Early November, ’89 the wall fell and the Soviet Union disbanded shortly after that and U.S.’s rival disappeared quietly into the night.

There was no longer the notion a worthy competitor and the fear of large scale thermonuclear war.  When I was growing up there was a cloud of mystery surrounding the U.S.S.R.  Could they beat us if we were to go to war?  All I knew of the U.S.S.R. before the wall fell were photos of Red Square, bread lines, Spies, East Germany, and other propaganda aggrandizing the communist state.

Our new focus became radical Islamic fundamentalists, power hungry dictators and rag-tag warlords who used burning tires to signal troops in the field.  Life was good and we could simply kill our enemies without fear.  We were clearly advanced technologically and tactically so confidence runs high when we faced those types of enemies.

Perhaps we’ve been fooled into complacency for the last 20 years…has the former Soviet Union been collecting resources and biding time?

I sure hope so!  WOLVERINES!!!

There was a comfort in knowing who the badguys were and WHERE they were.  As a teenager I would read Jane’s books I could get my hands on and peruse the number of ships, planes, tanks and troops each of the two countries had and imagining the conflicts in my head.  The Soviets always seemed to have more of everything which always worried me a bit and made movies like “Red Dawn” a not-so-remote possibility.

I loved the propaganda maps that showed the Soviet Union as a massive red blob, with an “Iron Curtain” around it…brilliant!

For now I’ll have to re-read older Clancy novels and watch older movies like “Wargames,” but with Russian muscle flexing testing our new President, who knows?  Maybe they’re not to be discounted.  It worries me to think of a world with Soviets AND terrorists.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_I4WgBfETc]

The irony of the “Wolverines” doesn’t escape me.  They’re modeled after the Mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan war, many of whom are fighting our troops now.  It’s weird to think of the Cold War as nostalgic, but it is for me.  Obviously I don’t want to go to war, I guess I just want the lines to be clearer, which for me it seemed they were.  We had about 4o years of practice to get use to the Soviets being badguys so we were good at it and so were they.

I still think they’re Волк в ове́чьей шку́ре.

MiH