The Cold War Starts Today

Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, said before the summit in Warsaw that NATO doesn’t desire a cold war with Russia, but in reality, everything is exactly the opposite. Especially since the Cold War, beginning with Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech, was never completely put to rest; there were simply different phases when it was possible to think that the world had really become wiser. But now there’s nothing left for the NATO heads of state gathered in the Polish capital to do but officially formalize yet another spike in the political and military confrontation for those whose emergence they worked so hard. What is this if not the Cold War in an active phase?

Such a revelation will hardly be heard in public. But behind tightly closed doors, where there’s no one in front of whom to feel shy, everything will of course be called by its proper name. Although what good are words if it’s well-known as it is: NATO battalions are already at our borders, U.S. missile defense launch sites are in Poland and Romania (the only thing left is to load cruise missiles into the launch containers instead of anti-ballistic missiles), while the rhetoric is as if it were copied from the era of McCarthyism.

Whatever else our Western partners undertake will come to light sooner or later. But there’s enough evidence to finally discard illusions: today Russia and the countries gathered under the NATO flag are in a state of war, a war that is fortunately, at present, cold. And the outcome is directly dependent on the specific political and military decisions that will be made at the North Atlantic Alliance summit in Warsaw: how soon will it come to armed confrontation? From the look of things, we need not expect anything good. That much was confirmed by Alexander Vershbow, deputy secretary general of NATO, in a Washington Post interview. “There is a much greater sense that we’re dealing with a long-term strategic competition with Russia,” he said. Yet it’s necessary to understand that a sense at such an executive level is practically a statement of fact.

Why Do They Dislike Us So?

While the Soviet Union existed, everything was clear: it was the opposition of two systems. But the fact of the matter is that the West was never fond not only of today’s Russia but even of czarist Russia, even though it was Russian weaponry that saved Europe time and again — first from Napoleon, then in the battles of World War I, and finally in 1945. Today Poland, emboldened under the wing of the U.S., slings mud at us for all it’s worth, but what would have become of the Poles if Hitler had won? Or what would have become of proud France, which during the German occupation was considered either a liquor store or perhaps one big brothel? It’s not necessarily the case that the British would have been able to hide out on their island either if Moscow hadn’t stood its ground.

And what have we done that was so bad, for example, to America, which today is at the forefront of global Russophobia? It used to be that Communism, so it was thought, was vigorously sweeping the planet. But today the only one left from the Red Scare, which prompted Harry Truman to demonstrate the capacity of the nuclear bomb on Japan, is Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of an altogether domestic party that doesn’t even come close to having access to the red button.

Moreover, unlike the Americans, the Russians have never in any way laid claim to global exceptionalism and have long since given up forcing anyone to live by the laws of Marxism-Leninism. But the Russians don’t want to try on the American way of life anymore, so maybe that’s the reason for the Russophobia? They tried it in the '90s; somehow it didn’t catch on. Moscow even tried to take American imperialism (in the sense of building a stars-and-stripes empire) in stride, indeed, right up to the moment that the Americans literally sat on our head with their military bases.

There must be at least some kind of geopolitical buffer zone, if only out of a sense of self-preservation, because Russia is nevertheless a powerful nuclear power. But it seems that in the minds of the American leadership, there’s something stronger than common sense. And when it’s activated, something comes to light like the letters by State Department employees to Barack Obama with a proposal to “strike the Russians in Syria.”

It’s thought that behind this message is presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who owing to her gender has a very shallow understanding of war in general and in particular of nuclear war with Russia, an understanding which before Hillary Clinton and the American establishment, was, apparently, entirely blamed on the fact that Russia doesn’t want to turn into a political colony of the United States. Even Europe, in the past a cradle of civilization, has come to terms with playing a subordinate role in tandem with the Americans, while Russia (a country of serfs, a country of masters) — just imagine — is being obstinate. The Russian soul, you see…

In general, America doesn’t like the Russian position at all. “The foundation of any strategy in Europe,” said Philip Breedlove, former NATO supreme allied commander for Europe, in Foreign Affairs magazine, “must be the recognition that Russia poses an enduring existential threat to the United States, its allies, and the international order.” And he put forward, in his view, a crushing argument: “Russia is determined to once again become a global power—an ambition it has demonstrated by, for example, conducting confrontational mock attacks on U.S. forces, as Russian warplanes did to the USS Donald Cook in the Baltic Sea in April, and resuming Cold War–era strategic bomber flights along the U.S. coastline.” But here arises a perfectly legitimate question, several even. Why can the Americans enter our internal seas but we can’t enter theirs? Why can they fly near our borders but we can’t fly near theirs? Why can the U.S. be a global power but Russia can’t? And why does a single country define the parameters of the world order?

Since Breedlove is a civil engineer by training, he may not have known that existentialism is something that lies beyond the mind. And in Europe’s history there’s already been a figure in epaulettes — albeit those of a lance-corporal — whose paranoid phobias cost the Old World dearly. Yet at the same time, he also had a reputation as an outspoken Russophobe, just like NATO’s current leadership from across the ocean. What can you do? Unfortunately, Breedlove isn’t the only one over there.

Hence a very simple conclusion follows. If everything is so far gone that you can’t get to the bottom of it without psychoanalysis, words will no longer help. Some other kinds of arguments are necessary so they leave Russia alone and let us live our own way.

Retaliatory Actions

Moscow realizes, of course, that the NATO summit in Warsaw can be considered historic, not just because it’s the last great transatlantic gathering with Obama’s participation as U.S. president. It’s all much more serious.

What’s it to us, so it would seem, that Obama is a lame duck and doesn’t decide anything anymore…? But on the other hand, relations with the West are so strained that an urgent reset is required immediately, yet there’s no one to talk to. Neither Angela Merkel nor Francois Hollande, much less David Cameron who conjured up Brexit in his own head, can decide anything. The whole leadership of the crumbling European Union lies prostrate as well, and NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg doesn’t determine anything either. By and large, he’s a talking head — a very active talking head, but absolutely not an independent one. And meanwhile the forces and implements of war on both sides of the line of confrontation continue to build up, rapidly approaching critical mass. But there’s no one to regulate this potentially explosive process. It’s hard even to imagine who today on behalf of the West could sit at the negotiating table with Vladimir Putin.

In this situation, a situation developing by inertia launched from Washington while our European partners’ sensory organs and sometimes even their brains are temporarily switched off due to technical difficulties, Moscow has no choice but to use sign language at the international level, that is, highlight its attitude toward what’s happening with unequivocal actions.

For example, at the last Defense Ministry board meeting, in which the development plan for the Western Military District was discussed in the context of the environment on the borders with NATO, it was clearly stated: Moscow considers everything that’s happening today on our Western borders a destabilizing factor to which it is impossible not to react in a corresponding way, and it is already taking retaliatory measures of strategic deterrence. As Sergei Shoigu, head of the Russian Defense Ministry, has stated, this year the Western Military District will get more than 10,000 contract soldiers and more than 2,000 units of new, modernized military equipment. And literally the other day the industry delivered to the troops yet another Iskander-M missile complex, equipped with cruise and ballistic missiles.

You will recall that the range of such missiles is 500 km (about 311 miles), and with existing air defense systems, they can’t be caught. In addition, it’s entirely possible (it will be apparent from the results of the Alliance’s summit in Warsaw) that Iskanders might appear in the Kaliningrad region, which is a stone’s throw from the European capitals. And if you consider that in our western sector, one tank and two combined-arms armies at various stages of readiness have already been created, Europe’s leadership has a lot to think about. Perhaps now even without “intellectual support” from the U.S., the EU will realize that you won’t take Russia with your bare hands, and in any case, the response will be withering.

During a recent working visit to Finland, Putin addressed a special message to those European countries that are still vacillating as to whether they should join NATO or remain traditionally neutral and not spoil relations with Russia. Finnish President Sauli Niinistö was told, as if it were a confession to a priest, that today Russian troops are 1,500 km (or about 932 miles) from the Russian-Finnish border, but if Finland nevertheless joins NATO, the distance will be reduced. As they say, it’s nothing personal; we are acting solely on the basis of national security. “NATO’s military infrastructure is moving toward our borders,” the Russian president clarified. “This is an obvious threat that no one wants to notice. No one wants to engage in dialogue with us about this problem.”

One has to admit that there most likely won’t be any constructive dialogue so long as Europe is politically subordinate and controlled from Washington through NATO. That’s why no one even hoped the Alliance’s Warsaw summit, whose decision was predictable, would at least somehow defuse the situation or offer anything besides a cold war.