The Age of the Donald by Dave Jaffe - Part Ten

      The Age of the Donald - Part Ten by Dave Jaffe


    "The Cold War is over," people around the world said in 1991. "And the United States has won the war," Americans chimed in.   Yet by 2016 everything had changed. The Cold War was back and once again the U.S. clashed with not the Soviet Union but its biggest republic namely Russia. How had this happened?
      It was simple really. The more Russia swing towards the western world and the U.S., the worse things became for the Russian people. Under Boris Yeltsin the head of the Russian Federation the country started to come apart. Massive inflation tore into people's savings and shrunk the savings to nothing. Crime in the streets skyrocketed. Chechens rose in revolt in Chechnya and Russian troops couldn't suppress the uprising.
     Oligarchs, many of whom were former communist leaders took over mines, mills and factories and made millions of dollars. Also Yeltsin unleashed soldiers on the elected Russian politicians in the Russian parliament when they defied his will. People in Russia started to get angry. Of course not all people did.
    One woman in her thirties named Marina lived in Moscow during this time. She saw no great changes. "There were more people sleeping in the street," this woman said. "There was more crime. But overall I didn't notice much change at all." Other Russians didn't share Marina's view.
     In 2000 Vladimir Putin a former KGB or secret police agent took over as president of the Russian Federation. "Putin imposed order," a Ukrainian visitor to Russia and Canada said. "Not law and order. Just order." Putin sent troops back into Chechnya and crushed the Chechen rebels. He cracked down on all dissent. Television stations, newspapers, radio and the government messages on the Internet, gave out one consistent message: Vladimir Putin is your new president. No criticism is allowed.
      Common criminals were thrown in prison. Some dissidents were killed. Oligarchs who defied Putin were imprisoned or fled the country. After 9/11 Putin co-operated with the U.S. and other countries in fighting terror. Yet as Putin cracked down on dissent, tensions rose between the U.S. and Russia.
     By 2010 many former satellites of the former U. S.S.R like the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland Bulgaria and Romania had joined the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO.  The United States planted nuclear missiles in many of these former communist countries. Also some former Soviet republics had also signed up into NATO and gratefully accepted nuclear missiles from the U.S.too.
     Russia's rulers claimed that these missiles broke a non-nuclear promise made to them by U.S. president George H.W. Bush to Russia in the late 1980"s. Maybe so, but the missiles remained. "They're pointed at Iran," some U.S. officials claimed. Still, this wasn't true. They were aimed at Russia. Then came more problems. And soon the Cold War started up again.