The “Cold War” and the Ukraine War.

By Ahmet Abdulaziz….

The year was 1945, and the world in general and Europe, in particular, had just seen the end of the Second World War. More than 40 million human lives were perished in the period of some six years. Everywhere, people had taken a deep breath of relief and were looking for a world fear of killings and conflicts.

But that was not the case. With killing stopped, the world had entered into another phase of the war. The name of this war was “The Cold War”. The winning Allies, had ended up becoming taking positions against each other. Communism and Capitalism had become the reason for pushing the world into a different type of serious war. Without killing the people, in a real sense, the world had stood divided into two blocks, with an iron curtain hanging in between the two. 

The Cold war, which had started immediately after the end of the Second World War lasted till 1991 when the USSR officially disintegrated, and other countries of the “eastern block”, who were under Russian pressure, got independence in a real sense. The people of the previous “Communist or Socialist” countries tasted real independence, after a pretty long period of time. 

People had thought that to a great extent the dream of John Lennon ,“Imagine”, was nearing becoming reality. To a great extent what they had thought was true. The world had started becoming a global village, where everyone was free to travel anywhere and take his/her own decisions for the future. 

Again the people had thought that the dark period of the “cold war” had ended. We all had witnessed the scenes of “mass joy” at the time when the Berlin Wall was being broken, and people from two different and opposing German states had started crossing over without any restrictions whatever. Those were the days of high optimism. But it did not take much time for people to realise that the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the end of the so called “ColdWar”, had led to some other problems.

The biggest problem that Europe faced was reducing the big gap between the weak economies of the “Eastern block” countries and the developed economies of the Western block countries. The rich western countries, worked hard to sort this problem out, by helping the weaker countries in all fields. The way the European Council dealt with the grave problem of economic development of these countries is really appreciable.

But it was very clear to everybody, that though the “cold war” had ended and the iron curtain between the Eastern and Western Blocks of the world was no more, but deep inside, the losing side would take some time to re-emerge on the world political scene. Whereas on the one side the European Union was hectically working to sort out the economic problems of the “eastern block” countries, and adding them into the “European Union”, Russia, under the strong leadership of Putin, was planning its comeback.

The re-emergence of Russia on the world power scene was expected, but to many, that would take much time. Astonishingly, Russia came back to the world arena, after leaving the haunting memories of her war in Afghanistan during the 1980s. Interestingly that’s exactly the same situation with the Americans too, who wasted their men and money in Afghanistan for a pretty long period of time.

The Americans were knotting the European countries one by one into Nato and were constantly nearing the geographical borders of Russia. In fact, America was testing Russia with their every next move. The last test was in Ukraine. Russia reacted when the moves to admit Ukraine into NATO, generated momentum. Though the moves were going on for quite a long period, and that was the way how the Americans were trying to read the Russians.

And then the day came when Russia responded, and declared war on Ukraine. The somewhat non-active “post cold war” era had ended, with the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. The world heard this news with a big question mark. People the world over had thought that the Third World War might start. That was a possibility, but luckily common sense prevailed to some extent. The loss of precious lives of both Russians and Ukrainians, is what must be taken into account while looking at the overall conflict. 

I personally feel that the matter was not something unique, which could have not been sorted out through negotiations. But unfortunately, the characters of the “Cold War” still believe in “winning” and “losing” at the expense of human lives. So let’s wait to see how far the “Hidden Cold War” would continue disturbing the whole world.