New Cold War - Part 2

2007-08-20T04:27:00.000+01:00

Back in June I wrote about the prospect of a new Cold War after the revelation that Russia was threatening to target European cities because of America's insistence of its placing components to its missile defence shield in the Czech Republic and Poland which would include installations of radar and missile batteries which Russia sees as a threat to its security. Relations with Russia have continued to deteriorate with the on-going saga of the polonium 210 poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and Putin's refusal to extradite Andrei Lugovoi who the British Government suspect is responsible for the murder.

Recently things have gotten worse. Not to the point where we are in a new Cold War but certainly much closer. Even the BBC Russian Service has been taken off air. An already tense situation between Georgia and Russia has become even more tense with reports that Russian fighter jets attacked a village near Tbilisi earlier this month. Luckily no one was hurt. Was this meant as a message to the other eastern European states as Mr Merabishvili, the Georgian interior minister suggested? Possibly but if so, Russia has also been flexing its muscles in other ways, both diplomatically and militarily. A couple of days ago we heard that Russia was to resume long-range strategic bomber flights on a "permanent" basis, for the first time in 15 years. There were hints of something like this happening back in July when Russian bombers forced the RAF to scramble two Tornado fighters when they came dangerously close to British airspace. Russian Bombers also buzzed a US military base in Guam this month.

America's imperial dream of Full Spectrum Dominance has suffered another blow with news that Russia and China are taking part in military exercises together. It's not the first time they have done participated in such joint exercises, so that alone wouldn't worry Washington too much. Much more worrisome for the neocons is the strength of this alliance and its rapid growth. China's opposition to America's missile defence shield is well known.

The six-member Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) has already been dubbed by pro-Kremlin newspapers as an "anti-Nato" alliance and a "Warsaw Pact 2". This is where it gets interesting. The SCO comprises of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyztan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. That's a lot of energy-producing states and a good chunk of central Asia. As well as these member states, are a number of candidate states including: Pakistan, India, Mongolia and, more interestingly, Iran. Obviously Iran's membership is something Washington is desperately trying to prevent but American influence in the region is waning with its antagonism of Russia and the debacle in Iraq. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, recently attended the summit as guest of honour. If the SCO is to evolve into a counter-balance to NATO then an attack on one member would be seen as an attack on all.

Iran is not yet a full member of the SCO and China may well try to delay Iran's membership because of its economic relationship with the West. But there are obvious advantages to granting Iran membership too. With NATO's constant eastward expansion (contrary to its promises to Russia at the end of the last Cold War), it was only a matter of time before an organisation formed to halt this advance. Russia seems to be taking full advantage of this situation and this time it's in a much stronger position than it was in the last days of the USSR.

Tags: New Cold War, Russia, Missile Shield, US Politics, SCO, Central Asia, NATO

The New Cold War

2007-06-05T20:18:00.000+01:00

Remember "Protect and Survive", the ridiculous government information pack that told us how we might survive a nuclear attack by doing stuff like painting our windows white? I wonder if it's going to be reissued. It's not time to start diving under tables yet but one of the legacies of the Bush and Blair era seems to be a return to the Cold War. That's quite an achievement after a well over a decade of thawing relationships with Russia. This comes, of course, with the news that President Putin of Russia has threatened to target European cities with nuclear weapons if America goes ahead with its missile defence shield which would include installations of radar and missile batteries in the Czech Republic and Poland.

The relationship between the USA and Russia has been deteriorating for a while now, largely because of America's insistence on continuing with this lunatic program, which Russia obviously sees as a threat, but also for other reasons. Indeed, things have got so bad that Condoleezza Rice, a supposed expert on the Cold War, had to deny last month that a new Cold War was taking place and then two weeks later accuse Russia of having a Cold War mentality. This was before Putin's recent announcement, if Russian missiles are going to be aimed at us it will be hard to dismiss the idea that we are returning to the bad old days before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Bush's continued insistence that the proposed missile shield is not against Russia and is merely a defence against North Korean or Iranian attacks is not believed in Russia as neither country has the capacity to successfully target the USA. Russia's argument against this seems quite reasonable. After all, how would the USA react if missiles were placed in a neighbouring country with a string of assurances that it was defence against some other state? Using Bush's logic, all Castro and Khrushchev would have needed to do in 1962 is insist that the missiles in Cuba were a precaution against a possible attack from Canada. Tony Blair was always enthusiastic about the missile shield and lobbied for parts of to be installed in Britain making the country a potential target.

At the heart of all this is the neocon credo of "Full Spectrum Dominance", an unrealistic plan for America to have total control of land, sea, air and space. This is what Tony Blair approvingly refers to as a "unipolar world". To most other people it's simply an empire and is already pretty much scuppered as a plan. America can only get away with this kind of dominance if compliant states let it and Russia has now drawn a line in the sand. Obviously this will cause the Bush administration to go into one of its periodic episodes of chest-thumping histrionics but in reality there is little it can do other than either back down or resign itself to this new reality.

If this is a new Cold War, there are some differences from the last one. The Soviet Union was bankrupted by the arms race which America started. The new Russia, on the other hand, has some of the world's largest reserves of natural gas, a commodity desperately needed in Europe and we have already seen how Russia can use this resource as a weapon. This will make it somewhat harder for European countries to fall into line with every insane command from the White House. The stark reality is Europe needs to maintain good relations with Russia or face a severe energy crisis.

That's not to say that there aren't legitimate disputes with Russia that need resolving. Among these is the fate of Kosovo which might be solvable, and the trail of contamination left across London from the polonium 210 poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko which probably won't be solved. For its part, Russia has genuine security concerns. Not only is it angry over the so-called defence shield, it is also angry about the broken promises concerning NATO expansion into eastern Europe.

What we seem to be presented with is two choices, neither of which are particularly appealing. The first is the unipolar world Blair is so enthusiastic about where America is the only power on the planet and we all ally ourselves to America's benevolent protection and defer any disputes over to its jurisdiction secure in the knowledge that it will always act fairly and impartially as we have seen so often. The other option is the Bipolar world where another power (Russia in this case) acts as a counter-balance to American hegemony resulting in America's allies having nuclear weapons pointed at them as we experienced in the last Cold War.

There is a third option, and I'm not sure if this is any more appealing than the other two. That is a multi-polar word where there are several superpowers that can keep each other in check. Obviously this still means that someone or other will still be pointing missiles at us but it might allow us a bit more independence from the de facto occupation of so much of the world (particularly Europe) by American forces. This would mean that Europe would have to stand up on its own two feet and refuse to be a pawn in a game between America and Russia. I think this is eventually what we may end up with as China also flexes its muscles. The downside is that this all sounds very 1984 with three large blocks permanently at war with just the alliances changing from time to time. There don't seem to be many other alternatives at present. Nuclear weapons are not going to be un invented, some states will always be more powerful than others and alliances will always be formed and broken. Also, the prospect of further conflicts is very real the more scarce the World's resources get.

How ironic that the destruction of Iraq over fictitious WMD and the sabre rattling with Iran over potential WMD has led to a serious threat of real WMD raining down on Europe's cities as the world's last superpower insists on pointing its WMD at Russia. And what a coincidence that this current crisis flared up shortly after Britain decided to renew its Trident WMD program. No doubt we will now be told that with Russian missiles aimed at London, renewing Trident was the correct decision and the original cause for this new arms race (America's provocation of Russia) will be glossed over.

The Nether-World

New Cold War - Part 2

The New Cold War