The Cold War is back

The new arms race is deadly because Russia is so fragile

Fraser Nelson

14 July 2007

/article_images/articledir_88/44218/1_listing.png

Fraser Nelson says that Putin’s bellicose strategy — spending his oil millions on a deadly new arsenal — is more dangerous than the actions of his Cold War predecessors because Russia is so vulnerable to economic and social collapse

A little over a week ago, Vladimir Putin tested a weapon deadlier than anything developed by the Soviet Union. A missile launched from a submarine in the White Sea entered the stratosphere and returned precisely on target 3,800 miles away in the Russian Far East — the other side of the world. Such tests are meant to send messages. The target could just have easily been Tehran, Los Angeles or London. It signalled that Russia means business. After a hiatus of two decades, the arms race is back.

While Britain has been fixated with the Middle East and Iraq, it has paid insufficient attention to the increasingly aggressive noises emanating from the Kremlin. Mr Putin was never very enthusiastic about Russia becoming a part of the West — but now, flush with gas and oil revenues, he has left its orbit altogether. The Russian military is once again treating Nato as the glavny protivnik, the primary enemy, and drawing up plans for a nuclear war. And Putin’s explicit aim is to challenge, and then counter, America’s world dominance.