YOUR AD HERE »

Paul Wellman: Maybe Trump can pull off ‘peace on earth?’

The Doomsday Clock was moved down to two minutes to midnight last year. That is the closest to midnight since 1953.

Stephen F. Cohen is called America’s most controversial Russian expert. He just came out with a new book called “War With Russia?” According to Mr. Cohen, it is not looking good.

In 1986, Gorbachev tried to cut a deal in Reykjavik with Reagan to ban all ballistic missiles. The U.S. sunk the deal and signed a much watered-down treaty called the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, referred to as the INF. It was flawed from the beginning and led to further development of weaponry on both sides.



In 2002, the U.S. backed out of the 30-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty — ABM Treaty — with Russia leading to further escalation. As part of the ABM agreement, NATO would not move into Eastern Europe, which was rightly seen as a huge threat to Russia.

Currently, NATO is doing a huge war game in Poland and the Baltic States while Russia, China and Mongolia are doing the largest military exercise since 1981 called “Vostok 2018” just across to border from the NATO games.



Putin has called Trump’s plan to pull out of the INF as “not the work of a great mind.”

On the bright side, in his announcement, President Trump said, “Unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to us and they say, ‘Let’s all of us get smart and let’s none of us develop those weapons,’ but if Russia’s doing it and if China’s doing it and we’re adhering to the agreement, that’s unacceptable. So we have a tremendous amount of money to play with with our military.”

Maybe this is Trump playing the art of the deal, and Putin will have to eat his words. Maybe Trump will pull off what no one has been able to do and start some peace on earth.

May it be so.

Paul Wellman

Clark


Support Local Journalism

Support Local Journalism

Readers around Steamboat and Routt County make the Steamboat Pilot & Today’s work possible. Your financial contribution supports our efforts to deliver quality, locally relevant journalism.

Now more than ever, your support is critical to help us keep our community informed about the evolving coronavirus pandemic and the impact it is having locally. Every contribution, however large or small, will make a difference.

Each donation will be used exclusively for the development and creation of increased news coverage.