Smells like 1980's. (From my personal point of view, that is. Those who remember the atmosphere of 50's or 60's probably recognize echoes from those times, too...) OK, I understand that this does not yet mean that Putin intends to launch nuclear missiles. And - if I understand correctly - the Russian launch system is so that Putin can't simply push a button all by himself, the sequence involves other layers and I hope the other people have a lot more calm rationality than Putin seems to have. I mean, the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction still applies. Threatening to use nukes amounts to saying "If I don't get what I want, then I'll destroy the entire planet and then no one gets what they want!". And that has absolutely nothing to do with rational decision-making. This very deeply takes me back to my own childhood memories, the deep realization of the utter absurdity of all violence-backed power-politics, and looking for alternatives set me on the spiritual path. And I see spiritual enlightenment as something which leaves a person with a deeply-felt unquestionable universal compassion; if one sees world that way, the idea of resorting to violence feels alien. But, the thing is that this kind of ideas have been talked about for more than 2000 years, yet we are here - witnessing how MAD returns to the daily reality not because of an accident or device malfunction, but because of a deliberate decision by a high-ranking world leader. The nature of spiritual enlightenment is such that it can't be forced on anyone. Yet, seen from purely scientific (cold, hard, rational) point of view the situation is that as a mankind we are facing common problems like the global climate change, the accumulation of plastic waste in the food-chain, the overuse of natural resources. If these problems are not solved, we end up suffering everyone - me, you, them, everyone, everyone. So the rational thing to do would be to the mankind to come together and start co-operating to solve the common problems together. At the moment it seems that we can't do the rational thing because too many people have a mindset far from being spiritually enlightened. (As I might have said before, I don't think that everyone needs something like a spiritual enlightenment. It is just that I think that those people whose rationality is blurred by their narrow-minded egoistic short-sighted fury, they probably aren't going to get any more humane no matter how much more intelligence or logical thinking is poured on them. It is those people who need deeply transformative spiritual experiences which would help them to find an unquestioned inner sense of togetherness and benevolence.) All that being said, I remain optimistic =) We survived the Cold War. Now let's just keep on surviving and working for peace, hope and solidarity.