http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/140912-cold-war-geography-russia-ukraine-sanctions/
Is the Cold War Back?
Despite a revival of the term, the political and physical landscape of the
"Cold War" has changed significantly since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
A Ukrainian soldier stands on a military tank near the eastern Ukrainian
town of Rozspyne on August 25, 2014.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ROMAN PILIPEY, EPA
Eve Conant
for National Geographic
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 12, 2014
The term "Cold War" has been resurrected in recent months as the conflict
in Ukraine has ebbed and flowed. Acease-fire agreement has stilled
full-scale fighting for now, but the peace is fragile and the conflict far
from settled.
Share
Share on emailEmail
More »
Western nations and Russia have been hitting each other with sanctions, and
Moscow has upped the ante by saying it may block the airspace over its vast
territory, all nine time zones of it.
And in another modern echo of the era that ushered in the Berlin Wall,
Ukraine is planning a 1,000-mile-long wall along its land border with
Russia. The start of construction was announced, in a sign of the times, by
Ukraine's security forces on their Facebook page.
Much, clearly, has changed since the height of the Cold War, a phrase used
to describe the 40-odd years after World War II, when the Soviet Union and
its Eastern allies and the U.S. and its Western allies were locked in
competition over ideological and military influence across the globe.
The phrase itself was popularized in 1947 when journalist Walter Lippmann
published a series of articles called "The Cold War," although the term had
already been used by others, including author George Orwell. He wrote that
a country with nuclear weapons would be one "which was at once
unconquerable and in a permanent state of 'cold war' with its neighbors."
Both Russia and the U.S. maintain a significant nuclear capability, which
remains a rising source of tension as relations fray. Meanwhile, modern
forms of intimidation like cyber-warfare are also taking hold.
Pro-Russian rebels speak with a local woman at Izvaryne, a border crossing
point in eastern Ukraine, in August 2014.
PHOTOGRAPH BY SERGEI GRITS, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Different Stakes, Smaller Forces
"You have to put cold water on the faddish idea of a 'second Cold War,'"
says Mark Kramer, director of Cold War studies and a senior fellow at
Harvard University's Davis Center. "This in fact is not a global military
and ideological struggle. It is just a regional dispute, and the stakes are
entirely different."
Russia, without the vast military might of the Soviet Union, has
significantly smaller military forces than the U.S. does, in terms of both
manpower and budget. It lost key bases in several East European countries,
all of which are now members of NATO.
Russia also lacks a key element of the Cold War battle: the Marxist
ideology that helped bring countries across the globe under its influence,
even as late as the 1980s in the cases of Nicaragua and Ethiopia. Russia is
now integrated into the European economy, and with its vast natural
resources is Europe's largest supplier of natural gas, oil, and coal.
"Russia is still by far the world's largest country, but it's not anywhere
near as large as what the Soviet Union was," says Kramer, who is also
co-author of Imposing, Maintaining, and Tearing Open the Iron Curtain: The
Cold War and East-Central Europe, 1945-1990. NATO has expanded farther
eastward since its rival alliance of Soviet republics and satellite
states—the Warsaw Pact—disbanded along with the Soviet Union when its 15
republics split into independent states in 1991.
Says Kramer: "A lot of repercussions of the breakup of the Soviet Union
have figured very directly in the current crisis."
The conflict in Ukraine is one of those repercussions. "Russia also lost
some important military and transportation facilities in 1991 that have
figured directly in the current conflict, such as basing the headquarters
of Russia's Black Sea Fleet [in Ukraine]," explains Kramer.
That base, at Sevastopol in Crimea, was part of independent Ukraine after
1991, and until this year had to be leased by Russia. "The thousands of
Russian soldiers who were stationed in Sevastopol under the leasing
arrangement spearheaded Russia's annexation of Crimea in March 2014 when
Putin acted in the immediate wake of Ukraine's Maidan revolution," he says.
Ukrainian soldiers ride on an armored personnel carrier in eastern Ukraine
in August 2014.
PHOTOGRAPH BY SERGEI GRITS, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Cold War 2.0
The rhetoric and tensions, however, are reminiscent enough of decades past
that Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama have had to address the return of the
phrase, even if both argue against its use.
"The nature of today's conflict is different," says Vasily Kashin, an
analyst with the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and
Technologies, a defense industry think tank.
"It's more like the conflict between the 19th-century great powers," a time
of imperial struggle over British versus Russian supremacy in Central Asia.
"It's more about the attempts of rising powers like China and Russia to
resist the dominant influence of the United States. I think we are at the
beginning of a difficult period in our relations," Kashin says.
Yet Russian leaders have described sanctions as possibly being beneficial,
saying for example, that sanctions against China after thegovernment's
crackdown at Tiananmen Square actually strengthened China in the long term.
Just as Europe slapped new sanctions on Russia this week, President Putin
was in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, to meet with other leaders of
what some say could become an eastern answer to NATO, the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization, a Eurasian political and military organization
including Russia, China, and the Central Asian states. Kashin says that
Russia's relations with Asia, in fact, could be of greater consequence than
its relations with Europe in the current conflict over Ukraine: "Some are
seeing U.S. actions to isolate Russia as pushing Russia toward a possible
future alliance with China."
A Russian convoy carrying humanitarian aid crossed into eastern Ukraine on
August 22, 2014.
PHOTOGRAPH BY SERGEI GRITS, ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Cold War tit-for-tat style, however, is still going strong. A new round
of sanctions on Russia takes aim at its vital energy sector, and Europe is
drafting an emergency energy plan in case Russia halts gas shipments this
winter. Russia is considering blocking Western airlines from its airspace,
which Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev claims "could drive many struggling
airlines into bankruptcy," given that Russia's more than 6.5 million square
miles holds more than one-eighth of the world's inhabited land area.
The quid pro quo can be found on multiple levels, from the closing of four
McDonald's restaurants in Moscow to reports that Russia will be developing
an array of new nuclear and conventional weapons in response to recent
moves by the U.S. and NATO, including a NATO "rapid reaction force" to be
positioned in Eastern Europe.
Much of the tension has been cumulative over the years. For example, NATO
expansion eastward has long been of serious concern to Russia, says Archie
Brown, emeritus professor of politics at the U.K.'s University of Oxford
and author of The Myth of the Strong Leader andThe Rise and Fall of
Communism. "Think what would happen, for example, if Canada or Mexico was
considering joining the Warsaw Pact, if it were still in existence. Could
you imagine the reaction in Washington?"
Still, Brown adds, "Calling this a second Cold War is an exaggeration, even
if elements of it are reminiscent of the real Cold War."
Received on Fri Sep 12 2014 - 14:30:12 EDT