Dear CCI Readers,
Nicolai Petro, Professor of Peace and Nonviolence at the University of Rhode Island and a Fulbright Scholar in Ukraine from 2013–14, send me the article and following note:
“The article below, by award winning journalist Cain Burdeau, is among the best available at explaining the long, historic challenges within today’s Ukraine. The current situation cannot be understood without deeper knowledge of the different communities that co-exist there.”
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
Ukraine Conflict ExposesDangers of a New Cold War
A look at Ukraine’s distant and recent past reveals a complex and dangerous example of the risks posed by a world where superpowers are once again clashing.
February 11, 2022
By Cain Burdeau
Ukraine, a land best known for its fearsome Cossack warriors of old and the Orthodox onion domes of Kyiv’s churches, is a multiethnic and complex country of 44 million people nearly the size of Texas full of potential with its vast and fertile plains, industrial cities, position on the Black Sea and rich history.
But this large country that sits at the crossroads between Europe and Asia is now the embodiment of just how dangerous the world has become in an age of struggle between nuclear-armed superpowers vying to bolster their economic, cultural, military, cyber and political regimes in a context of growing competition over developing nations like Ukraine. Many experts warn this is a new Cold War.
On Friday, Americans living in Ukraine awoke to the news that U.S. President Joe Biden was urging them to leave the country because “things could go crazy quickly” in the region within days. Biden’s alarm-filled warning was the most dramatic statement yet about a perceived threat that Russia plans to invade Ukraine and start a war. The Kremlin denies any such plans.
In the short span of the two months since Ukraine became the focus of world events, people around the globe have been shown how long-simmering unresolved problems in a country as pivotal as Ukraine can bring the world to the brink of the unthinkable: Another major war between great powers in Europe.