World War 3 would mean the end of the human race, says American political activist Noam Chomsky, and Russia’s former leader Mikhail Gorbachev is stating that the situation is dramatic. Chomsky and Gorbachev agree that the attitude of the West towards Russia is dangerously escalating. As reported by the Chicago Tribune on Nov. 8, while speaking at the Berlin Wall ceremony on Saturday, Gorbachev said that "Euphoria and triumphalism went to the heads of Western leaders.”

Astonishingly, American world-famous academic, linguist, philosopher and political commentator Noam Chomsky agrees with the former Russian leader. In a recent interview with RT’s Sophie Shevardnadze, Chomsky points out that Russia and the West slipped back into what appears to be a Cold War situation all over again because – as U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel worded it -- the U.S. needs to deal with “Russia’s army on NATO’s doorstep.”

That doorstep used to be the Berlin Wall dividing East and West Germany. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, NATO expanded to East Germany and over the next decade, it reached Kosovo and Serbia. NATO, which was originally designed to protect Western Europe from Russia after World War II, is according to Chomsky, a U.S.-run intervention force.

During his speech on Saturday at the Berlin Wall, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev accused the West and in particular the United States for not fulfilling their promises after 1989. Gorbachev opposed both the U.S.-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and the U.S.-led Iraq War in 2003. President Bush, Bush number one, had convinced him in a verbal agreement that NATO would not expand one inch to the east. But as soon as the agreement was made, NATO expanded to East Germany. When Gorbachev expressed his anger about NATO inching closer to Russia, he was informed by President Bush and his Secretary of State, James Baker, that they had only made a verbal agreement and that there was nothing on paper. Under President Clinton, NATO expanded even further towards Russia.

On Nov. 9, 1989, Gorbachev heralded the end of the Cold War at the Berlin Wall. This time, the now 83-year-old leader warned of a new Cold War and even more dire consequences.

"The world is on the brink of a new Cold War. Some say that it has already begun. And yet, while the situation is dramatic, we do not see the main international body, the U.N. Security Council, playing any role or taking any concrete action."

The United Nations Security Council was created after World War II and is supposed to maintain world peace. However, its inaction has resulted in the West taking advantage of the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 by claiming monopoly leadership and domination of the world.

“Gorbachev said the West had made mistakes that upset Russia with the enlargement of NATO, with its actions in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and Syria and with plans for a missile defense system.”

When Obama ran for president, he promised change, fewer troops in other countries, and complete global nuclear disarmament. “Well, now there are plans to spend one trillion dollars on nuclear arms in the next 30 years,” said Sophie Shevardnadze in her interview with Chomsky. Instead of less interference in other countries, the international relationships are now defined by “red lines”, “no options off the table”, “lethal aid”, and “troops on the ground.”

Obama’s justification for spending more money on nuclear arms came with an announcement that Russia’s nuclear weapons had surpassed the United States. For 83-year-old Gorbachev or 85-year-old Chomsky, Obama’s words and actions are too much of a reminder of the previous Cold War and the dangers of coming again too close to World War 3 and a nuclear war.

Gorbachev calls the dangers of a looming World War 3 a “dramatic situation.” Chomsky describes it as “threatening.”

“We’ve come awfully close, several times since: the missile crisis in 1962 was described by Kennedy’s close associate, historian Arthur Schlesinger, as ‘the most dangerous moment in human history’, and he was quite right, we came very close to a nuclear war. There have been many cases, not that serious, but pretty close, where human intervention with a few-minutes choice has prevented a nuclear war. You can’t guarantee that’s going to continue. It may not be a high probability each time, but when you play a game like that, with low probability risks of disaster over and over again, you’re going to lose. And now, especially in the crisis over Ukraine, and so-called missile-defense systems near the borders of Russia, it’s a threatening situation.”