Spending too much time following details of the expanding global war can be depressing. To avoid this undesirable attitude, I try to stay as close as possible to spiritual realities by acknowledging our beneficent Creator. Life makes little sense to me otherwise. I often wonder how atheists and other unbelievers handle it, especially when catastrophic events are imminent. Do they bother to ask “Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going?”

I’ve watched Russia begin another war in order to steal another sovereign nation and enslave its people. Among the 193 nations of the world today, Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are the most aggressive war-starters and serial killers. A central reason for their common disregard for human rights and dignity of others is their rejection of Judeo-Christian mores. There are also hundreds of other nations that don’t properly respect their neighbor’s rights to be left alone. Most of these are dictatorships, theocracies, or communist. These belligerent “others” often join the major troublemakers for profit or protection; many to be found in Africa and the Middle East. Ukraine is just the latest victim in this growing conflict. We need to know our enemies better.

We should remember that Russia (as Soviet Union, under Lenin and Stalin) used starvation as a weapon of genocide. The best book on the Ukrainian Holodomor is Harvest of Sorrow, the first full history of one of the most horrendous human tragedies of the 20th century.

“Lenin’s revolution, the resulting civil war and famines, and the domestic repression that he led against dissidents and scapegoats directly led to the deaths of over 8 million citizens of the Russian Empire, many by starvation, torture, or summary execution.”

In 1932 and 1933, millions of Ukrainians were killed in the Holodomor, a man-made famine engineered by the Soviet government of Joseph Stalin. “The primary victims of the Holodomor (literally “death inflicted by starvation”) were rural farmers and villagers, who made up roughly 80 percent of Ukraine’s population in the 1930s. An estimated 14.5 million--more than the total number of deaths for all countries in World War I resulted by the Holodomor.”

“How long will you keep killing people?” asked Lady Astor of Stalin in 1931.

Replied Stalin, “The process would continue as long as was necessary” to establish a communist society.

We can’t understand the depth of inequity within these types of communist-Jihadist- dictatorships until we learn their histories. But we do not teach this bloody history in American schools, keeping our citizens ignorant of the facts. Therefore, most Americans know little or nothing about the mindset of our common enemies today, like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Masoud Pezeshkian, and Kim Jong Un. Their modus operandi has not changed for centuries. All humans outside their jurisdiction are treated the same way. We know what Russia (Soviet Union) did to Ukraine. China continues the same murderous way with more than a million Uyghur Muslims arbitrarily enslaved in its Xinjiang region, (following Mao Zedong’s murdered millions). In Iran (or other Muslim nations) any contact with Christians who have converted from Islam, or caught supporting converts may be sent to prison or executed. In North Korea, the slightest complaint about government will send you and all family members into underground prisons, possibly for life. Recently, in Syria, calls went out for anyone who could open the electronic door locks on Bashar al-Assad’s underground torture prisons, where children were borne and have never seen daylight. These are a few of the alternatives available in anti-democratic governments. Why aren’t these facts taught in American schools?

Most immediately, Vladimir Putin is about to experience spontaneous human combustion over the disaster he has inflicted on Russia with the Ukrainian war, a collapsing economic system (40 percent inflation, 12 percent interest rate), incompetent military leadership, naval losses, astronomic loss of military equipment, and 700,000 losses in soldiers; all this in a 3-year war he expected to win in a week. Putin’s extreme paranoia for personal survival could trigger Armageddon during any Trump transition confusion.

Putin repeatedly threatens to nuke NATO and the West. It’s past time to remind him and his comrades that the U.S., France, and the UK are nuclear-armed NATO nations, with other NATO members, including Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey, participating in nuclear-sharing arrangements. These countries have dual-capable aircraft that can deliver US nuclear weapons.

Our enemies should ponder the fact that GPS coordinates for Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, and Pyongyang are well known to their Free World nuclear opponents.