It beats me whether I was wrong or right about Russia and its intentions in Crimea. There has been a near orderly and bloodless transfer of power as Russia annexed the portion of the former Ukraine, something upon which Americans pride themselves.
If, however, the whole Crimea exercise by Russia is a means to the end of a separation from the once Soviet Union then that would not be good at all.
There are more than just one splinter of countries in that portion of the world in which people are connected with Russia by language and history. People who have come of age these days — those both in the East and in the West — have grown without the worry of nuclear annihilation.
It doesn’t seem very long ago at all that I graduated from college, in 1984, and saw a brave new world out there for myself. And though it was fading, the Cold War in which I had served as a sailor was fading. The USSR was something still “evil” though fading as Ronald Reagan said, as an “Evil Empire.”
I think there are many good Russian people in the world and those who would rather see a stronger more than weaker relationship between their homeland and the United State. Yes, we are rivals and probably always will be as such. But rivals need not be enemies.
Vladimir Putin is a latter-day Commie spook. He wouldn’t make a wine stain on Mihkail Gorbachev’s head. Let us just hope these flights of Soviet fancy are just that.
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