Today we woke to a very different world from the one we left last night

 I never thought I would be watching and listening to the words from former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, this morning, saying that today is reminiscent of September 1939. Those of us born in the middle of World War II, were raised in a post-war world of relative peace, relative economic stability and growth, near-full employment, and the shuttering of the munitions factory DIL just north of our home town.

Fathers of classmates had served in the Great War that ended in 1918, and other fathers had served in WWII; some of us were spared the spectre of having a parent or grandparent serving the allied forces in both European wars. Very few conversations were heard in recollection of what those wars were like for servicemen and women. November 11, Remembrance Day, was celebrated with ceremonies at cenotaphs, the sale and wearing of the Legion poppies, and people pausing to reflect on the trauma that had plagued the world.

War, even on the Korean peninsula, was still a kind of event characterized by many in Canada as “over there” somewhere on the other side of the world. The Cuban missile crisis came, scared everyone, saw the construction of bomb shelters, and fortunately passed from the front pages, and into the history books and the doctoral theses. Later, in Viet Nam, mostly the Americans were engaged in another war on the other side of the world.

We are a generation schooled on peace treaties, memorials and history books, on the ravages of military conflict. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 6, 1945, while ending WWII, nevertheless, changed the basic security of every human being on the planet. The nuclear war spectre, monitored on the nuclear clock, hovered near mid-night through the decades of our lives. Treaties have come and gone on the numbers and the relative safety and security of nuclear weapons, their storage and the competing ambitions of non-nuclear states to acquire them (think Iran, North Korea). Nations like Ukraine, formerly nuclear powers, we thought and believed, fortunately surrendered their nuclear weapons.

Today, ironically, falsely, and in an unprovoked way, Putin sent military forces, aircraft, missiles into Ukraine, on the pretext that Russia was in danger of attack by the Ukrainian military. Nothing could or would be considered even feasible, let alone even considered by the Ukrainian government. Ukrainian military capacity, economic stability and political stability is dramatically inferior especially militarily to Russia’s. It would not nothing short of foolhardy for Ukrainians to attack Russia.

In the Donbas and Luhansk, on the eastern border of Ukraine with Russia, where Russian-natives live, and where Russian is spoken on the street, there have been tensions between Russian-inspired separatists seeking unity with Russia and the Ukrainian military. No doubt these tensions were continually fostered and nurtured by the Kremlin since 2014, since Russia took over Crimea also in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine has written into its constitution a determination to join NATO, at some time in the future. Thus far, she had not fulfilled the expectations of NATO membership, although Putin claims Russia is ‘threatened’ by the prospect of NATO membership for Ukraine. In the last two or three decades, NATO has indeed fostered and acquired new members in the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary. The Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are also relatively recent NATO members.

So much has changed not only from 2014 until today, but especially, since 1989-90 and the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia’s governance has been taken over by Putin’s oligarchic cleptocracy; social media as flushed disinformation into the public dialogue and thereby enabled propaganda machines in all countries. The rising consciousness of both a global pandemic and the spectre of rising global temperatures from the continual toxic emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, and a political information war funded by corporate interests embedded in the fossil fuel sector.

Russia, itself, relies on the production of fossil fuels, as its primary source of revenue. And, as part of its initiative to neutralize Germany and other European nations in the event of initiating a military move, Russia has begun to construct Nord Stream 2, a pipeline under the Baltic Sea, to convey oil and gas from Russia to Germany and other European states. So, disinformation through cybercrime and dependence on fossil fuel are two of the non-missile or bomb-like weapons that Russia has developed. Putin is also thumping his national chest about new weapon development the likes of which the west has not witnesses.

NATO members, as well as non-NATO nations like Great Britain, Sweden, Finland, have tried to pull together in a common, committed and concerted agency opposed to the territorial expansion of Russia, a ‘united front’ of commitment to extreme sanctions on banks and oligarchs, as a way to deter Putin from his obsessive purpose.

Whether or not that purpose includes the full take-over of Ukraine, by Putin, is becoming less and less in doubt hour by hour. A hollowed-out Ukraine, one of the highly probably outcomes of this latest tragic attack. Millions are already in their vehicles attempting to escape to Poland from Ukrainian cities. In Moscow, with 3 million Ukrainians living in Russia, there are no more ‘dollars’ as there has been a ‘run’ at the banks with people attempting to dump rubles in favour of dollars.

Reports of Russian forces attacking nuclear waste storage sheds in Chernobyl demonstrate a complete disregard for human life, given that if successful, nuclear dust will spread near and far in that area immediately north of Ukraine in Belarus. However, a Russian puppet, Lukashenka, holds power propped up by Putin, in spite of the rebellion in the streets of Minsk last summer, demanding his overthrow, a new election and a new democratically-elected government. Leader of the opposition in Belarus left her homeland fearing for her life, at the hands of the Belarus dictator.

It is almost impossible to keep up the reports of military conflict, announcements of sanctions, curtailment of Russian banking options, and more threats from the Kremlin depicting both danger for more countries than Ukraine, and also proving beyond a shadow of a doubt, the mental, emotional and even political melt-down of the Russian tyhrant.

The deplorable fact that trump and his acolytes, in both the Republican party and on Fox, echo support for Putin is another of the seismic shifts in the health of the body politic of the United States of America. Naturally, given the penetrating intelligence of the Russian oligarch, Putin is intimately acquainted with American chaos, disunity, racial animus and economic insecurity, especially in the middle of a pandemic. He is also intimately aware that his own standing in Russia itself is  under a considerable cloud of public distrust. Alexi Navalny lies in serious ill health, in a Russian prison. Poisonings of Russian emigres in Great Britain have resulted in both death (assassination) as well as perpetual sickness. Journalists, under Putin, have the respect one might afford a python in the kitchen, such is the fear and the unmitigated contempt for truth, transparency, accountability, and the names and faces of those everywhere who stand for such values, and who fight to sustain those values.

This conflict is not, and never will be, contained within the borders of Ukraine, not even within the confines of Europe itself. The whole world is facing the spectre of a conflict with weapons never before deployed, under technologies never before imagined, and certainly not reined in by law and or self-regulation. Hackers acting on behalf of Putin and the Russian government, are among the most loyal of Putin’s forces, and their stealth and infiltration into all cyber systems threaten all systems of energy production and distribution everywhere, in Europe and North America.

The position of all countries in the world on this invasion of Ukraine by Russia remains significant, and none more than whether or not China utters words of support, condemnation or neutrality in the light of developments.

The markets, of course, are dropping in both performance and in confidence in the near future, given their heralded disdain for uncertainty. Prices of all commodities, including gas, oil, food, and necessary supplies are already rising, and will spike even further as a consequence of this unprovoked military aggression.

We are and will continue to experience not only those rising prices of commodities we all need; we are and will continue to experience increased anxiety, tension, apprehension and scepticism not only about the full impact of these events but also of the vibrations and imitations and echoes that will continue to redound around the planet.

Dictators everywhere will be emboldened by Putin’s intemperate, unconscionable  unjustified, senseless, illegal war. Even many Russians themselves, are angry by these actions of their leader. Whether the  “squeeze” that the west exerts on oligarchs and cleptocrats in Russia, on their stashed cash in foreign bank accounts, is enough of a tourniquet to stop  the blood and the pulse of the Russian bear, and bring him/it to its knees, is an open question.

Many of us who are watching are filled with scepticism that the west, especially those barons enmeshed in the financial networks inhabited by Russian oligarchs, and their politicians, have the guts, the commitment and the foresight to recognize that stashed cash, in the cause of sinister, inhuman and inhumane power brokers, could prove to be an existential threat to what we have considered “world order” for more than half a century.

Restraining a madman from pulling the trigger on nuclear weapons, too, is an obvious risk that every single person has to bear in mind, including those leaders western capitals, in the UN, in NATO and around the world.

Today we all woke up to a very different, far less safe and secure world than the world we lived in when we went to bed last night. Putin and his means and methods, exclusively and intemperately and unconscionably thrown around with impunity seem, at this moment, more than  the west can wrestle to the ground. Can he commit self-sabotage and bring himself the oblivion he so richly deserves?

We can only hope and pray.