Cold War is Back to Stay

The New Cold War, which got rolling in February with the U.S.-backed coup in Kiev of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich, is being given an institutional imprimatur later this week at a NATO meeting in Wales. The Atlantic Alliance is expected to announce the creation of a 4,000-troop rapid reaction force for the former Warsaw Pact nations of Eastern Europe. The tagline trotted out to justify the move is that Russia cannot be allowed to "change the borders of a sovereign European country by force." Both Estonian prime minister Taavi Roivas and German chancellor Angela Merkel have uttered this already.

Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Steven Erlanger, in "NATO Weighs Rapid Response Force for Eastern Europe," summarize the solemnizing of the New Cold War to be proclaimed at the NATO summit:

Numerous leaders of NATO countries have said that any hope of achieving the “strategic partnership” with Russia envisioned as long ago as the 1990 NATO summit was finished because of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine. Nevertheless, NATO is being careful not to violate the NATO-Russia Founding Act, the 1997 agreement with Moscow under which NATO pledged not to permanently base substantial forces in Eastern Europe. 

The compromise will come from a regular rotation of troops and the positioning of equipment and supplies, including weapons, ammunition and fuel, in Eastern Europe. Mr. Rasmussen said it would also require command and control and logistics experts, “so this force can travel light but strike hard if needed.” 

Russia’s “aggressive behavior,” he said, will mean “a more visible NATO presence in the East for as long as required.” NATO for now appears unwilling to formally abandon the NATO-Russia Council established in 2002, though the alliance suspended “cooperation” with Russia in May. 

The moves, combined with more military exercises and enhanced air patrols over the Baltic States, Poland and Romania are intended to deter Russia and reassure newer members.

“This is a credibility summit,” said Robin Niblett, director of Chatham House, a policy research institute based in London. “When we say we’re able to do something, we must have the political will and ability to do it.” The summit meeting will also be measured, he said, on how “governments use it to wake up and sensitize their populations to the fact that we live in an increasingly dangerous world with real threats to our prosperity and security, and that more money must be spent.”

The political leaders of the West will have their work cut out in convincing a population still reeling from the meltdown of the global economy six-years ago that it is time to spend more money on weapons to fight another Cold War.

But Germany, powerhouse of Europe, appears ready to shoot herself in the foot. Merkel, according to Neil MacFarquhar in "As Ukraine Talks Resume, Putin and Poroshenko Trade Barbs," has committed her country to more anti-Russian economic sanctions:

Addressing Germany’s Parliament, Chancellor Angela Merkel used stark terms to describe the fighting. “It is becoming ever clearer that, from the very start, this was not a conflict within Ukraine, but a conflict between Russia and Ukraine,” she said. 

Earlier, at a news conference, she addressed the question of new sanctions, noting of course that they will have an impact on German companies that export to the Russian market. 

“I have to say there is also an impact when you are allowed to move borders in Europe and attack other countries with your troops,” she said. “Accepting Russia’s behavior is not an option. And therefore it was necessary to prepare further sanctions.”

A trade war is looming, one that Europe, greatly dependent on Russian energy supplies, cannot win. I suppose the thinking is that further sanctions can be crafted that continue to nibble away without endangering the EU's relationship with Gazprom.

But there are signs that Putin's reservoirs of patience with the West are rapidly diminishing. This is from Andrew Roth's "Russia to Revise Military Doctrine in Response to NATO":

On Tuesday morning, an aide to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia played down but did not deny a report that Mr. Putin had told José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, “if I want, I will take Kiev in two weeks.” 

The comments came as Mr. Barroso asked Mr. Putin about Russian troops in Ukraine. Mr. Putin, who has repeatedly denied having any troops there, then turned “to threats,” Mr. Barroso told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. 

Yuri V. Ushakov, an aide to Mr. Putin, said Mr. Barroso’s recounting of a private conversation was “inappropriate.” 

“Whether these words were said or not, in my viewpoint, this quote given is taken out of context and it had absolutely different sense,” Mr. Ushakov said. 

On a nationally televised call-in show in April, Mr. Putin said, “When the infrastructure of a military bloc approaches our borders, we have grounds for certain apprehensions and questions.”

“We wanted to support the residents of Crimea, but we also followed certain logic: If we don’t do anything, Ukraine will be drawn into NATO sometime in the future,” Mr. Putin said, adding that “NATO ships will dock in Sevastopol, the city of Russia’s naval glory.”

Meanwhile the coup-makers in Kiev continue to shriek "The Russians are coming!" This is from the Hirschfeld Davis and Erlanger story:

The sense of urgency was highlighted by events in Ukraine on Monday, as President Petro O. Poroshenko accused Russia of military aggression to alter the battlefield. “Direct, unconcealed aggression has been launched against Ukraine from a neighboring country,” he said, according to the presidential website. “It radically changes the situation in the conflict area.” 

Ukraine’s defense minister, Valeriy Heletey, was more emphatic. “A great war has arrived at our doorstep, the likes of which Europe has not seen since World War II,” he said in a Facebook post. And Col. Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for the National Security and Defense Council, said Monday that Ukrainian forces had withdrawn from the airport near Luhansk in the face of a Russian Army tank battalion, and that seven Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the last 24 hours. Russia regularly denies sending troops into eastern Ukraine.

But what is going on here is that the junta military, a combination of the Ukrainian Army and various oligarch-sponsored militias, is finally giving up the ghost after a summer of absorbing blows from the Novorossiya self-defense forces. The only way to obscure this defeat and keep it from turning into a rout is to scream that it is all the Russians' fault and hope the West will intervene.

This is where we are now. And there is no indication of any let-up by the U.S., NATO or Europe. We are in a New Cold War. Russia knows this of course.

I still believe that time is on Moscow's side. Kiev will collapse. Western governments -- U.S., U.K., France, et al. -- have no popular mandate. Elections for the European Parliament proved that; and elections this fall in the United States will prove it again. Russia is governing with the consent of its people. That's a big difference.