Ever since the Russian invasion of democratic Georgia, pundits and politicians have been writing extensively about the “new Cold War” that is emerging between Russia and the West.
Though it is clear that the dynamics of the Russia-West relationship has changed dramatically, it has already moved beyond a Cold War. In fact, by launching a full military invasion of democratic, NATO-allied Georgia, Russia has transformed the “cold war” of words to a full-out assault on Western institutions and freedoms.
In the aftermath of World War II, the Big 3 — the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union — divided up Europe and Germany into spheres of influence with tragic consequences for the Eastern half of Europe and Germany. In the late 1940s, the division of Europe hardened with the Soviet government undermining and destroying any independent political movement in the Eastern half of Europe.
Although the Soviets used extensive force to subdue opposition and destroy the remnants of the military units caught behind in its territory, it displayed severe apprehension of using any military power directly against Western European or American territory.
The first flashpoint of the nascent Cold War was in 1948 when the Soviet army blockaded allied entry to Berlin. Though the military was at high alert, no bullets were fired, much less did the Soviet army advance into Western territory.
In 1949, NATO was formed as a military treaty unifying the West against the Russian military threat. Over the course of the remaining four decades of the Cold War, the Soviet leaders rightfully feared launching an open military attack on Western Europe or the United States. In fact, it was the lack of direct military engagement between the West and the Soviet Union that defined the Cold War era.
Looking back over the past few years of Russian actions, it was clear that Putin had already launched a Cold War against Western institutions. Russia’s role in actively undermining a democratic election in Ukraine, launching cyber-warfare against Estonia and launching gas wars against Western countries were clearly the opening salvos of the new Cold War.
Sadly, there was no Churchillian figure who grand eloquently warned the West of an iron curtain descending on Europe, or perhaps, more aptly, an oil-fused one. While NATO was clearly formed to counter the Soviet military threat, at the most recent conference in Bucharest, NATO members bent over backwards showing deference to Russian sensibilities and accepting its right to have a veto over Ukraine and Georgia’s foreign policy.
Perhaps it was the tepid response by the West to Putin’s cold war tactics against his neighbors that emboldened the Russia Prime Minister to accelerate its Cold War tactics to outright military invasion of a European democratic country.
Georgia may still be a largely unknown country to many in the West, as are Estonia, Latvia and Ukraine, but the great success since the fall of the Berlin Wall has been the expansion of freedom and democracy to new areas in Europe, just as the post-World War II years did so to countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal.
Russia’s military invasion of Georgia is a direct challenge to this expansion. It also clearly goes beyond any actions against the West undertaken by the Soviet Union during the decades of the Cold War.
