... today than ever before in history” (p. 109).
So wrote the American expert on Russia Stephen F. Cohen—who passed away on 18 September 2020 in New York—in his last published book [
1
]. For over a dozen years, Cohen had been warning of a “new Cold War,” no longer between two capitalist and communist blocs, but between the U.S. and the post-communist Russia. A number of other prominent scholars and institutions, such as the left-leaning Noam Chomsky [
2
], and the right-leaning Council of ...
... other side accept defeat. Underlying this is a belief (which appears to be a fateful illusion, more present among American scholars and experts) that war and achieving victory in it have again become possible, with the stakes much lower than during the Cold War, and the prospect of total annihilation itself is enough to deter the weaker party, Russia, from using its nuclear weapons on a massive scale. This is the principal danger these days.
Misperceptions – or lack of clear understanding - between ...
... restrictions, many opportunities still remain for cooperation in a wide range of areas. The social capital of old ties is still working. However, seeing this as an upward trend would be stretching it. The situation is totally different even from the Cold War, when both the Soviet Union and the US were in confrontation. There was a high mutual interest on both sides then. Restrictions on contact and cooperation were extremely severe. But the trend was different, and reversed into a rapid and exponential ...
... of NATO enlargement. And so from the early 2010s, the Kremlin started charting a course that was clearly at odds with its earlier policies of Western integration.
With the Russian military intervention in Ukraine in 2014, the breakout from the post-Cold War, Western-dominated order was complete. The takeover of Crimea and support for separatism in Donbass did not presage a policy of reconquering Eastern Europe, as many in the West feared, but it clearly set Ukraine and other former Soviet republics ...
... encirclement; the exit from multilateral arms control agreements; the trade wars and escalation of sanctions; and of course the aggressive and explicit character of official discourse. What kind of picture does emerge?
What is unfolding today is not the New Cold War. The New Cold War was during the Reagan years, in the 1980s, as critically elaborated most notably by Noam Chomsky and Fred Halliday in their published books of that decade. So, what is happening currently has to be the New, New Cold War, or ...
... events. In fact, the year 2018 drew a line in the international arena under what can be called the post-Soviet period. In other words, it is a period when the international system remained within the framework (albeit transforming) established during the Cold War-era confrontation.
Why did it happen now? Were there not enough events in the past century that knocked down the old system and brought new motivations into international practice? There certainly were many such events, but the past twelve months ...
... hours ago said exactly the opposite. This is not the way emerging superpowers are treated. Trump, for instance, can’t afford to do the same with China. He treats Beijing with more respect.
As an aside, the concept of superpowers dates back to the Cold War and is outdated. Even if we think of the United States or even China as superpowers today. Russia certainly isn’t one, because it lacks resources. And even the United States is losing its status.
What I see unfolding is something else ...
... relationship—the only one to have featured strategic arms control—is no longer central to global strategic stability. While Sino-American relations are not nearly as dominant in terms of the rest of the world as U.S.-Soviet relations were during the Cold War. Thus twentieth-century methods of dealing with the issue of strategic stability, such as arms control, are insufficient.
The U.S.-Russia strategic relationship—the only one to have featured strategic arms control—is no longer central to ...
... dialogue between presidents is required. If the upcoming summit lays the groundwork for such a dialogue, it will have served a useful purpose.
Since 2014, Russia and the US have been embroiled in a conflict comparable to, yet very different from, the Cold War; one that is as, or even more, dangerous than its twentieth-century predecessor. In February 2018, US forces killed a number of Russian private contractors advancing on positions held by US allies at Deir-ez-Zor. In April, the US and its allies ...
How likely is a new arms race to begin? Are the latest actions of Russia and the U.S. going to lead to a new Cold War or will they become a starting point of the negotiations on a new strategic arms reduction treaty?
On April 6, 2018 the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) hosted a webinar devoted to Russia – US security relations. Richard Weitz,...
