Cold War 2.0/An Unpopular Opinion Part 2

Low Sun - The Monster Storm
   • Low Sun - The Monster Storm  
REASONS I WANT A NO-FLY ZONE
1: I refuse to live through another cold war.
2: Better to deal with this now than to let it drag on for 60 years like last time.
3: NATO exists for exactly this scenario. Their inaction is suspect.
4: There have been war crimes alleged against both sides. There are no political good guys.
5: Nuclear doomsday is a myth. Worst case scenario: The west demands Putin chill the fuck out. He loses his shit and hits the button. Are we really gonna miss D.C. and Cheyanne Mountain? Portland, Detroit? The video is meant to show that a few thousand nuclear weapons had been detonated during the cold war. A few more ain't gonna kill us.
6: The options are interesting.
A: Russia takes Ukraine, China takes Taiwan, Communist states expand while western governments go deeper and deeper into the Marxist mindset until a really fucked up future is created.
B: Ukraine beats Russia in a ground war and a nuclear standoff between the two follows. Cold war shit.
C: NATO does nothing, Ukraine holds off Russia to a draw of sorts. Lines are re-drawn, a bit of the ethnic cleansing happens and again, cold war shit. Iron Curtain deals.

There is clear evidence of war crimes (oxymoron) being committed by Russia AND Ukraine. It's evident that Putin is indeed trying to bring back the days of the Iron Curtain. Isn't NATO's purpose to prevent these things from happening again? I keep hearing that WW3 will erupt if NATO steps in and puts a halt to the fighting under flag of humanitarianism. Maybe.

On the other hand, it's a near certainty that we will soon enter a new cold war and watch as Putin begins to bring back a Stalinist-type regime or an even worse modern analog of old style Soviet oppression. Seems like it all comes down to nukes. The question is, are modern armies mature enough to fight a conventional war without the loser getting petulant and suicidally start lobbing megatons around? Oh, hell no they aren't, and everyone knows it and that's a root cause of NATO's hypocritical lack of direct action. Fear of reprisals after the fact is another. But there's another perspective.

For sixty years following WW2 the world lived under the shadow of Soviet nukes. This is how the Boomers and Gen X grew up. The existential anxiety, the baseline fear, knowing that at any minute, with little or no warning, your entire world could be atomized stained everything. It twisted perspectives and brought out an ingrained fear response in every day to day act or encounter. In short, everything you hate about boomers can be traced directly back to the Cold War.

I was in Nancy Reagan's Navy from 1985 to 1989. That shit was spooky. Forget the Bay of Pigs and whatever you heard on the news or in a book. Stuff went on daily. Submarine tag in the Arctic Ocean, conning towers popping up within torpedo range like it's a game and I'm aboard USS Kalamazoo, AOR 6. A giant, floating 7-11 gas station and convenience store with everything from Twinkies to thermo-nuclear warheads and everything in between. Pants-wetting scary. Then there were the little spy trawlers that would sail right between two NATO ships during underway refueling and resupply ops, their decks covered with cameras on tripods, trying to figure out how we do our thing. Or the fighters and bombers that would buzz us in international waters, using us for practicing air to sea attacks. Every single day, all over the world such provocations and bluffs went on. Once you wrap your head around that, and the short step to an international incident and maybe a missile launch, you begin to maybe understand the baseline paranoia two generations lived with.

I'm not interested in going back to that so how about we do something now to stop this shit? I propose NATO enact a no fly zone over Ukraine right damned now. I don't believe for a minute that Putin is "all in" and willing to start a nuclear conflict. Trump was right, Putin is quite smart. Given the option, he will choose an arbitrated settlement with Ukraine over a nuclear scenario.

The problem is, NATO member nations are all too afraid to take the responsibility of direct action, afraid not so much of nuclear war, but of international backlash, of being scapegoated and "cancelled" on a national scale. In other words, the Marxists are afraid of the Marxists as much as they are afraid of the Communists. Such a cozy world we live in. Yes, there's a calculable chance that some bombs will get dropped. If NATO does nothing, a new cold war begins. The shadow of nuclear war that is creeping into imaginations today will evolve into an understanding that at some point, when you least expect it, the sun will bloom in your hometown and melt away your cares.