Trump arms for Ukraine

I cannot believe that providing the Ukrainian government with anti-tank weapons is going to bring peace to this former Soviet Union satellite nation. The US has a very chequered history of throwing arms into a war zone, often with disastrous results. But Trump, in his wisdom, has decided that anti-tank weapons will change the balance of military power in Ukraine because it will help government forces to destroy the tanks and armoured vehicles driven by the "rebels" who are backed, supported, financed, trained and everything else by Moscow. Many of the rebels are in fact Russian Spetnaz special forces in disguise - and not very good disguise at that. So, logic says that to counter the Ruskies, advanced anti-tank weapons are needed, and Washington feels it's right for the US to be the provider. Well, of course, if Russia is involved it has to be America that sends arms to the other side. It's good old-fashioned Cold War thinking. It's surprising how much of that thinking is still around, both in Moscow and Washington. But Ukraine is not going to become a happy place if one superpower and another former superpower trying to reinstate itself to Cold War status are pitted against each other. More arms means more killing and more killing means a more divided and miserable country. That's not to say that Moscow should be allowed to get away with stirring it up in Ukraine but sending in arms cannot always be the answer, and I don't believe it is the answer for Ukraine. Unless, by some miracle, the "rebels" decide that it's now too risky to prosecute the war and stop fighting. If only! What will happen is that Moscow will send in weapons to counter the anti-tank weapons, or more Spetnaz will be secreted over the border to blow up the storage sites with the anti-tank munitions. War war and more war, and even worse relations between two countries - America and Russia - who really should by now be grown-up enough to stop playing such dangerous games and start cooperating to confront the real threats facing them and the world - such as North Korea. Look what happened to all those US arms given to the Mujahiddeen in Afghanistan to fight the Russian occupiers. Once the Russians had left, the Mujahideen metamorphosed into the Taliban and we all know who they started to fight - the US-backed Afghan government. The CIA had to scrabble around frantically to get their Stinger anti-aircraft missiles back from the Mujahideen before they could be fired at Afghan, US and other coalition helicopters and fighter jets. Amazingly, they largely succeeded. Some Stingers remained in Taliban hands but by then thy were a bit rusty and no longer viable. But here we are nearly in 2018, and we have the prospect of US/Russian confrontation in Ukraine, nuclear war with North Korea and yet moe climate change. Very depressing.