a world where more nations and more people possess the ultimate tools of destruction. Such fatalism is a deadly adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable. Just as we stood for freedom in the 20th century, we must stand together for the right of people everywhere to live free from fear in the 21st century. (Applause.) And as nuclear power –- as a nuclear power, as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it, we can start it. So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.

In 2010, Obama signed the New START treaty with Russia that called for reducing each country's deployment of nuclear nuclear warheads to no more than 1,150 total. In 2013, Obama gave another speech at the Brandenberg Gate in Berlin calling for even greater reductions, not only between the US and Russia, but also by our NATO allies.

Obama has also said the United States will only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners. [...] Obama's guidance directed the Pentagon to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in the overall U.S. security strategy, and narrow the focus of nuclear strategy to deterrence, the White House document said.

And yet, President Obama now supports and has proposed a new arms race with an extensive and radical Trillion dollar upgrade in the nuclear arsenal of the United States that violates the terms of the "1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty." A program that could literally bankrupt the United States and require massive cuts to other critical spending needed to improve our economy, provide a health care and a safety net for the majority of our citizens, and rebuild and modernize our nation's critical infrastructure.

Although President Obama began his administration with a dramatic public commitment to build a nuclear weapons-free world, that commitment has long ago dwindled and died. It has been replaced by an administration plan to build a new generation of US nuclear weapons and nuclear production facilities to last the nation well into the second half of the 21st century. This plan, which has received almost no attention by the mass media, includes redesigned nuclear warheads, as well as new nuclear bombers, submarines, land-based missiles, weapons labs and production plants.

Furthermore, this Nobel Peace Prize winner (deserving or not) formally threatened Russia with "armed conflict" on Halloween, over as yet unproven allegations that Russia was behind the DNC and Podesta emails released by Wikileaks.

[T]he U.S. used the latest incarnation of an old Cold War communications system — the so-called "Red Phone" that connects Moscow to Washington — to reinforce Obama's September warning that the U.S. would consider any interference on Election Day a grave matter. This time Obama used the phrase "armed conflict." "International law, including the law for armed conflict, applies to actions in cyberspace," said part of a message sent over the Red Phone on Oct. 31, according to a senior U.S. official. "We will hold Russia to those standards."

And now, under the cover of a joint and relentless effort by US mainstream corporate media and US intelligence agencies to destroy the legitimacy of a Trump presidency based on unproven assertions of Russian hacking to ensure Trump's victory, his campaign's alleged involvement with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, and a supposed "dossier" by a British intelligence agent that alleges Trump is subject to blackmail by Russia's government, the United States military and NATO are engaging in massive military exercises on the borders of Russia just prior to the date for Trump's inauguration.

On Friday, nearly 2,800 pieces of military equipment arrived in Germany when the U.S. Army's 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, reached the port at Bremerhaven before setting off for Poland. The U.S. troops will spend about a month training in Poland before moving to Germany and Romania for additional training exercises. "Let me be very clear, this is one part of our efforts to deter Russian aggression, ensure territorial integrity of our allies and maintain a Europe that is whole, free, prosperous and at peace," U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Tim Ray, deputy commander of U.S. European Command, said. The troops will rotate training in Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia for the next nine months. The regional training exercises are also designed to test how U.S. forces respond on short notice to a possible conflict with Russia.

A very few brave souls in the mainstream media have begun to question these actions, actions for which many alternative news outlets and blogs online have been calling out President Obama, prominent members of the Democratic Party, the US intelligence community and other warmongers for months now. Unfortunately, we are in the minority, but the arguments made on a very few newspaper op-ed pages, such as this one in The Daily Camera in Boulder, CO(a re-post of an editorial originally published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), against such excessive saber rattling are valid and worth taking seriously, especially when so many "journalists" in other corporate media outlets and on Cable TV News shows are beating the war drums as if we lived in 1955 or 1962, rather than 2017.

... Operation Atlantic Resolve, is the largest [increase in the deployment of US forces in Europe] since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. In principle, forces from other NATO countries, including Canada, Denmark, France, Germany and the United Kingdom will also be added to the new force in Eastern Europe, even though there is some resistance to the move within NATO. The action is being cast by the administration of President Barack Obama as a reaction to Russia's military actions in Ukraine, including continuing combat in the east of Ukraine, and its annexation of the Crimea in 2014. It is also being portrayed as enabling a more rapid NATO response to any further Russian military encroachments into Eastern European countries on its borders that President Vladimir Putin may be contemplating. Given that most of the actions in Ukraine that ostensibly have provoked the U.S. enhancement of its forces and their activities along the Russian border took place nearly three years ago, the question must be asked to what degree recent U.S. intelligence assessments of Russian intervention in the 2016 U.S. elections played a role in Obama's decision to strengthen U.S. forces in the region.

Obviously, this has little to do with Russia's actions in Ukraine and Crimea, and everything to do with the internal politics of the United States following the stunning and unexpected general election defeat of Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump in November. In the hysterical environment that followed that loss by Clinton and the Democrats, much has been made of Russian meddling in our elections. Often this hysteria was deliberately fostered as a result of selected leaks by unnamed US intelligence or administration sources, who are heavily invested in a new Cold War with Russia, and a President who cracked down so diligently on such leaks in the past, now seems to be tacitly giving these sources permission to "please proceed" with their efforts to bring down Trump no matter what the risk to the people of Russia, America and the rest of the world.

All I can say in reaction to these events is an extended paraphrase of the famous line from the McCarthy-Army hearings by Lew Welch: