No Cold War, Perhaps, but Surely a Lukewarm Peace

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN’S acerbic assault on American unilateralism last weekend in Munich might not have heralded a return to the bad old days of global ideological confrontation — of blocs and proxy wars, dissidents and spies, arms races and mutually assured destruction — even if some were quick to say it did.

The problem is, Cold War II could in its own way be just as messy and unpredictable. For all the talk of strategic partnership and even personal friendship between Mr. Putin and President Bush, the relationship between Russia and the United States has reached what is probably its lowest point since the Soviet Union collapsed a decade and a half ago. 

This is now “the world of one master, one sovereign,” Mr. Putin said in Munich, and he was in no way pleased. “The United States,” he said, “has overstepped its national borders, and in every area.”

The countries seem headed into a period of tensions when every step is met with distrust and some counterstep, putting them on opposite sides of hotspots around the world, from Iran to Georgia to Kosovo.

And with presidential elections in both countries coming in 2008, it is unlikely to get better, since candidates rarely score points at home by being conciliatory abroad.

The countries are now openly competing for influence in Europe, in the Caucasus and in Central Asia, where access to natural resources and military bases has become paramount for both. The Bush administration’s plan to build ballistic missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic is viewed with outright hostility here. So is NATO ’s flirtation with Georgia and Ukraine, both former Soviet republics that Russia considers part of its historic sphere of influence.

Equally hostile is the American view of Russia’s arms sales to Syria, Venezuela and, most worrisome of all, Iran. Russia last month provided Iran with $700 million worth of TOR-M1 antiaircraft batteries whose likely target in the event of conflict would be American fighters and bombers, just as Russian anti-tank weapons, originally sold to Syria, were used against Israeli forces fighting Hezbollah  in Lebanon last year, prompting diplomatic protests from Israel.

The areas in which Mr. Putin and Mr. Bush have cooperated closely — against terrorism and the spread of nuclear weapons — suddenly seem like sources of confrontation as much as collaboration. Last week’s deal with North Korea to suspend its nuclear programs offers hope of collaboration, but a declaration by Russia’s top general that Russia could withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, negotiated by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbatchev in 1987, portends the opposite.

“There was an equilibrium and a fear of mutual destruction,” Mr. Putin said in his Munich speech, delivered at an annual trans-Atlantic security conference. “And in those days one party was afraid to make an extra step without consulting the other. And this was certainly a fragile peace and a frightening one, but as we see today, it was reliable enough. Today it seems that the peace is not so reliable.”

Russia and the United States are no more likely to go to war than before, when their nuclear arsenals assured a perpetual standoff, as they still do. But potential flashpoints abound. And, as in the cold war, it would not take much for simmering tensions to become a grave breach, even a violent one.

Last September, for example, someone in South Ossetia, the Russian-supported enclave in Georgia, fired on a helicopter carrying the Georgian defense minister on the same day that a Senate delegation including John McCain was flying around the region.

“Can you imagine,” said Andrew Kuchins of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, “if they had shot down John McCain’s helicopter?”

Mr. Putin’s speech, which was interpreted at least by some in Russia as a defining moment akin to Winston Churchill's in 1946 that gave the world the phrase “Iron Curtain,” almost certainly reflected Russia’s rediscovered swagger on the world stage. It certainly could become a historical marker. Buoyed by soaring energy prices, Mr. Putin’s Kremlin is more assertive about its role in the Middle East, in Asia, in Europe — and inevitably that means tripping over American interests in those places.

Mr. Putin was also airing long-simmering grievances about the heavy-handedness of American foreign policy that began under President Bill Clinton and continued under Mr. Bush. The complaint is of the United States’ disregard for Russia’s feelings on issue after issue since the 1990s, from the expansion of NATO to the alliance’s war against Serbia, when Russia was simply too weak and chaotic to do anything about it.

“The West has not reckoned with the quick revival of Russia,” said Alexander Rahr, a Russia expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations. He stopped short of predicting Cold War II but, “We can surely speak of the emergence of a cold peace.”

After reaching out to Mr. Bush in the first hours after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Putin and others here have expressed dismay at what they see as a string of broken promises: an unfinished war in Afghanistan, with a growth of heroin production that inevitably reaches Russia; and, even worse, the seeming permanence of an airfield in Kyrgyzstan once billed as temporary. Then there is the war in Iraq, which Russians vehemently opposed and Mr. Putin warned would be catastrophic for regional peace.

American officials have expressed equal dismay with Mr. Putin’s unmet promises on democratization and an “energy dialogue” that was supposed to expand opportunities for American oil and gas companies but died with the Kremlin’s campaign to impose state control over natural resources. Mr. Putin spent last week in the Middle East, including Qatar, another major producer of natural gas, expressing interest in a “gas OPEC” that could coordinate policy and prices for Europe and the United States.

“That is what worries me about a new cold war: both sides feel betrayed,” said Sergei M. Rogov, director of the Institute for the Study of the United States and Canada in Moscow.

Mr. Rogov said the two countries now disagreed on economics, politics, military matters and, most important, values. The latter includes distinct worldviews, he said: Russia’s desire for multinational solutions that give it a voice versus American unilateralism that, especially under Mr. Bush, disdains the constraints of international treaties and obligations. Increasingly they seem to be talking past each other.

The most ominous development, Mr. Rogov said, would be a breakdown in cooperation on nuclear nonproliferation. To turn the tide of nationalistic ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons will require the countries to agree, as they did with North Korea but have yet to do with Iran.

“If we fight, politically not militarily,” he said, “who will be minding the store?”

American officials were clearly shocked by the tone of Mr. Putin’s speech but sought to emphasize the areas of agreement. And Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates went so far as to retort, “One cold war was enough.”