The New Cold War: How the Kremlin Menaces both Russia and the West
Edward Lucas

In August 2008, Georgia launched a large-scale military attack in the separatist region of South Ossetia. Shortly after, Russian combat troops began firing into Georgia with full military response, which escalated a long conflict between the pro-West region in South Caucasus and Russian-backed Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The Western response was largely condemning, but surprisingly soft. The European Union was simply baffled: Is Russia returning to its old Soviet patterns?

In his latest international best-seller "The New Cold War" (descriptively subtitled "How the Kremlin Menaces both Russia and the West"), Central and East European correspondent of the Economist, Edward Lucas, attempts to answer that complicated question. Dissecting Russian domestic politics, Lucas aptly recaptures the Russian regime history from Gorbachev to Medvedev, giving special attention to Putin's rise to power and the changes he immediately began applying once in office.

The ex-KGB agent, today enjoying public support greater than any previous Russian leader, is sketched as a cold pragmatic with a clear vision. When in office, Putin broke with Yeltsin's world of corruption and inflation by cracking down on oligarchs, nationalizing vital industry, taking advantage of the spike in oil prices to boom the economy, and reviving a patriotic pro-Russian agenda. The message: Russia is yet again a player in world politics to count on. Over time Putin has made drastic changes in Russia, improving the material and economic condition for millions of middle class Russians, and dethroning the country's worst corrupt handlers.

But Lucas tracks with impressive clarity and research how Putin, despite the positive domestic changes, at the same time has reversed the Westernization seen during Gorbachev-Yeltsin period and instead opted for what Lucas persistently characterizes as "crony authoritarian capitalism." While the West regards law, justice and market economy as ideals, Russia uses them as methods to increase its power influence--the West is idealistic, Russia is pragmatic. Indeed, Putin prides himself as someone who has done away with Yeltsin politics, which he regards as a sell out to the West, and instead chosen state nationalization of industry, media, public life and foreign relations. Lucas describes the product as a return to Soviet-style governmental oppression.

For those who are skeptical of such an assessment, Lucas brings forward loads of evidence, news and research, which will baffle many. Oppositional media is bought out by the government, its prominent figures either put out of business through "tax evasion" excuses, or outright hunted--and in some cases, killed. Strange "bomb practices" complete with stolen cars and mysterious inside terrorism adds up to something that could have been taken out of a 20th century comic book. Vital companies like Gazprom are seized by the government, youth camps glorifying Putin are set up, public life socialized, and bureaucracy running rampant. Corruption is dealt with if it displeases the Kremlin, otherwise left to its own fate. It's a scary insight into a modern Russia taking a different path after decades of repressed totalitarianism.

The effects of the Putin regime change are therefore a double-edged sword: while the middle class is better off than ever before, foreign investment is increasing, and private business life is beginning to thrive, the same sectors of society taken for granted in the West as free and competitive-based, are kept in check through state power, circumventing law and policy by helping or oppressing what it sees as good or evil to the Kremlin. The Yeltsin-era runaway inflation and corruption are finally beginning to reverse, but in turn, the Russian citizens are seeing their private and business life once again going back to centralization, regime dogma and Mafia silencing of public dissidence.

When discussing Russia's international relations, Lucas describes how Russian nationalist economics use clever business interests to buy assets in vital Western energy industry, in effect using Europe's liberal market economy to boost its own geopolitical power. Money, Lucas argues, is the new weapon Russia uses to exploit a morally divided West, too confused and weak to respond to the crimes Russia commits to property rights and public interest. It's a pragmatic game Putin knows how to play, but which leaves Europe impotent and stranded. The problem becomes more complex when EU internally is divided over how to approach Russia's business methods; Lucas exposes German top leaders using high power to strengthen ties with the Kremlin, disregarding European interests to satisfy personal goals. Add EU members like Germany and Italy supporting a soft approach to clear Russian policy breaks, and the situation appears to be more bleak than expected. Russia, like China, is taking the West for a ride, and no one dares to complain.

If any message is central to this book, it's how Western naivity has led to it become divided by foreign ill-spirited intentions. The new Russia is a self-preserving, authoritarian, soft mafia state looking after its own interests only, playing the international market game after its own rules, because it knows it can. If this isn't made clear by the domestic analysis Lucas applies to Russia, it certainly becomes self-evident by the way the Kremlin treats ex-Soviet republics like Ukraine, Estonia, Poland and Georgia. Russia wants to seize control of the Caucasian and Balkan regions in parts where it still enjoys moderate to high support, and use that power against the remaining regions. Scenes like the uproar outside the Russian embassy in Estonia, the gas game played to Ukraine and the "peacekeeping" methods used in South Ossetia to later claim protection of "Russian citizens," appear with clarity in their deviantly humorous form.

Lastly, Lucas sums up his case by carefully plotting the foreign policy of Russia, which currently is trying to consolidate power with common enemies to the West (Iran, China, Venezuela) and building counter-NATO organizations heavily emphasizing Russian energy domination and its new ideological platform "sovereign democracy." A very well-plotted chapter is also dedicated to the pipeline politics played between Russia and the West, where Russia's Nord and South Stream compete with West's Nabucco and Transcaspian pipelines--a fascinating but critical power play between the regions. The complexity of the situation appears to be greater than first thought. Lucas therefore ends his book by describing how the West can still win the New Cold War, in effect proposing an end to anti-American sentiment in Europe to unite it and America in order to strengthen transatlantic relations and resurrect moral courage to resist Russian pressure--the only way to win the power game and save its civilization from inside bankruptcy.

But isn't the Cold War over, we ask? Lucas agrees: the former Cold War played on military terms is over. Russia's military might is still there, but not strong enough to pose as a serious threat to the West (although it gladly props up regimes like Iran with nuclear capability). Instead, Lucas suggests we are in a period of a New Cold War, where we face the same power play scenario, but on different terms and with different weapons. Russia's new methods are economic and geopolitical. It's mission: divide Europe from America and split up EU internally until it's too feeble to resist espionage, energy domination and self-invented policy making from the Kremling Hq. It's a strategical war where super powers don't flex nuclear muscle, but use bully politics to make their bid. The Fukuyama vision of an end to empire war after WWII has turned out to be a facade, and Huntington's vision is finally proven right: super powers are once again colliding, but in ways much more refined and thought-out than in the past.

Lucas, defending a liberal democratic and free market-based West, is unapologetic about his stance, but at the same time balanced. There is no Russophobian sentiment taking over real analysis. Lucas, to his credit, is not only a brilliant journalist and a well-researched writer, but also a great polemic. Some will disagree with his own ideological position; Lucas mentions that groups who defend Russia will be those who currently champion anti-Western (including anti-American) sentiment, but as he insightfully points out, the enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our friend. While the West must stand under scrutiny and criticism, those who see a saviour in Russia are by Luca's account seriously mistaken (p. 278 f.):

It may well be that individualism and materialism are an inadequate basis for a happy life; that corruption and influence-peddling in Western political systems may be an indefensible distortion of the principles on which they are founded; freedom may conflict with justice or stability. But that is not the same thing as taking the Kremlin's claims about its own system at face value. Such a balanced approach would be absurd.

Western self-criticism doesn't equal a biased view on Russia, either for or against. Lucas therefore separates himself both from Neoconservative paranoia as well as anti-Western critics in favor of Russian pressure on the West. As a result, "The New Cold War" is an essential read for anyone who is interested in understanding the domestic and international politics of modern Russia. For those concerned about the health, freedom and international status of the Western civilization, there is no shorter guide to understand the mechanisms by which we are systematically and ruthlessly being fooled into disarming our own power and independence. Polemically sharp and well-informed, Lucas' account resurrects Huntington's "clash of civilizations" theory in a critically current context, desperately calling for Western unity.