Why a New Cold War with Russia?

With the media harping on about Russian collusion in the 2016 presidential election and now openly attacking anyone who shows even a sliver of truly progressive ideology as a Russian operative, it should be increasingly clear to many that this story is nothing but a conspiracy theory that is being used to smear anyone who stands against the status quo, an ominous echo of McCarthyism. With the Senate Intelligence Committee now saying there is no evidence of Russian collusion, it's important to take stock of how we got here. If this dangerous new cold war is based on a fabrication, what are the circumstances that led us here?

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States implemented what is known as "shock therapy", a financial theory that sudden, dramatic change in national economic policy can turn a state-controlled economy into a free-market one. The result in Russia's case was disastrous. The economy crashed while the western-backed oligarchs plundered and pillaged the country of its money and resources while the U.S propped up its presidential puppet Boris Yeltsin and even helped him get re-elected in 1996 despite his abysmal approval ratings.

By the late 1990's the country was crumbling. Many employers no longer paid salaries in money but in every day items such as lightbulbs and batteries that could be bartered for goods. Stores stocked rotten food and many people ate that food out of desperation because there was nothing else to eat. Thousands died either from starvation or eating bad food. Gangs and organized crime came to power and Moscow, previously one of the safest cities in the world, was rocked by almost 2,000 homicides a year.

When Vladimir Putin took over the presidency at the turn of the millennium, he was put into power by the same oligarchs who were looting the country because they believed they could control him. They quickly learned otherwise when Putin turned on them and began the long, slow process of releasing the country from their grasp. One can even chart this turn in the western media as papers and news channels proclaim Putin a "sober Boris Yeltsin" who will allow the plundering of Russia's resources to continue and quickly sour to declaring Putin enemy number one. This bitterness is consistent with the implementation of the foreign policy think tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in the late 90's calling for complete economic and military dominance by the United States to control the buying and selling of the world's resources. What was happening to Russia is the same thing that later happened to Iraq and Afghanistan and what is currently being attempted in Syria and Venezuela. Whoever controls the flow of oil controls the world.

That brings us to the modern day role of NATO. Established in 1949 to protect Europe from falling under the influence of, or military threat by, the Soviet Union, NATO was facing an existential crisis at the end of the cold war. In 1990, as the Soviet Union was coming to an end, Mikhail Gorbachev was promised by the George H.W. Bush Administration that NATO would not expand one inch eastward. Nevertheless, NATO has consistently rolled east in the years since, gobbling up many former Soviet satellite countries right up to the Russian border. Even though it's claimed NATO's existence is no longer about Russia, it is strange that Russia has never been allowed to join that alliance. In short, NATO now functions as the military arm for the U.S.'s PNAC agenda, of which Russia is still very much in the crosshairs. Its disastrous attempts to pull Georgia and Ukraine into its sphere of influence has created a very real security risk to Russia, a country very protective - even paranoid - about its borders considering the number of times it's been invaded and attacked. Quite possibly when Russia sees the buildup of the NATO alliance it sees a repeat of the Third Reich's relentless push eastward. This in a sense has solved the dilemma of NATO's existential crisis: it exists now to manage the security threats caused by its existence.

From this perspective it is difficult to view the new cold war and the increased military buildup against Russia as anything other than a mission of revenge by the US Government and its allied powers. This adds even more danger to the present situation, far beyond anything a simple "new cold war" would bring. Russia has become Ahab's white whale. The question is how far Ahab is willing to go to sink his teeth back into his prey?

*For more info, read Richard Sakwa's excellent "Russia Against the Rest: The Post Cold-War Crisis of World Order".