Is the west on the verge of a new cold war with Russia, as the Economist correspondent Edward Lucas suggests in his new book of the same title? Hardly, says Stephen Kotkin, a Russia specialist at Princeton University, writing in the new issue of Prospect.
Kotkin suggests we all calm down a little. Just as the chaos and impoverishment under Yeltsin’s rule in the 1990s hardly amounted to a liberal democracy, despite the wishful thinking of western analysts, the authoritarian tendencies at home and muscle-flexing abroad that characterised Putin’s reign do not make contemporary Russia an international menace that demands confrontation.
Kotkin also detects in new fears about Russia’s totalitarian turn traces of America’s long-established religiously inspired concern about the west “losing” Russia. For Americans, he writes, Russia has for over 100 years been seen as, in some way, America’s “dark double,” a colossal Eurasian riposte to the civilised, democratic values of the west.
Thanks to Stephen Kotkin for an illuminating article on a much discussed topic there days.
I am sorry to inject a bit of confusion, but, actually, both Kotkin and Edward Lucas (an ex-colleague many years ago in the BBC World Service) could be right in whether there is a new cold war or not. It depends on perceptions. And the central players in the new cold war may not be America and Russia.
The last cold war which ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union was more real because it involved a prolonged confrontation between two different power blocs, each with a clear ideology and social system. The West, which saw Soviet communism as a threat, engaged in containment until the USSR collapsed. China’s break from the Soviet Union and strategic defection to the West muddied the waters, but the divisions between the two main power blocs remained intact.
Today, if neoconservatives, and those who buy their rhetoric, are to be believed, radical Islam has replaced communism as the main threat to Western liberal democracies. It is a greatly mistaken view, because one billion Muslims spread all over the world cannot be seen as a single bloc. There are so many shades and interpretations of Islam. Followers of the Islamic faith live in different cultures. And there is no line of demarcation between Western liberalism and Islam as such.
Despite the difference between ‘then’ and ‘now’, President George W Bush is engaged in what is widely seen, rightly or wrongly, in the Muslim world and elsewhere as containment (of Islam).
Many in the West and the Muslim world see each other as a threat. Steps taken by states in the name of combating the threat – immigration, visa restrictions, collection of private information, personal profiling, stop and search policing of immigrants – can easily be seen as part of a containment policy.
These are features of a new cold war, or shall we say ‘war on terror’. Today’s ‘new cold war’, if there is one, is a product more of perceptions, less of reality. And Russia, if anything, is an ally of the West. I await the arrival of the next President in the White House in the hope there will be less strident rhetoric and ignorance.
Deepak Tripathi
There is no new “Cold War” between Russia and the U.S. The Economist predicted that Western capital would not flow to Russia because Putin threw one of the most ambitious oligarchs into jail. It has flowed richly instead. A handful of democracy wallas bemoan the loss of democracy in Russia, but really feel pain also for their reduced tax supported grants. The U.S. has never historically paid much attention to anywhere not in its hemisphere, and little of that. Uniquely among vast countries, it has weak neighbors north and south and vast stretches of blue water east and west. The result is little interest in distant neighbors, including Russia. Until WW I, Americans fought mainly for land against weak opponents. Roosevelt knew the U.S. had to fight Hitler, but until Pearl Harbor he could not lead the U.S. to war. The USSR’s massive superiority in arms (except nuclear weapons) kept the U.S. engaged around the globe out of fear. Its collapse saw the U.S.arms budget instantly halved until Bush tragically went to war in Iraq, possibly for the most venal of reasons but certainly not because he thought he could bring democracy to Iraq. That was a much belated additional excuse for the war after no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.The U.S. has never crusaded for democracy except on paper. It has consistently tried to seek its national interests, covered by the historically tried and true professions of idealism. That is the human model, not just the American one. Americans as a polity do not want to make Russia democratic but a few academics and activists do, and they bemoan the loss of their incomes and influence. Putin has been on the whole very good for Russia and rightly pursues its national interest, which rightly includes a measure of respect and influence on the international scene. Democracy took hundreds of years to arise in
the U.K., the mother of Parliaments, so it is not surprising that it should take a long time in countries just coming out of bitter repression in Europe and elsewhere. bob baker
A cursory glance of media opinion at the time seems to suggest that most western commentators thought putin would be yelstin’s puppet…i expect them to be wrong again
the key problem in russian politics isn’t centralisation but the lack of credible parties…