Ending the second Cold War between Russia and the West

George Orwell, the author of “Animal Farm”, the satire on how a dictatorship can slowly but steadily evolve in a democratic society, and “1984”, a novel about three dystopian dictatorships always at war with each other, was the first person to use the phrase “Cold War” in a 1945 newspaper article, written just after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He argued that “the surface of the earth is being parceled off into three great empires, each self-contained and cut off from contact with the outer world, and each ruled, under one disguise or another, by a self-elected oligarchy. He counted the US and Western Europe as one, the Soviet Union as the second and China as the third. He concluded that, “the atomic bomb is likely to put an end to large-scale wars at the cost of prolonging indefinitely a peace that is no peace”.

I think Orwell got it nearly right- or so it seems as a new Cold War has erupted between Europe and Russia,  and between the West and China as China spars with the West over Taiwan, the South China Sea and its islands, and now, almost unbelievably, a Cold War seems in the making between the US and Europe.

To me, as a European, the idea of a new Cold War with Russia, and one with the US and China today- is nonsense on stilts. Even more, the original one. Don’t we see that we are in danger of being encircled by hostile forces, and we have no one but ourselves to blame?

George Kennan, the former US ambassador to Moscow and the famed author of a Foreign Affairs article on how to contain the Soviet Union, always insisted, as most contemporary historians belatedly now do, that Stalin had no intention of rolling his tanks into Western Europe. Robert Legvold summarizes Kennan’s views in his interesting book, ‘Cold War’, “The threat the Soviet Union posed was political, a threat accentuated by these countries’ vulnerability to Soviet subversion because of their economic frailty and political instability – a threat requiring a political and economic response, not a military one”. In 1948 Kennan wrote, as he observed the creation of NATO, “Why did they [Western leaders] wish to divert attention from a thoroughly justified and promising program of economic recovery by emphasizing a danger which did not actually exist, but which might be brought into existence by too much discussion of the military balance and by the ostentatious stimulation of military rivalry?”

It was Kennan, backed by people like Robert McNamara, (who was the Secretary of Defence under both Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, and a committed “bomber” in the Vietnam war) who told President Bill Clinton that he was expanding NATO in defiance of many promises to President Mikhail Gorbachev, made by both US and European leaders, and that this was the worst of all possible mistakes, the worst in the history of twentieth century diplomacy.

Those who say that these promises were never made haven’t done their homework. The US ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, who was in the room when US Secretary of State James Baker promised the Soviet Union’s President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would only expand in Eastern Germany, says these pro NATO-expansion voices are misinformed or just lying.

Now NATO’s membership has expanded up to Russia’s border and NATO troops are deployed ever closer- which is what the war in Ukraine is fundamentally all about.

We forget that Russia supported the US in Afghanistan and let American war materials be carried on its railways. We forget that Putin was the first to call President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attack.  We forget that Putin seriously considered asking NATO for membership, and if encouraged would probably gone ahead with that. We forget that both Gorbachev and President Vladimir Putin at one time visualized Russia becoming part of the European Union. We forget that Russia returned to being a Christian-inspired nation that also gave religious freedom to Islam and others. We forget the progress made under Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Dmitri Medvedev, and Vladimir Putin in reducing the armory of nuclear arms. With the Americans they have reduced stockpiles from 70,000 to 16,300. This ended the US-Russian race between offensive and defensive strategic nuclear programs. Russia with the US has eliminated whole categories of weapons. They have worked together securing nuclear weapons and materials in Russia. They placed limits on large standing armies in Europe while introducing transparency and mutual trust into their operations. (This has crumbled since the Russian invasion of  Ukraine.) We forget when Medvedev was president he published in 2008 a well thought out, multi-dimensional, plan to enhance European security. Legvold says, “The US and Europe brushed it aside”.  

In Ukraine the US and the EU self-defeatingly walked away from a compromise arrangement they had worked out with President Victor Yanukovych that could have avoided further political upheaval.

Rodrick Braithwaite, the former UK ambassador to Russia, wrote in his book, “For a decade Westerners lectured Moscow where its real interests lay, and expected it to follow where the West led. They rarely listened to what the Russians said in response. Russian concerns seemed unimportant, misguided or unacceptable”.

Is a new Cold War called for? Definitely not. Just some wise Western leadership. Moscow has given the West an opening. President Donald Trump appears ready to do a deal with Putin ending the war in Ukraine in return to normalcy in their day-to-day relationship. The rest of the NATO members will be left out in the geo-political wilderness.

Copyright: Jonathan Power.