Is a Cold War between the East and the West on the verge of repeating itself?

Yes

3 of 14

by Aldo Bonincontro

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In the years following the fall of Soviet Union and the other Communist regimes in East Europe, Russia has laboriously become a capitalist Country, despite its deep economic crisis, due to the great difficulty of creating a modern and efficient productive system and producing profits, jobs and social stability.
Still today, this objective is still very far; unemployment is very high, salaries and safety in workplaces are very scarce, local mafia controls important sectors of the economy, corruption is widespread among politicians and entrepreneurs, democracy is still very scarce under Putin's regime (already about 250 journalists "mysteriously" killed, to date).
In foreign policy, Russia had started friendly and intense economic and political relations with Western Countries but this friendship is now passing through a period of deep crisis; not anymore for ideological reasons but for political and economic contrasts and I personally think a new Cold War between Western Countries and Russia is really approaching.

Surely, the first negative fact in the relation between US and Russia was the 2nd US war in Iraq, to which Russia was very contrary; another contemporary fact was the civil war in Chechenia, the Caucasian Russian province where an independentist guerrilla and terrorism is always very active, despite many years of bloody Russian repression and war crimes against local people.

Then, the tension between Russia and Ukraine, the latter, always destabilized by a deep political contrast between pro-Russia and pro-US parties.
US and Europe have frequently accused Russia of destabilizing Ukraine, also with the recent raise of Russian natural gas prices, from which Ukraine and many European Countries are partially dependent. Russia, in fact, is one of the main fossil fuels producers of the world and this production is strictly controlled by the Government by means of the Gazprom company.
So, most of Western Europe doesn't feel very happy for this dependence and, for not to provoke reprisals from Russia, Europe never adopts concrete diplomatic actions against human rights violations in Chechenia and in Russia.

Another friction cause is the technical and political support Russia gives Iran for its nuclear program, strongly suspected by the West to have nuclear weapons as the main objective of the Iranian regime.
Just Iranian Prime Minister Ahmadinejad has already claimed many times to be favourable to Israel destruction and he doesn't mitigate its hostility to the US and, generally, to the whole Western culture and civilization; so, we can understand why US and EU can't be indifferent to a Russian policy too close to Iran, one of their worst enemies.

Also the recent spies war between West and Russia still doesn't cease and the worrying case of Litvinienko's killing in London with plutonium in his food (Litvinienko was a former Russian spy, more recently, become a strong opponent of Putin's policy) is only an example.
UK, in fact, can't surely tolerate that Russian government still kills its opponents, even spreading radioactive contaminants within English territory.

Also the former satellite-Countries of the Soviet Union, now become part of the EU and even of NATO, blow on the fire of a new Cold War; they fear a new Russian hostility and expansionism against them and especially Poland and the three Baltic Republics are the most diffident toward Russia, worried by the tension between Russia and Ukraine and, the present year, by that with Georgia that has produced a Russian invasion of this Country with the pretext of defending the Russian minority in the Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and Ossetia from the Government's repression.
All Western Countries have condemned this armed intervention and only a patient French mediation has produced a fragile cease-fire in that area (August 2008).
It's the first time that Russia sends its troops to invade a bordering Country since 1991 and this is a very bad precedent.

The last critical point is the great Russian support to Serbia against the self-proclaimed independence of Kosovo (February 17th, 2008).
Western Countries have recognized the new little Republic, previously run by UN forces since 1999, when a massive NATO aviation bombardment obliged Serbia to end its new "ethnical policy" in Kosovo.
Russia, instead, doesn't accept this situation and, today, it justifies its intervention in Georgia to "free" Ossetia and Abkhazia just with the precedent of Kosovo, detached from Serbia by NATO armed intervention.

So, NATO and US are now thinking to face Russian foreign policy, more and more "arrogant", installing nuclear missiles in Poland; also this new step should be avoided, in my opinion, because it's only an hostile act (with all the nuclear weapons still stored in the arsenals of all the world!) that can only make more and more real a new Cold War.

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