i am a child of the cold war. duck and cover drills, surrogate battlefields and imminent nuclear destruction were all an integral part of my formative years, so it's difficult for me to see beyond the old animosities. well, the old days are gone and the soviet union disintegrated. germany is unified and the old soviet satellite states have, for the most part, gone their own ways. russia itself has gone through some hard times, the fall of the union, the rise of the criminal element and the eventual return of many of the old state elements, and it's now become relevant on the global stage once again. in the meantime, china has rushed in with its faux-capitalism, europe has tried and failed to unify itself against the major powers of the world and the militarism of the middle-east has done nothing but expand. the united states has tried to reinvent itself too, as a kinder, gentler world power, leading from behind and giving up its hard won role as the dominant force for a rather benign democratic evolution in favor of a doomed activist democratic revolution. as hard as it is for me to fathom, the next great step may very well be one of the most unlikely alliances - russia and the united states. before someone starts screaming about how russia is the very antithesis of the american ideal, let's look at this rationally. both are continent spanning nations, with vast natural resources and diverse populations. both are primary nuclear powers, with the capacity to overwhelm nearly any foe. both have invested massive amounts of capital around the world and have been vilified by lesser nations for their efforts. though their approaches have often been quite different, their goals, ideological dominance, have been the same all along. perhaps it's time to grow up. perhaps it's time to recognize that the ideological differences must take a back seat to the utilitarian realities of the modern world. i don't know if the two governments have yet realized the potential profit of such an alliance, but the united states is now in a position to recognize the benefits and act on them. we have, for the first time in a long time, a president whose ideology is relatively flexible. he's a businessman whose purpose is now the profit of the entire nation instead of merely his own. europe is no longer of any use to us. it descends into anarchic bedlam, corrupted by islamic invasion and half-hearted collectivism. china is as inscrutable and untrustworthy as ever. never admitting to any defeat, it will continue to attempt limited expansion and the covert destruction of any who stand in their way. the middle-east and africa are disasters. plagued by the destructive nature of tribal division, they are over a hundred years from being more than a global nuisance. south and central america are similarly useless. caught between the old global powers' ideologies, they embrace corruption like the pissant banana republics they are and regularly self-destruct. the outliers like canada and australia will always be outliers. too ineffectual to be of any real concern, they will always be useful only to those powerful enough to use them as fodder for their economic or military machines. perhaps it's time for both of these nations to adopt a more live and let live philosophy, utilizing our strengths in a common front against the chaos around us instead of adding to that chaos with our ideologically based sniping.
i posted this yesterday and no one saw fit to respond in even the most condescending manner. i wasn't all that surprised. most of the old cold-war kiddies like me see such a union as nearly unthinkable, even those who were wary of the propagandized information of the past, and a lot of the younger folks have their impressions tainted by the anti-soviet rhetoric that still dominates the thinking of the major news outlets. then i read an article this morning that had trump claiming it was possible for the us to have a positive relationship with russia and it seemed to echo what i have been thinking. the article, of course, included the usual "official" viewpoint that russia is incapable and unwilling to alter its old habits and that such an alliance would depend on the us turning a blind eye to russian offenses, but such thinking disregards the very real possibility of both nations seeing the profit of collaboration and each bending a bit to accommodate the other. another bump in the road for the "experts" is their infatuation with the idea that russia supposedly interfered with our recent election. i have to wonder if this is just partisan politics being played out to it conclusion. after watching as both sides constantly attempted to undermine their cold war enemies both at home and abroad, it would seem that uncovering the dirty laundry of the clinton crime family and the dirty tricks of the democratic party is pretty small potatoes. so whaddya think? does anyone here believe there is a chance for the two most powerful nations on earth to exist in peaceable cooperation after well over half a century of mutual distrust and antipathy?
Probably not. Putin will be happy if the US adopts an isolationist policy towards Europe, thus leaving it for Russian expansion. China will be content with Asia and the Pacific. We outliers will wait to see what the big fellows do, as the saying goes, when the elephants fight, the ants flee. It isn't about ideology though. I too grew up in the Cold War. I was 12 when the Cuban missile crisis was on. I remember it well, living in the UK which was right in the middle of it. Then it was ideology. Now it's about power, influence and wealth for individuals in elite political positions. This one is far less clear than the old ideological struggle.
