The war in Ukraine has been raging for many months now when it first began with Russia’s initiation of a “special military operation” on Feb. 24, 2022.

Initially, it looked like Russia would steamroll the entire country and the war would be over in weeks. The conflict ended up going a different way, however, with the combat raging for months because of U.S. and other foreign aid. As of Sept. 30, Russia has only annexed 18% of Ukraine’s pre-war territory.

This has become a proxy war between the United States of America and the Russian Federation. Nord Stream, a Russian pipeline, was recently damaged. Russia claims America did it, and the U.S. claims Russia sabotaged the pipeline to pin the blame on them in a new misinformation campaign.

In the 1980s, the world hung in the balance just as it does now. At one point, there were false alarms of the U.S. launching nukes in Russian defense systems, but the operator was speculative and made the decision to not push the button. Then, cooler heads prevailed. The question is, are cooler heads a thing of the past? What we do know is that in the game of nuclear warfare, the only winning strategy is not to play.