The scenario recreated so many times by Hollywood of a totally or almost extinct humanity due to nuclear war, is more real than never, according to the Russian president Vladimir Putin´s ominous statements.
The end of the Cold War had made us believe that the possibility of a mass extinction was something from the past, a desliz in our rationality, a twentieth century madness.
In his annual Q & A session in Moscow which brought about the presence of 1,700 local and foreign journalists, Putin has brought back the ancient fear of the end of the human race.
According to the Russian leader, the breaking up of international arms control mechanisms promoted by the United States, set up the scene for an unstoppable arms race of catastrophic consequences.
The abandonment which he points out is the falling apart of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Putin´s key preoccupation is the minimization of this risk because this growing tendency leads up to a lowering control of powerful nuclear weapons.
Under his perspective, we seem to fail in understanding with clarity the meaning of a “global nuclear catastrophe. For this reason, he made special emphasis in not taking this new arms race to irreversible extremes and of deadly consequences for mankind in general and life on Earth.
A disturbing question used by him as a solid argument in his warnings referred to what to do in case of the activation of these missiles in Europe. He answered himself that the strategies would be centered in the defense and security of his country. This would imply the operation of weapons which could neutralize the anti-missile defense system. Other countries could see this as a Russian advantage since they do not have that kind of defense mechanism. And these can produce the feeling of a bigger Russian military domain.
However, Putin opposed to this perspective, the idea of balance, the preservation of parity. “Then, don´t complain”, was the expression used by the ruler head of Kremlin, marking in this way that he will not accept complaints about it.
By José Espinoza