A New Cold War ?

Russia has been doing some serious saber rattling lately. I’m no expert on world affairs, but I do recognize the symptoms of a cold war. At this point, the cold war flu is in it’s infancy stage. Whether or not it matures and becomes contagious depends on a number of heads of states.

Russia has sided with Iran on the nuclear issue. Russia made a brief soirée into Georgia to show it can flex it’s muscles in the region. Let’s face it. Russia is king of the hill in it’s area. They could probably successfully take on several of their neighbors at once and still win.

I’m not privy to the inner workings of our Department of State, but I am somewhat taken back at their adolescent attitude toward Russia’s actions. Basically we told them they had to get out of Georgia or we would diplomatically embarrass them in front of the world.

Then the U.S., who has been working on the missile defense shield in eastern Europe, came to an agreement with Poland to allow some of the missiles to be sited there. In addition, the U.S. committed to providing Poland with other missiles which could be used for “defensive” purposes.

Does anyone remember when Russia wanted to place missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles off the coast of the U.S.? The U.S. response was swift and powerful. We convinced the Russians that we were willing to go to war to defend our country from such close proximity of enemy missiles.

The missiles we plan to put in Poland are just 115 miles from Russia. For years we have talked about the missile defense shield and for years the Russians have complained about the project.

Now Russia is threatening what amounts to military action if we proceed with placing missiles in Poland.

A cold war is not a very pleasant environment. In a cold war both sides have weapons pointed at each other. Defenses are on the highest stage of alert and all it takes is one itchy finger on a hair trigger to bring on Armageddon.

I hope we don’t let our foreign relations backslide to the era of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Let's cure this disease before it gets out of hand.