Is war with Russia and China on the horizon?

Photo of a nuclear weapons mushroom cloud explosion

As we know with the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 the cold war ended between the US and the USSR.

Significantly, other than the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962 which ended with the diplomacy of US President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev there were no direct provocations between them.

There was a clear understanding between the two nuclear weapons superpowers that a nuclear attack initiated by one on the other would result in the annihilation of the other in a retaliatory strike. This became known as "MAD", mutually assured destruction.

Now two years before the Soviet Union imploded there was a verbal agreement between the Bush Sr. administration and then Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not move "one inch" eastward if the two Germany's were allowed to reunite. The latter of course happened but the former was ignored.

First by President Bill Clinton with the admission of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in 1999, then under Bush Jr. in 2004 Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined the bloc. Then Albania and Croatia were admitted n 2009 under president Obama and finally Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in 2020 under President Trump. Though NATO includes EU members the US essentially calls the shots.

So Geo-politically the world has changed since then.

And Russia, essentially the successor to the Soviet Union, recognizing the US ignored the verbal agreement with Gorbachev not to move NATO eastward was none too happy with the bloc on its doorstep.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 with its special military operation citing the expansion of NATO along with the February 2014 coup in Kiev that forced then legitimate Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych to flee the country which then brought a Neo-Nazi regime to reign in Kiev.

Crimea which housed the Russian Black Sea Fleet rejected the post the coup government and held a peoples referendum choosing to join the Russian Federation.

Meanwhile the Russian speaking people in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of eastern Ukraine (the Donbass) also rejected the post coup government in Kiev which prompted the regime to initiate a war against these two regions that continued though the Russian invasion. President Vladimir Putin stated Russia came to protect the Russian speaking people in those areas that had been under constant attack by the Kiev regime.

The purpose of this little review of history is to highlight some of the significant geo-political changes that have occurred over the last 30 plus years that prompted Russia to act as it did.

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