A lesson in history
This post is meant to give a few extra explanations to a bunch of people I’ve noticed around that don’t seem to know any history whatsoever or who are ignoring history altogether.
Earlier I have noted why fools shouldn’t be allowed to govern and this is meant to be a part two for that, something specifically targeted at the dominion of a notorious idiot, known as GW Bush, Jr.
To start with, I’m sure most of you know (or at least have heard about) the Cold War. This is another name for the timespawn between the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the 90’s. Basically it was a standoff between two superpowers, the USA and the USSR. Both blocks were involved in various races that culminated with the conquest of the outer space but also resulted in two largest nuclear arsenals, arsenals which were feeding the policy of “mutual assured distruction”. In layman’s terms this means that in both blocks there were a few people ready to turn a key in a move that would unleash so much power that they could destroy the world about 100 times over … and they were ready to do exactly that should the “enemy” (eg the other block) would make the wrong move.
In 1962 the world came close to destruction during the Cuban Missile Crisis when in a wrong move by Kennedy, the installation of nuclear missiles in Turkey by USA was answered with an installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba by Khrushchev. However, forced by economic and political reasons, amidst threats by Kennedy, Khrushchev made a public image move to appear the greater man and forced out a mutual dismatling of nuclear installation.
Why is all this important? Well, the mentality of the political scene has been dominated for years by this picture, of the two large opposing blocks: USA and USSR. This image was always promoted through the media, American movies picturing evil soviets, soviet movies picturing evil americans.
Did you notice something? I didn’t say countries. USA and USSR are(were) not countries. They are unions. USA is a union of 50 states governed by a mixture of statal and federal laws. Each state has a great degree of freedom in establishing local and foreign policies, while the federal power is limited through the actions of the Congress. The USSR was a union of 15 states (republics on their own): Armenia, Azerbaidjan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Also (regarding the current crisis) the Abkhaz Republic was constituent of the USSR in a confederation with Georgia. Isn’t this interesting?
In 1991, the USSR fell, mostly due to the work of one Eduard Shevardnadze, a georgian, former Minister of Foreign Affairs in the USSR, under Stalin (another georgian). Didn’t you know that? Yes, dear readers, the fierce Joseph Stalin wasn’t a russian, he was georgian. In fact not many of the great soviet figures which have caused nightmares to western leaders were ever Russians. Stalin was georgian, Shevardnadze is georgian, Leonid Brezhnev was ucrainean, Vladimir Zhirinovsky is a kazakh … only Nikita Khrushchev was russian and irnocally enough he was the man who defused the Missile Crisis.
Despite the obvious, one mentality is still governing the political scene today: Russia is still USSR. The same values applied to the USSR area now considered against Russia. Russia is evil, ready to kill millions, always seeking to invade, communism will kill us all.
Why is this a mistake? Because it prevents people to see the change, the change in interests, in behavior. USSR invaded Afghanistan, Chechnya, Russia didn’t invade anyone. The change from being a union towards being a country is obvious to me, but until the world’s leader will see this, they have no chance of understanding that there’s a country and not a union there beyond Caucasus Mountains. And such a self-imposed limitation will prevent them from taking the steps towards building the relations the world needs to be a fair and balanced place. Sure, maybe Russia can be called evil, but throwing at it a past that actually belongs to others will prevent us from taking the correct and efficient steps to counter that.
USA has preseved it’s block mentality, has went on to invade many countries across the globe in order to ensure its position and speheres of influence. With such a mentality, there’s no wonder many countries feel threatened and will seek to counter this influence by any and all means necessary. This is dangerous as even the smallest escallation can lead to a new and devastating conflict because right now at least 8 countries in the world have the capacity to irreversibly destroy the whole of humanity.