Cold War II. It Won't Be Your Grandpa's Cold War

 

Cold War II seems to be upon us. The bad news is that it has come on extremely rapidly. The good news - there isn't any. 

Mary Elise Sarotte is an expert on my Cold War, Cold War I, and a professor at John Hopkins University. She considers Cold War II by far the more dangerous.

That 20th-century conflict was characterized by avoidance of direct Western-Russian engagement, producing instead proxy wars in other countries. President Vladimir Putin’s brazenness calls this practice into question. If he is reckless enough to pulverize Ukrainian civilians and risk popular rebellion, he may be reckless enough to provoke NATO.

Russia’s vastly larger military — along with its stifled domestic political opposition, free press and free speech — means that there will be few checks on Mr. Putin’s carnage beyond what the outgunned Ukrainians can bring to bear. And if his conduct in Chechnya — a territory Russia mauled militarily in the 1990s — is any example, a potential occupation of Ukraine will be bloody and brutal, with additional spillover risks.

Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, Washington and Moscow still control more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads — more than enough to devastate most life on earth. The missiles that deliver those warheads have the ability, through their immense speed and reach, to shrink the world into a very small place.

Another problem is how quickly we have spun back up to Cold War-like hostility. During the old Cold War, which lasted from the late 1940s until around 1989, settled patterns of non-engagement had time to evolve.

...The longevity of the Cold War also gave both sides time and incentive to negotiate arms control agreements. Washington and its allies concluded a host of detailed treaties with Moscow that, while flawed, at least provided predictability and monitoring — all while serving to build a long-term relationship in managing nuclear danger.

In recent years, however, both sides rashly shed many of these accords, seeing them as outdated and inconveniently constraining. The New START Treaty is now the only restraint on the number and types of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons — and it expires in 2026, with little hope of renewal. Already gone are the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which George W. Bush abrogated in 2002, and the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, from which Mr. Putin “suspended” Russian participation in 2007. And, most relevant to today’s crisis, in 2019 President Donald Trump abrogated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty over U.S. claims of Russian violations and Chinese arms buildup (though China was not a party to the treaty).

...Even if Moscow can be brought back to the negotiating table, which seems highly unlikely for the foreseeable future, it would take years of painstaking talks to resurrect these treaties. Their disappearance is especially grievous in light of other losses — of military-to-military communication, expelled embassy and consulate staff members — and the development of new forms of weapons, such as hypersonic missiles and cyberwarfare. Two of the world’s largest military powers are now functioning in near-total isolation from each other, which is a danger to everyone.

Becoming a historian requires the ability to develop a sense of periodization. I sense a period ending. I am now deeply afraid that Mr. Putin’s recklessness may cause the years between the Cold War and the Covid-19 pandemic to seem a halcyon period to future historians, compared with what came after. I fear we may find ourselves missing the old Cold War.