"...In Other News"

While we were busy having a cold civil war and fighting over getting a vaccine shot. This came in from the Times of London: "Russia via a treaty proposal is demanding that NATO withdraws from Eastern Europe." Thereby betraying the nations, we pledged to protect. 

Nothing new there. Trump wanted to do this anyway. Also, we did exactly this by kicking Syria, and Afghanistan under the bus. 

Putin's government is demanding a return to the 1997 balance. Eastern Europe including Poland returns to the Russian sphere of influence.  There's other stuff like neither side will fly heavy bombers outside of their national territories. Especially if nuclear armed. Limiting troop movements, and restricting activities of nuclear subs. It reads like surrender terms.

Eh...we surrender to them.

Like the French we should be used to that by now. What with a losing streak of 70+ years going back to Korea. Them Russkies is playing a sharp game. They intend to win too. They were humiliated by us when we won the cold war. It's time for payback. One war leads to another. 

It has the scent of the events that led to WW1. 

A bunch of the same players too. Read "The Guns of August". All of the miscalculations that led to the Second Hundred Years war are happening again. The first act we know as World War One. The last "The War on Terror". 

It was some centuries between the hundred-year wars. 1337~1437 followed by relative peace. Then the second war. Which began in the French trenches of 1914. It ended with the abandonment and fall of Afghanistan to barbarians in 2021. 

That was in September.

The new Hundred Years War is beginning roughly where the first began. However, unlike that last which gave us several centuries of peace. The second gave barely four months. 

Progress. 

Granted with all the ugly mayhem of da Pandemic, and our American culture, and race wars. WW3 was easy to miss. Still, folks might want to pay a bit more attention.