By Katherine Robinson
It has been a full year since February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. We were all shocked when images of Russian tanks began rolling into Ukraine, which resulted in an ever increasing death toll. A year later, this conflict has become a proxy war between Ukraine with NATO support and Russia with some support from China and Iran.
A year in, the amazing part is that Ukraine is still holding up and fighting back. This invasion was only supposed to take a few days maybe a week or two for Russia to invade the entire country. But this war is still going on which is a credit to the bravery of the Ukrainian soldiers and the high tech weapon systems that were given to them by the Western nations of NATO, especially the United States.
Recently, there has been talk of what would happen if Russia and the United States get into a real hot war and if that would lead to a nuclear exchange. None of us wants to think about what nuclear war would mean for us. Essentially a nuclear war would end life as we know it.
Another issue that has cropped up since this war is taking so long to end is that massive amounts of money that are required for fighting a war in the modern age. This war is costing many lives, but it is also costing billions of dollars. Where is that money coming from and what will it mean to the United States and other Western countries, already suffering from high inflation rates. The use of billions of dollars will only make inflation worse.
Furthermore, what will our involvement mean in the rest of the world. The United States withdrew from Afghanistan, and now we are involved in Ukraine. Iran is close to getting enough nuclear material to make bombs, which is a big threat to that part of the world, especially Isreal.
Chinese-American relations have been tense as well, with the competition of economies and the very real threat of conflict if China invades Taiwan. This will destabilize the trade routes through that part of the world, including Japan and South Korea. Taiwan also is responsible for a major portion of all the high tech microchips used all around the world today. Think the chip shortage in 2020-2021 was a problem? Wait until China controls most of the chip manufacturing in the free world.
These are all serious issues facing the world today, but hopefully our leaders on all sides will get together and work together for the betterment of all people around the world.
