PUTIN WILL NOT RELENT. He has invested too much in terms of reputation, self esteem, political capital. He has invested too many resources, men and armaments. He has the aid and support of North Korea and China, and thus, a seemingly unending resupply of armaments and ammunition. He will not negotiate any settlement which does not include permanent Russian possession of the one fifth of the Ukrainian territory now occupied and controlled by Russia. Ukraine and her European and American allies continue to insist on complete Russian withdrawal from all occupied Ukrainian territory as the only basis for beginning peace talks. Already Putin has conducted "elections" in the conquered region, handing out ballots door to door to the suppressed population, with a strictly limited number of choices on the ballot, and Russian soldiers waiting at the front door with AK47s to collect the ballots. Plus, a fairly high percentage of Ukrainians in the conquered region in the east are already sympathetic to the Russians, and would prefer to live under Russian governance. Putin has issued threats, not so veiled, that he is prepared to use nuclear weapons to achieve his goal, the complete subjugation of Ukraine under Russian hegemony. Since Putin is and has long been a demonstrated tyrant, we've no choice but to take him at his word, habitual liar though he is. The Union of Concerned Scientists has their infamous nuclear countdown clock, and has had it for years, monitoring global politics and expressing its opinion of exactly how close the world is to nuclear disaster. Over the decades the minute hand has crept closer to darkest midnight, ever creeping closer, then receding a bit, then inching closer and closer yet again. It is always close; currently it is as close as its ever been. Of the world's nine confirmed nuclear powers, at least five of them either have unstable, belligerent governments, acrimonious relationships with closely located neighbors, and/or serious economic difficulties which their leaders deem can be remedied through aggressive economic, territorial expansion. Almost unanimously the world's leading experts on geo-political politics, nuclear deployment, and human nature are in agreement that it is a virtual miracle that there has been no use of nuclear weapons in anger since the United States invented nuclear warfare against Japan at the end of World War Two. Almost unanimously, they consider a nuclear war of some kind virtually inevitable. Humanity has never invented a weapon which it has not used repeatedly. Pakistan and India are almost always at the brink of war, based on territorial disputes and nationalistic religious rivalry, without any resolution in sight. North Korea, incessantly threatening South Korea while firing missile after test missile into the sea off the coast of it ancient enemy Japan, wants to reunite the Korean peninsula under its control. Aggressive Russia and China, with their clearly expansionist aims, are now entangled in an alliance that can bring nothing but threats and harm to us all. And, again, only the United States has ever actually engaged in nuclear warfare, and has a foreign policy which can only be described as "ambitious". Einstein said that world war four will be fought with rocks. Khrushchev said that in the event of a nuclear war, the living will envy the dead. Both were quite correct. Amid all these boiling global entanglements and animosities and conflicting ambitions, we the United States of America, the world's bastion of freedom, liberty, and expansionist corporate capitalism, may well be the "sleeper". WE the American people, with our rising fascist America first America alone Trump movement, may well be the straw that stirs the drink of nuclear Armageddon far beyond the brink.
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