Ahmadinejad institutes a crash program to build nuclear weapons and launch missiles and satellites. Putin adopts a Russian strategy of violently extending its reach into the sovereign territory of lands to which it has no right, withholding gas and oil supplies and blackmailing countries in Europe that might want to resist by threatening nuclear war. This is in essence a repeat of Hitler’s Sudetenland annexation of Czechoslovakia in September 1938. Hitler concocted an uprising along the German-Czech border as a pretext for invading Czechoslovakia to supposedly protect the lives of the German-speaking Czechs who lived there. Great Britain and Western Europe adopted a policy of “wait and see” – substituting endless talks with NAZI Germany for action.
 
Wanting to outdo the audacity of menacing pre-war NAZI belligerence, President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, says that his mission in life is to complete Adolf Hitler’s final solution, to kill all Jews and then wipe the State of Israel from the face of the earth. To do this he intends, with the assistance of China and Russia, to use the nuclear weapons that he is developing, over the tepid objections of the United Nations. He says that he welcomes nuclear war even if it obliterates Iran, so long as in the exchange all the Jews are killed. The problem is not the technology of Iran’s scientists, but the insanity of its national leadership.

Seventy years after the world endured a similar demoniac, we still don’t seem to understand how dangerous this type of aggression is to world stability. Russia’s invasion of Georgia and its threatened unleashing of nuclear war on Poland and cutting off of Europe’s energy supplies should be enough to shake the Western powers out of their “lazy days of summer.” Add to this Iran’s efforts to copy Russia’s energy and nuclear war strategy of blackmailing the civilized world and all leaders should be fully on the alert. Russia’s aggression cannot be tolerated and Iran simply cannot be permitted to develop nuclear weapons or ICBMs. 

For those who are blind to Russia’s intentions, they should look no further than the fact that Russia is now reportedly placing short-range missiles in South Ossetia, possibly trained on the Georgian capital of Tbilisi and is adding more equipment and ground troops to strengthen its stranglehold there.

This is a time for all leaders – of nations democratic and otherwise – to impede this threat. Russia and Iran must be stopped in their tracks. The civilized world cannot accept these forms of aggression or belligerence. The violent takeover or destruction of the sovereign territory of another state is simply not to be condoned or ignored. And no country should saber-rattle with the threat of nuclear weapons. The detonation of a nuclear device over a small country like Israel or a larger nation like Poland would result in a significant spillover effect, contaminating surrounding nations in the Middle East and Europe for a century or more. Are the nations in the path of such fallout so suicidal they will simply turn a blind eye to Russia’s overreaching or to Iran’s growing ability to bring down their very ability to live?

With the United Nations standing by while Russia growls like a hungry bear and Iran develops nuclear weapons, these very nations, along with all nations devoted to peaceful coexistence, must stand up and show their strength together and resist – or civilization as we know it will bear the horrid cost.