swaziland times

Remarkably, we haven’t been sitting on our hands and biting our nails because there’s so much to worry about. The truth is that humans are surprisingly capable of coping with and even adapting to unwelcome and even extreme situations. If it wasn’t World War II from 1939 to 1945, the Korean War in the 1950s, the 30-year Cold War with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and the 20-year Vietnam War, it’s been religious extremism since 1980, the ongoing HIV and AIDS pandemic, and most recently COVID-19, hopefully not Mpox. When there are sustained periods of calm, and there aren’t many, we can rarely fully relax in this beautiful but imperfect world.

Unstable

Over the past two years, we have seen serious wars break out again in very volatile parts of the world. It is August 2024, and we are particularly focused on the Middle East, a region that has been at war since the late 1960s; the Israelis are currently at war with the terrorist organization Hamas and – unintentionally, we believe – have killed thousands of innocent Palestinians. A little further afield, fierce fighting is taking place in and around Ukraine. While the severity of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict cannot be underestimated, the Ukrainian/Russian war is the greatest threat to the rest of the world right now. And for a good reason – the risk of nuclear war looms large for Ukraine and the countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

One of the most chilling aspects of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict is how a small number of people could have drawn two otherwise perfectly normal nations, with no hatred for each other, into a brutal, deadly struggle. The motivation for the attack appears to have come from the urgent need to rebuild the former Soviet Union (USSR) after its collapse in 1991. The determination to achieve this goal, and the resentment of seeing these nations, especially Ukraine, reassert their rights to be classified as sovereign states, do not justify Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022.

Change

Russian President Vladimir Putin is simply swimming against (or otherwise against) a wind similar to the “winds of change” that drove independence projects within the British Empire. Let us not forget that on December 8, 1991, the three Slavic republics of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus signed an agreement to form the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS); others followed suit. It was clear from a statement issued by the leaders of the CIS in 1991 that “the Soviet Union as a geopolitical reality no longer exists.”

The Soviet Union failed because its basic ideology, communism, failed. The central government of the Soviet states was overly controlling and provided little incentive for the people to develop their own economies. Ironically, the Soviet Union included the word “socialism” in its name, but its ideology was not. In fact, communism only exists in a few countries today, mainly China, and it is just an extreme form of socialism. Socialism aims to eliminate social inequality through a more equal distribution of resources. Communism goes a step further and requires that all property and wealth be owned collectively rather than individually. But this is a political ideology that does not work. Remember: “Everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others?” Soviet communism collapsed in 1991, while China has completely reformed its economy to incorporate a degree of capitalism.

support

Vladimir Putin has effectively used the wealth he has accumulated during his 24 years in power in order to build an oligarchic regime to support the dictatorship he now controls in Russia. It is likely that he has no interest in the revival of communism, but simply hates the idea of ​​former Soviet member states now being independent and turning their backs on Russia as a major player. Before the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, Putin served as a KGB foreign intelligence officer, protecting his country, the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was the largest sovereign state in the world and routinely won the most gold medals at the Olympics; although a 1989 Australian study showed that all Soviet gold medal winners had taken drugs of one kind or another.

The multinational family in which Putin grew up no longer exists. His country, Russia, signed a peace agreement in 1991 that made Ukraine a sovereign state. That fact should be respected and not violated. Will there be peace between Russia and Ukraine in the foreseeable future? Most likely. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has seen his troops cross the border into Russia and seize territory. But he certainly doesn’t envision a full-scale invasion of a country that has an absolute advantage in every way.

Ukraine may well see its offensive as a destabilizing measure, and a useful bargaining chip in any peace talks. Both countries have suffered huge casualties, and with Ukraine now across Russia’s border, Putin must be very nervous. Now suddenly at a disadvantage, he may feel personally insecure; this psychological state could be dangerous. This danger carries a serious risk of nuclear war; for desperate people often take desperate measures.