Readers’ Forum

Another cold war!

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said, the world is on the brink of another cold war. On the other hand, a cold war analyst said, a nuclear war may start any moment. And we know that nuclear war means holocaust, all sides losing the game, preparing for an ice age.
We also know that Gorbachev contributed a lot to the downfall of the Soviet Union and emergence of the United States as the lone super power. Not only Gorbachev, incumbent Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Russian President Boris Yeltsin are also equally responsible for dismemberment of the Soviet Union, which was dissolved by the end of 1991.
When Russian was part of the Soviet Union, neither the USA nor any other western country dared issuing threat of war against Moscow. The dissolution of the Soviet Union marked an end to the Cold War. The uprising of 1989 and the end of the Soviet Union led to the end of decades-long hostility between North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact, which had been the defining feature of the Cold War.
In the sixties and the seventies, the world averted devastating nuclear war thrice. According to information, the USA was about to give order to strike back the Soviet Union but at the very last moment Washington detected that no Soviet missile was heading towards the USA.
Former British Philosopher Bertrand Russell said, the Soviet Union would suffer less than the USA in the event of any nuclear war.
The balance of power has changed.
Now, the US and the Western world, including Russia are more involved and engaged in ideological warfare, what is otherwise known as, clash of the civilisation in which the Islamic civilisation or ideology is the main opponent. In the process, India and communist China have covert support for the West.
That is, the Muslim countries have replaced the former Communist States in the world of politics and so the nuclear war seems far from reality.

Ameer Hamzah
Dhaka