A rivalry with Russia. A proxy battleground. Nuclear brinksmanship. For many generations of Americans, it's just like old times.
The invasion of Ukraine has rapidly returned echoes of a Cold War mentality to the United States, with a familiar foe in Russia. Bars have poured out their Russian vodka. McDonald's, a symbol of the end of the Soviet Union when it first opened in Moscow, has shuttered its Russian locations. Once again, a U.S. president sees a pitched ideological battle. 바카라We will save democracy,바카라 President Joe Biden said in his State of the Union address.
For an America where Russia never quite went out of style as an evergreen villain in film and television, revived tensions with the Kremlin have drawn from a well-worn geopolitical script. A familiar, chilly East-West wind is blowing again.
바카라It's very much a Cold War echo,바카라 says James Hershberg, professor of history and international affairs at Georgetown University and former director of the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson Center.
Hershberg sees much that's different about today's inflamed tensions with Russia. Vladimir Putin's aggressions, he says, don't seem driven by ideology the way communism was for the Soviet Union. A transformed media landscape, too, has helped turn Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into a global protagonist.
But in a crisis that pits two nuclear superpowers on opposing sides, history is repeating in other ways. A Russian strategic overreach, Hershberg says, is again sparking a potentially perilous moment in international order.
바카라We are in a second Cuban Missile Crisis in many ways in terms of the danger of escalation,바카라 says Hershberg, whose books include 바카라Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam.바카라 바카라Putin is acting so irrationally he makes Nikita Khrushchev appear like a rational actor in comparison.바카라
The largest land conflict in Europe since World War II, Russia's two-plus weeks of war in Ukraine has rallied Western alliances like few events before it. In repudiating Putin's invasion, the U.S. and its European allies have enacted crippling economic sanctions on Russia -- which Biden on Tuesday extended to Russian crude oil -- while still drawing the line on military engagement with Russia.
바카라If we're talking about a capitalized Cold War, I don't think I could call this Cold War II,바카라 says Fredrik Logevall, professor of history and international affairs at Harvard and Pulitzer-Prize winning author most recently of 바카라JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956.바카라
바카라But," Logevall says, 바카라if we're talking more generally about a cold war, if we mean a titanic struggle that involves all aspects of national power waged between two incompatible systems but short of outright military conflict 바카라 then yeah, I guess this is a cold war.바카라
The Cold War is innately connected to the crisis in Ukraine partly because it so much informs Putin's world view. A former KGB agent, he once called the collapse of the Soviet Union 바카라the greatest geopolitical catastrophe바카라 of the 20th century. The invasion of Ukraine is intended to deter Western influence and NATO infringement from Russia's sphere of influence, and potentially to restore a Texas-sized part of the former Soviet Union.
Barely two weeks in, the Cold War has often been invoked. The U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said 바카라the threat to global security now is more complex and probably higher바카라 than during the Cold War, partly because there aren't the same back channels of communication. A Russian Foreign Ministry official, Alexander Darchiyev, according to an Interfax report, recently suggested that 바카라perhaps it would be worth recalling the well-forgotten principle that worked during the Cold War 바카라 peaceful coexistence.바카라
Even before war began in Ukraine, Americans had a historically dim view of Russia. According to Gallup poll conducted in February, 85% of Americans viewed Russia unfavorably, easily the country's worst rating in more than three decades 바카라 a slide accelerated by Russia's meddling in U.S. elections, its annexation of Crimea and the nerve agent attack on Putin's leading opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, who's currently imprisoned.
And while former president Donald Trump has maintained his esteem for Putin, anti-Russian opinion has uncommon bipartisan support. Gallup found that 88% of both Republicans and Democrats have an unfavorable view of Russia. Nothing unites like a common enemy.
Nina Khrushcheva, a Moscow-born professor of international affairs at the New School in New York and the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, maintains that the Cold War never really went away 바카라 that the West's view of Russia remained stuck in the broad portrayals of villains Boris and Natasha in 바카라Rocky and Bullwinkle바카라 cartoons. To her, Putin's invasion was devastating because it confirmed the worst about her native country. Now, she begins her classes by apologizing.
바카라Putin is the global villain he deserves to be, and Russia is finished for decades to come,바카라 says Khrushcheva, whose great-grandfather was premier of the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when John F. Kennedy was president of the United States. "My country just killed itself," she says, and the U.S. 바카라got their enemy back.바카라
바카라They got their enemy that has always been, always deserves to be and is always at the forefront of the American mind,바카라 says Khrushcheva. 바카라Russia has no excuse. But for America, it's a field day. America is back and it's on a white horse saving a white country in the middle of Europe against the horrible Russian Bear.바카라
Logevall, who co-authored the book 바카라America's Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity,바카라 doesn't expect a Cold War rerun. The world isn't as bipolar as it was decades ago. China, which signed a pact with Russia shortly before the invasion of Ukraine, looms much larger. And the interconnectedness of the global economy -- where waves of corporations have severed ties with Russia -- makes isolated coexistence harder to tolerate.
The conflict in Ukraine seems sure to be at least a coda to the Cold War, if not a new beginning.
바카라Putin feels great resentment about how the Cold War ended. The West declaring victory. Russia losing power and influence. I think he resents a certain Western triumphalism,바카라 Logevall says. 바카라In a way, I think history is what drives him.바카라
