by Harvey Morris | 22 Mar 2022 | Decoders, Educators' Catalog, Ukraine, World
Three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has revived dormant fears of a catastrophic nuclear war. Russian missile launchers, capable of firing nuclear warheads, in Red Square in Moscow, Russia, 9 May 2016 (AP...
The world’s optimists thought the era of Mutually Assured Destruction was over with the collapse of the Soviet Union, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has stirred fears of nuclear war – anxieties that many young people around the world have never experienced. Harvey Morris takes a horrific topic – what he calls “a suicide pact between the superpowers” – and examines the irony of the nuclear age: that to ensure there would be no nuclear war, the United States and the Soviet Union both had to have weapons of mass destruction. He offers a highly readable introduction to the harsh realities of the nuclear age – realities that all generations are compelled to live with.
Exercise: Ask your students to debate the resolution: “The best way to ensure there will never be nuclear war is to ensure adversaries have recourse to nuclear weapons.”
by Julian Nundy | 7 Mar 2022 | Asia, Decoders, Educators' Catalog, Europe, Human Rights, Politics, Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the fall of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe. What was the USSR, and what does Putin really want? Russian communist party supporters commemorate the death anniversary of the founder of the former Soviet Union, Vladimir...
It’s next to impossible to fathom why Russia might have invaded Ukraine without understanding the Soviet Union and Vladimir Putin’s attachment to the notion of an empire led by Moscow. Few are better placed than Julian Nundy, whose links to Ukraine go back more than half a century, to explain the complex relationship between Russia and its western neighbor. In his decoder, Nundy takes the reader from the upheaval of the Russian revolution to the collapse of the USSR and, with it, Russia’s loss of buffer states – for Putin, an intolerable affront.
Exercise: Ask your students to choose a revolution – if their country had a revolution, then that should be their focus – and to assess the good that may have come out of it, and the bad.
by Nelson Graves | 25 Feb 2022 | Europe, Politics, Ukraine, World
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens the global order that has spared us world war. In an era of nuclear weapons, our very survival could be at risk. A body of a dead soldier lies on the ground next to Ukrainian Army soldiers in Kyiv, Ukraine, 25 February 2022. (AP...
by Birgit Kaspar and Alistair Lyon | 21 Feb 2022 | Africa, Europe, Human Rights, Politics
It’s been 60 years since Algeria won freedom. The nation’s former ruler, France, is still struggling with its colonial legacy, national identity and values. Abdelkrim Sid, son of a “harki” who fought for France in Algeria, stands in a derelict...
by Natasha Comeau | 14 Feb 2022 | Decoders, Europe, Politics, Ukraine
Neighbors Russia and Ukraine share a common history that looms over Europe’s deepest security crisis in decades. In this image released by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on 2 February 2022, Russian soldiers attend military training at the Yurginsky...
