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Tuesday 2 December 2008

The Cold War is back

The new arms race is deadly because Russia is so fragile

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

To Britain, all this sounds almost quaintly absurd. The recent debate about renewing Trident reckoned without a nuclear confrontation with Russia. Yet this is precisely what Mr Putin’s troops are being trained to expect. The view in London is fundamentally different from the view in Warsaw, which is watching the Kremlin’s assertiveness with alarm. In Moscow much of the Cold War mindset is returning (minus the communist ideology) — whereby Nato is the enemy, and perceived as a growing threat.

The irony, of course, is that by many of its own members, Nato is seen increasingly as an anachronism. It played no role after the attacks of 11 September 2001 — other than a routine invocation of Article 5 — and its peacekeeping efforts in Afghanistan have been a testimony only to the reluctance of its members to share an even burden or agree a clear set of priorities. The phrase ‘coalition of the willing’ became popular in Washington partly because expectations of Nato solidarity are so low.

In this context of slow decline the admission of former Warsaw Pact countries into the club is seen simply as an act of friendship. Yet within the paranoid confines of the Kremlin such gestures are seen as new and sinister manifestations of Western imperialism. When Mr Putin is called upon to explain his extraordinary arms build-up, he points to the expansion of Nato.

The architect of the new Russian military is Sergei Ivanov, for six years defence secretary, now promoted to Deputy Prime Minister and favourite to succeed Mr Putin next March. ‘In the mid-1990s, we counted on the fact that the collapse of the Soviet Union would lead to the end of the Cold War — that Nato would not move to the east,’ he said in a recent interview. ‘But now we see everyone deceived us.’

More articles from: Fraser Nelson | this section

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