Thursday, January 14, 2016

Why Russians Fear That A Full-On Conflict With The U.S. Is Possible

Russian servicemen equip an Iskander tactical missile system at the Army-2015 international military-technical forum in Kubinka, outside Moscow, Russia, in June 2015. Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters/File

Fred Weir, CSM: Why fear of war weighs heavily for Russians in the New Year

UNDERSTANDING OTHERS The Russian public is worried about a full-on conflict with the US, fed in part by a drumbeat from the Kremlin and in part by US and NATO foreign policies.

MOSCOW — Magomed Tolboev, a former Soviet bomber pilot, says he feels that relations between Russia and the US are worse today than they were even in the depths of the cold war. In those days his job, for which he trained rigorously, was to take out a US air base in Turkey with a nuclear strike.

"There was some kind of predictable order in cold war times. Two camps, two leaders, and everything depended on them. Now there are so many different players, many of them not under control by either side," such as North Korea or the many factions vying for dominance in Syria. "So we have not only growing tension between Moscow and Washington, but all this complicated, many-sided discord. It's very worrisome."

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WNU Editor: You do not have to be a Russian to be worried about a nuclear war. And while we are no longer living in the Cold War, concerns that a conflict may spiral out of control are justified for the simple reason that there are too many players on the stage right now, and no one is in control or in command.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

2 Balkans wars immediately preceded the Great War. Less than 10% of the American population knows about the Balkan wars.

Russia, Austrian-Hungarian Empire, Germany, Britain were all interested.

And they kept jockeying.