Flowers For Socrates

by GENE HOWINGTON

At any given time, there are dozens of hotspots around the world where regional conflicts or outright wars are fermenting. Most times these potential conflicts are local or regional in scope. There are four areas at the moment though that, if things a serious turn, could erupt into large scale – possibly global – war. The one that is currently grabbing headlines is the deteriorating situation between Russia and the Ukraine. NATO has begun posturing and maneuvering troops to hopefully deter the manifestly expansionist bent shown by Russia under Putin’s leadership. There are talks of “military exercises” in Poland (and possibly Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia).  Real, old school, Cold War sabre rattling. The problem with cold wars is they can become hot all to easily despite how the nearly forty year long Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. ended with the primarily financially driven collapse of the Soviet Union. On more than on occasion, that long running tension nearly erupted into global thermonuclear war. The possibility of a new cold war or (worse) an open war between NATO and Russia is fraught with danger that some of the younger generations never grew up with.  Children of the last part of the 20th Century grew up with thermonuclear war being an abstraction from the past at best or ignorant of the possibility at worst. No sane person would use nuclear weapons? Right? Having been in college when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin Wall was reduced to ruble, I remember all to well growing up in a time where the specter of nuclear war hovered over everything. A pale ghost threatening death by fire and radiation that could come with little or no warning. The one consolation of growing up in a known first strike zone was I knew that if it happened, I’d be one of the lucky ones gone in a flash of gamma rays and a shockwave so sudden and fierce I’d barely have time to recognize what had happened if at all. I pitied the survivors. As a follower of international relations, I have to say as of late I’m starting to hear those old dogs of war barking. They may even be growling. Although the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set the Doomsday Clock to five minutes to midnight as of January 14, 2014, one has to wonder if this is an accurate estimate given this recent turn of events.  Is it accurate given other global concerns? The Ukrainian situation is not the only theater where if the dogs are loosed they come with a nuclear threat. Are we on the brink of a more dangerous time? Has the nuclear boogeyman returned? Did he ever go away?

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