Welcome to the New Cold War

The ideology of the Putin regime is hardly less toxic and is perhaps more incendiary than communist totalitarianism.

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“A nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought.” That and a promise to “ensure predictability” by “a Strategic Stability Dialogue in the near future” were the only things that Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin agreed on strongly enough to put in writing—in a 140-word joint statement, which was the sole tangible yield of the duo’s June 16 summit in Geneva, Switzerland.

Nuclear missiles and bombs are again the sum total of the relations between Russia and the United States. We are back to the pre-Gorbachev era. The “this is not the Cold-War” mantra is wearing thin. It is time to admit: It is a Cold War.

True, the enemy of the democratic West is not communist totalitarianism fueled by Marxist millennialism. Yet the ideology of the Putin regime is hardly less toxic and perhaps more incendiary. The normative gap between the liberal democracies and the system that Putin assiduously forged is already almost as deep as during the Cold War. 

Contrary to the prevailing view, Putin’s domestic regime is not merely a corrupt autocracy founded on propaganda, political manipulation, and repression. These descriptions amount to dangerous oversimplification because they vastly underestimate Putin’s ability to bend to his will millions of his compatriots.

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  1. Kurt Von Fuchs

    Yes, hindsight is 2020 and in hindsight it seems as though much of the blood and treasure spilled during the so-called Cold War was a large waste of time. I continue to believe that the biggest problem we have in America is that we don't believe our own story. If we really believe, as I do, that are Republican democracy and loosely regulated capitalism are the best forms of government and commerce we can just wait everyone else out but maintain strength through our economy and our military

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    Narwhal

    During the first Cold War against the Soviets some Americans felt an attraction and allegiance to the Soviet style of government. For our second go around some Americans seem be attracted to Putin’s Russia for other reasons, more to do with culture and attitudes. Interesting.

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    Rochejaquelein

    Excellent piece. China may be a much more serious threat across the board (and serious country in general) but at least for now Xi's regime is a much more conventional and predictable player. Russia is far more likely to cause a serious systemic shock out of its irrationality or spite. China is the new mob boss edging in, but Russia is the aging biker obsessed with respect who doesn't care about consequences and is openly threatening us with a pool cue.

    Two key points the piece touches on but deserve some further reinforcement.

    First, the horrors of WWII deeply scarred the Soviet leadership, producing dangerous paranoia and an ever more militaristic state but also making men who had seen the results of war pull back from conflicts. The current generation of siloviki grew up with all of the ludicrous propaganda about the glories of the Great Patriotic War without any counterbalancing knowledge (other than Afghanistan, a Chechen war they pretend never happened and the occasional murdering of Syrians, Georgians and Ukrainians from a safe distance) and the Putinist state is doing the same to the younger generations. Old school 20th century jinogism is very much alive in Muscovite hearts, as proven by the popular reaction to the Donbass aggression.

    Second, the Soviets officially and occasionally even individually were internationalists, however strong the layer of primitive blood and soil Russian nationalism was beneath. Soviets were told America was a hellhole of crime and oppression, but one created by a small group of capitalists. And while I'd argue that the Soviets *did* in practice frequently deny Western contributions to WWII, there wasn't a long standing real animosity against America to draw on. The current Muscovite regime under Putin draws liberally from the Soviet past but has no trace of the old internationalism -- its ideology is an an attempt to reconstitute late Czarist Imperial Russian nationalism, with some vague "Eurasianist" nods to acknowledge the population isn't all Orthodox Rus. That means its far easier to whip the populace into a frenzy against outsiders, and unlike during the Cold War Russian historical grievances are focused on the United States. Putin, his circle, and many even educated Russians of that generation have embraced a delusional and self-pitying narrative in which the Soviet Union could have transitioned instantly from being a Communist evil empire to a thriving, happy and unified Commonwealth of Independent But Ruled Happily From Moscow States but for the wicked West and NATO. In their moral weakness they blame everyone but themselves, but blame the United States of America above all. Never underestimate the real and sincere animosity Russians, even nice Russians with a flat in London, harbor towards America.

    The Russian state's current and future rulers have an irrational hatred of America and Western democracies and a love of violence and chaos. The current Russian State embodies and modernizes many of the historical vices and flaws of the Czarist period, from xenophobia to fear of free discussion, and carries forward few of the historical redeeming characteristics of greater Russian civilization and culture. The ballets are sterile, the novels are trickling to a stop, the athletes are drug cheats and the scientific breakthroughs are in tech to sell to China and hacking tools to foment organized crime. The Church, as Kiev and Constantinople have realized, is a corrupt arm of the bureaucracy. There is nothing worth saving and nothing worth engaging.

    China is a rising power with a poisonous ideology and a (somewhat justified but manipulated) sense of historical justice. China is a threat. Russia, for this generation, is a psychologically crippled and unpredictable enemy of the West. Russia is a cancer.

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      Nathan

      Well, this aged pretty well.

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        Rochejaquelein

        unless of course, You know a certain Québécois, and more about this stuff that I ever will. In which case, apologies.

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        Rochejaquelein

        I assure you, I wish it didn’t. Please donate to humanitarian organizations. Write your congressmen. Throw rocks at the Russian consulate and go to a Ukrainian Orthodox or Uniate Church to pray.

        Resolve to cleanse the Arepublicsn party of the scum that were and or are fellow travellkers and useful idiots for z putin’s murder of Ukrainian children.

        Glory and honor to Ukraine.

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    2. anonvet

      I think this is a great comment (thank you for taking the time to say what I was too lazy to write in my own comment...lol) and would only point out that the issue of the Russian Church vis Constantinople is a bit more complicated than you present it. Like the general issue of needing to look prior to the Soviet Union to understand Russia politically, one needs to look even further back to get a full picture of the current dispute with Constantinople.

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        Rochejaquelein

        That's fair enough. I am aware with out fully understanding that there are some very real issues of theology to governance to history that almost certainly explain the bulk of the tensions between the patriarchates other than the fondness of Moscow's clerics for wearing designer watches and following the orders of the State, so it was perhaps a bit of a cheap shot.

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      Logical

      Well said AT.

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  4. anonvet

    It's not that I find this analysis wrong, just incomplete. To put relations with Russia solely in a Cold War context ignores the "complicated relationship" that Russia has had with the West for literally centuries. The notion that Russia would immediately embrace western style democracy after the fall of the Soviet Union was optimistic at best. If we don't go back further than the Soviet era in our understanding and analysis of where Russia is today and why, I think we fundamentally misunderstand the situation.

    In short, Putin appeals to something in the Russian people that predates the Soviet era by quite a long time.

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    Kevin Johnson

    Fantastic piece.

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  6. R. James

    We should be far more worried about China.

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    Victor Clairmont

    While Russia has an evil dictator at its head, it is not the once powerful USSR that could challenge the uSA in every sphere.

    It’s gdp is 1.7 trillion, ours is over twenty trillion. It has a navy that is debilitated and rotting, our is revamped and still creating new ships far ahead of them. Their nuclear weapons are aging and ours will be going through updating. It is why Putin is relying on cyber espionage to spread his power, while hoping to still move into the Baltic’s.

    This doesn’t mean Putin’s work of radicalizing the Russian people is not to be ignored. Germany itself went through radicalization before WWII, and Japan also. But currently what makes a Russia and her oligarchs a real threat is it’s ties to China. If war (God forbid) were to break out between the USA and China over Taiwan, having Russia in the mix would make things murky. Of course, hopefully we would have allies in the mix too.

    But NATO is still there for Russia. We will need SEATO for China.

    It is true that a Cold War is going. But it is a far stronger one with China at the moment who has its tendrils across the world that the former USSR had, where the current Russia does not.

    But thank you for the update on an evil man, and how he is trying and continuing to warp the minds of a generation.

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      Narwhal

      One of our greatest achievements in the Cold War against the Soviet Union was exploiting and increasing the Sino-Soviet split.

      The PRC is now in the driver’s seat of that relationship and Putin doesn’t seem to be open to any US effort to oppose the PRC.

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    Chris L

    For all of Russia's posturing, they are doing so because they know they are stuck with a losing hand, are becoming desperate. This is of course bad news for everyone - bad for them because they end up regressing to essentially a larger version of North Korea (including the military deification, revisionist history, farcical jingoism, and increased isolation with collapsing economy), bad for us because their military capabilities are not insignificant, and bad for their neighbors because no one likes a crackhead hanging around their front porch.

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  9. William

    Great article. Informative, but disturbing.

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