Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
I am not an alarmist, and am not about to start. But something is rapidly moving very dangerously, and doing so fast.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggressive pressure on Ukraine (150,000 troops heavily armored), escalating US and Allies’ direct response and preparations (multiple brigades mobilized and deployed), and a developing alliance between Russia and a China that is anxious to displace the US as the premier power player, inform my reasoned concern that we might rapidly be edging into a Third World War. It may not be by design, but this extraordinary intimidation and operational threat could easily, even carelessly, yield to uncontrolled ego. Meanwhile, the President of the United States Joe Biden has informed NATO and its allies that the U.S will ‘respond decisively’ if Russia moves on Ukraine.
Once at that tipping point, the story will be history….
Putin seems anxious to get back at the U.S especially because of the events of the 1980s. You may recall that it was during the Ronald Reagan presidency and leadership (1981-1989) that Mr. Reagan challenged the former leader of the bigger USSR/Soviet Union (of which this same Russia was the main force and factor), Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!” With President Reagan’s unrelenting combination of pressure on all fronts, ideological, economic and military, among other factors, the communist wall shattered, the “iron curtain” fell, and the old Soviet empire crashed…. Putin, at the time, was a young and ambitious Russian spy/intelligence officer.
This is nothing new, except that a friendly, compliant Trump was his leverage, gratis. He will likely stop at nothing until he pieces backthe lost glory of the Eastern Block. At least, he might want to die trying.
We are in times like we’ve not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. John F. Kennedy was President and about 30 percent of today’s Americans were not even born.
Trump might yet be the precursor of an emerging ominous, dark age.
But Putin could not find better green light than the uncontrolled slide of a Republican Party, like an RNC that just yesterday went on record to say that January 6 was “legitimate political discourse”. What a discourse, indeed!
We simply are in times that call for caution, care and prayers. May divine intervention save God’s own country. •Okorie, an attorney, is a member of the editorial board of USAfrica in Houston, Texas.
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