Sweden in the 80-ies. The obligatory military service. As officer recruits we had trainings , both in assault and strategic theory. The enemy was always expected from East, either he came in frontal attack or pinched in from north and south. That time, the Cold War, a struggle for balance between two different ideologies, but basically with identical missions: Make the World global. We really feared the Soviet Union. If you fear the illusion of an enemy, he can be imagined according to the personal imagination of each, but he will never be humanized, never similar us. I suppose the most of us imagined the Soviets as hard, brutal, insensible killer machines, brainwashed to commit mass slaughter. In a certain sense, such illusion are not strange to have for those who had read about the war crimes committed by the Red Army during the invasion of Germany.

Even if I personally visited the Soviet Union once, in Leningrad later renamed to Saint Petersburg, I do not have any memories of Russians from that time. We were a group of friends and had full time to take care of ourselves and keep ourselves alive from the cruel coldness instead of mingling with Russians.

Many years later, I met with people from Russia and from other former Soviet Republics. Nice, normal people, most of them very friendly and social. When I told them how afraid we had been of them under the Cold War, they looked wide-eyed on me and replied: - How can it be? We were afraid of you!

How should fear and war be possible without propaganda and provocations? And a blind faith on the version of the own Nation? The seeds of all this, where do they come from? Normally from far away, from some interested to invoice on a conflict.

No smoke without fire and somewhere in the true objective history, you will always find reasons for both sides in a conflict. If you want to take position, do not do it blindfolded, then your role may just be as the useful idiot. Go to the objective history first! If you must do your duty for your nation, you will confront “enemies” who just mirror your own situation. The peculiar thing with conflicts are that most times the actors are very similar. Gladiator against gladiator. Fueled with fear, from fake and exaggerations, they will fight.