COLD WAR, TOO?

The origins of the Cold War were debated by scholars for years and only faded into obscurity when the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Were Soviet actions in Poland and Czechoslovakia responsible for the bill chill? Did the West contribute by rushing to re-establish a German state? Actions and reactions - some deliberate, some unintentional, some well-considered, some misguided - conspired to bring about an icy era of global tension that reached its apex in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Are we now on the verge of another Cold War, it too the product of actions and reactions that lead where no one dare go?

The Russian press. the Russian foreign minister and eminences grises such as Mikhail Gorbachev, have cited the expansion of NATO, the desire to establish a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, along with a general Wester condescension towards the successor state to the Soviet Union. Mixed in with legitimate beefs are the familiar faces of Soviet Russia: hyperbole, distortion, fabrication and outright deception.

As Russia prolongs a ceasefire that never should have been required had the United States warned Saaskavili in no uncertain terms that a military attack on South Ossetia was foolhardy and would lead to consequences that might be beyond the ability of the nascent Georgian military to cope with, the Western response is muddled and rife with recklessness. True to its macho posturing, the Bush Administration has elected to ink an agreement with Poland to emplace missiles as part of a Star Wars technology ostensibly aimed at preventing an as yet non-existent Iran threat to Europe. Talk of NATO expansion into the Ukraine and expediting Georgia's request to join NATO have provoked even more Russia bile. What's lacking is a strategy to counter Russian bully tactics.

Harvard professor Monica Toft is the latest to weigh in on the ostensible lack of military options to deal with the Russian incursion. Apparently, forward positioning of NATO naval and air fleets, combined with the assertion of air superiority across Georgian territory - sans South Ossetia and Abkhazia - is not a viable military option in their view. Have the follies of the Bush Administration so diminished our capacities that we confuse the use of military power, that is, boots on the ground, with the application of credible military threats in order to exact concessions?

Admittedly, leadership is lacking. Western Europe dallies when it should be taking the lead. Condolezza Rice still looks more the shocked inspector in Casablanca than the Russia expert she supposedly was. Didn't she see the folly of foisting a missile defense system that has failed to demonstrate any ability to work to the 90 - 95% reliability most would expect of a defense system. In the meantime, more money is wasted on a system that even under the most favorable of circumstances - knowledge of when and where without any countermeasures - barely approaches a 50% success rate.

Bush, on the other hand, remains Bush. Clueless in the face of danger, Bush lacks the moral authority to mobilize the West against Russia. Ignoring legitimate Russian concerns regarding the haste with which Kosova was granted independence and the failure to tie this action to other intractable ethnic issues - South Ossetia and Abkhazia, for instance - Bush chose to press ahead, be it with his ill-fated folly in Iraq or his declaration of the Axis of Evil.

Russia, too, is not without fault. Indeed, the issuances of passports to South Ossetian and Abkhaz citizens of Georgia goes beyond what one normally would expect of a peacekeeping power. The swiftness and coordinated nature of its response to the Georgian gambit of 6 August suggest that it was looking for an opportunity to reshuffle the deck. The lack of Russian cooperation with respect to nuclear enrichment on the part of Iran, as well as outright Russian obstinence with respect to cooperation in Polonium poisoning incident in London, are clear indicators that dealing with this new, petro-dollar rich Russia won't be easy.

Still, there were signs that Russia could cooperate. Even though the Krasnoyarsk radar site is not particularly useful in dealing with an eventual Iranian military threat, the offer could have been used to establish a joint Russian/NATO task force to work through the scenario. Here again, the Bush Administration seems to have too wedded to its plans for Poland and the Czech Republic and too easily dismissive of the Russian counter-proposal.

Rather than offer NATO membership to newly independent states of the former Soviet Union, the West might have been better off extending membership in the European Union. Of course, that's not in America's interest. It has no voice in the EU. However, an ancillary defense arrangement, without the extension of formal NATO membership and the participation of relevant forces in war simulations, might have been possible, if only to reassure the Balkan states.

Conditions ought to have been attached to any such associative relationships. Resolution of ethnic disputes certainly should have been one. Why was the accession of Georgia to NATO even considered as long as Russian troops/peacekeepers occupied provinces that Georgia regarded as integral to its national territory?

No one need have conceded to Russian suzerainty over its "near abroad" either in diplomatic or military terms. Votes conducted under international supervision could have determined the fates of regions in dispute. And, granting self-determination rights still ought to be a part of a face-saving solution.

The difficulty now is to find a means to compel Russia to withdraw. Diplomacy seems the favored course, but its outcome seems uncertain at best. Issuance of an ultimatum might stand a better chance of success, but it is hard to imagine the Bush Administration mustering the requisite mettle required. Whether Europe can come up with the will to lead and undo the damage wrought by the Bush Administration in its relations with Russia is truly the great unknown. It doesn't seem to be a likely result, but it could happen.

Does anyone really want the alternative? Cold War Two?