The Proxy Cold War 2.0

Could NATO’s militarisation of the Caucasus, Moscow’s projection in Crimea and Syria, China’s claim to South China Sea & schisms in the Middle East ignite the CW2.0?

Public Lecture, Centre for Human Environment - CXXIV, MMXVI Vol. X No. VII

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD,

Professor of Public Policy, School of Graduate Studies,

College of Business & Economics, AAU,

Abstract

            Russian statement at the Munich Security Conference - we are in a new Cold War and that this year, 2016 reminds us of 1962, sends unnerving signals of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world staggered on the threshold of atomic war. Edward Lucas's The New Cold War asserts that Moscow's new battle with the west is not about ideology but power. Painted in black and white, the anti-hero is a Kremlin with evil designs upon a naïve, disorganised ‘West’, while Russia accuses the North Atlantic Treaty of seeking to destabilise the Caucasus with upcoming joint exercises in Georgia. Russia views this consistent 'development' of Georgian territory by NATO soldiers as a provocative move, aiming to destabilise the military-political situation in the Caucasus region deliberately. On the other hand, South China Sea has become a contested region.

            A school of thought prevails that the West should not be afraid of Russian strength, but rather of its fragility because it still possess powerful arsenal. Rather, the US ought to be worried about Europe and the centripetal forces that seem to be pulling apart its closest pool of allies inexorably. The question is what is the best course for the US? Pundits urge caution in response to NATO's plans to deploy battalions to the Baltic States, warning it could lead to another Cold War. Moscow quickly responded that it would position brigades along its EU borders. Then the West continues to build up the eastern flank of NATO, with more battalions, more exercises, and more ships and more platforms, and the Russians will respond. Is it some real strategic thinking or a reaction? It is a tactical ricocheting from crisis-to-crisis, which has been much of what is in the Middle East.

   

      The paper analyses global security governance - the exercise of political, economic and administrative authority to manage inter-governmental affairs. It is the complex mechanisms, processes and institutions, through which states and citizen’s groups articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights and obligations and mediate their differences. The West with its support to an agglomeration of tin-pot dictatorships, Sha’ria tyrannies, banana republics and soon-to-be failed European states cannot lead the world alone any longer. The mono-polar, US-dominated world is history.  A multi-polar world has emerged before our eyes, not just in Russia but also in five or six capitals around the world (Cohen, 2015).

Key words: Cold War 2.0, Russia, US, Europe, nuclear, global security governance, multi polar world

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