It Is Absurd to Talk of a New Cold War

In the current conflict with Russia, onlookers are seeing a return of the Cold War. However, the current situation has little to do with the bipolar world order in which the USA and Soviet Union reigned.

We should be wary about talking about a new Cold War. The old one was bad enough. In any case, since history doesn’t repeat itself, the new one will be very different. Moreover, the talk of a new Cold War should also be avoided because it conveys a false sense of security and an excessive trust in crisis management and rationality.

The Cold War began during the final stage of World War II, when the victors fought over who should inherit the German Reich. Even the planning of the occupation revealed that they didn’t trust each other, however. Germany became both the focal point of the conflict and the first prize, which Stalin denied the West and the West denied Stalin.

The Cold War was global, nuclear and bipolar. Without the USA’s nuclear monopoly in the first years there would have been no extended deterrence, no German Republic, no NATO and no European Economic Community. Instead, the Soviet Empire would reach as far as the Atlantic.

The New Rules of Strategic Engagement

But in the double crisis of Berlin in 1958/61 and Cuba in 1962, Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, wanted to use his newly-won nuclear power in order to change the geographic distribution of power in Europe and the world. The nuclear confrontations ended in mutual deterrence among the super powers but also in new rules of strategic engagement. Fear and reason forced a “rough balance” and nuclear peace, as well as a war avoidance consortium.

Strategic (i.e. nuclear) arms monitoring has become a continuation of the strategy that attempts to restrict the number of owners of nuclear weapons by other means. After all, nuclear weapons are terrible equalizers. Common interests made it possible for the super powers to predict each other.

All together, an artificial system of arms control arose, comprising of a three-decade long abstinence from missile defense from 1973 onward. Ultimately, the Cold War was a [means of] management and protection of the status quo. This, and only this, made it possible for the historical crisis to end without war once the Soviets’ power fell apart, at first in Berlin and then everywhere.

The stability of the Cold War carried a high price. But it embraced rules and discretion too — implicit relinquishment of power and sovereignty, from which we can learn something for the management and overcoming of the present crisis.