A New Cold War

Before the recent events in Georgia there was also some scuffle between the U.S. and Russia concerning stationing American anti-missile sites in Uzbekistan. Is there a new cold war in development or had it never really gone away even with the break-up of the Soviet Union, just a little less obvious?

The Russian air force had also started flying 'patrols' that pushed the boundaries of their air space.

I fear President Prime Minister Putin has been flexing Russia's muscles for the past couple of years. I don't think this ex-KGB man likes what he sees as the marginalisation of Russia as ex-Soviet countries look more and more to the West than to their old Easter Bloc alliances.

The sad thing is that with Russia's recent economic successes they were quite capable of taking a central place in world affairs without resorting to such aggresive posturing.

I don't think the rivalry between the US & Russia went away completely.

We as a country, though, seemed to settle into the view that a post-Soviet Russia was a warm, snuggly Russia, even though the American news program 60 Minutes did a story on the spooky, gradual rise of pro-Soviet nationalism in Russia just a few months ago. Hell, an ex-singer of mine, who's Russian, told me last year that things were getting a bit "old school" last time she visited Moscow.
It also overwhelmingly worked to the Russians' advantage that the moron in the White House was fundamentally convinced, from personal relations with Putin, that the Russian Federation would never act like the old Soviet Union, and therefore didn't require as much watching as in the past. That Dubya's own Secretary of State (whose expertise on Russia & the Soviet Union is highlighted in her OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE BIO) was also caught as off-guard about the Georgian invasion as they all were with 9/11 shows that foreign relations has never been their strong suit.

That the US recently concluded a treaty with Poland to base short-range missles on Polish territory after years of courting former Soviet Bloc nations, and that Dubya has been pushing, the last few years, for the mythical "missle defense shield" aimed at preventing Soviet/Russian nuclear attack only ensures future misadventures as these instances only provoke Russian national paranoia.

Gotta say, though, it was surprising that the Russians hadn't flexed their old imperial muscles before the latest incident. With their economically weak 20th Century adversary militarily tied down in a new Vietnam, and with a huge nuclear arsenal to keep the world at bay, how soon before .....

I agree that the so-called "cold war" never went away. However, I am hearing some interesting talk that the United States may have given Georgia some encouragement to meddle in South Ossetia. Russia isn't the only aggressor here.

semyaza wrote:

I agree that the so-called "cold war" never went away. However, I am hearing some interesting talk that the United States may have given Georgia some encouragement to meddle in South Ossetia. Russia isn't the only aggressor here.

Georgia has been looking towards joining Europe and NATO. America has been a strong supporter of that, and has encouraged Georgia to maintain its unity, and prevent South Ossetia and Abkhazia from breaking away.

Unfortunately it seems the Georgian leadership decided to do that by means of military action, despite Russia having warned them that it would protect Russian citizens in South Ossetia (though as an added level of complexity, it would seem it has been suspiciously easy for South Ossetians to gain Russian nationality recently)

Georgian President Saakashvili should have known from history that no one provokes the bear with impunity.

Things just went up a notch.

http://news.aol.com/article/us-poland-sign-missile-defense-deal/65479