"This Is Not A New Cold War" Or Is It?

Putin Warns US Over Missile Shield, Threatens To Target Europe With Nukes

Bush Panics, Says Missile Shield Is No Threat To Russia

As world leaders gather for in Germany for a G8 gathering, a remarkably explosive, and extremely public, feud has broken out between the United States and Russia over American plans to deploy missile batteries in Eastern Europe, close to Russia's borders :

President Vladimir Putin has sent a chilling message to world leaders...with a threat to aim Russian nuclear missiles at European cities for the first time since the Cold War.

In comments that seemed calculated to cause consternation and division at tomorrow's meeting in Germany, the Russian leader said that American plans to erect a missile defence shield in eastern Europe had left him with no choice but to retaliate.

"If the US nuclear potential extends across the European territory, we will get new targets in Europe," he said...

"It will then be up to our military experts to identify which targets will be aimed by ballistic missiles and which ones will be aimed by cruise missiles," he said.

It's not that the US 'missile shield' plan is extensive, or even poses a major military threat to Russia, being little more than a move to position 10 interceptor missiles in Poland, and covert a Cold War era bunker in the Czech Republic into a radar station, it is that Russia has warned the US extensively in the past 12 months that it will not tolerate American missiles close to its borders, and the United States is still pushing ahead with its plans.

Russia says the United States is trying to covertly position and then aim missiles at Russia, from just over the border, and this insolence will not stand. China nods quietly in agreement, and Iran grins happily, knowing it is safe for now, with Russia's barely reported promise of protection from attacks by the United States or Israel.

President Bush made a special effort, as he arrived in Europe, to address Putin's concerns ahead of the G8 meetings :

"My message will be: 'Vladimir - I call him Vladimir - you shouldn't fear a missile defence system. As a matter of fact, why don't you cooperate with us on a missile defence system?'" Mr Bush said.

"Russia is not the enemy...we can work together on common threats".

"The cold war is over, it has ended. The people of the Czech Republic don't have to choose between being a friend of Russia or a friend of the US. You can be both. I don't believe in a zero-sum world, I don't believe a country should be forced to choose."

In his remarks, Mr Bush reiterated that a missile defence system was designed for an attack from "rogue states".

"It is purely a defensive measure, not aimed at Russia but at true threats," said Mr Bush..

True threats? Yes, Iran and North Korea, and those mysterious 'rogue states'.

Bush won't say who the 'rogue states' are, or might turn out to be, and claiming that Iran and North Korea pose a strategic threat to the United States, or its allies, just makes the Russians laugh.

Russia grows in power and wealth by the day, locking up a huge percentage of natural gas supply and pipelines to European countries, cutting oil and nuclear energy deals with Iran, quietly expanding its military ties and military technology-sharing with China. All the while, the United States declines internationally, off the back of the Iraq War failure, and spreading dissent in the homeland.

Putin has made it very clear that it is not Russia who is making the kinds of moves that could lead to further destabilisation in Europe, or across the former Soviet states. It is the United States who has "started altering the strategic balance."

The United States has refused to abandon its 'missile shield' plans, and is expanding its vision of another shield array across south, and north, East Asia, including development deals with Japan and Australia.

Following are some examples of the recent Putin rhetoric on the American missile shield, as he clearly sees no need to be polite as President Bush has tried to be.

From The Australian :

"It is obvious that if part of the strategic nuclear potential of the US is located in Europe and will be threatening us, we will have to respond.

"This system of missile defence on one side and the absence of this system on the other... increases the possibility of unleashing a nuclear conflict."

He speculated that the US's real motive was to provoke Russia's retaliation and so "to avoid further closeness of Russia and Europe".

He called on "our American friends to rethink their decision" and warned that "we cannot be responsible for our reciprocal steps because it is not us who are initiating an arms race in Europe".

"We will need to establish such systems, which would be able to penetrate the (US) missile defence systems ... What kind of means will be used to hit the targets that our military believe are potential threats - ballistic missiles, or cruise missiles, or some kind of new weapons system?"

"We have brought all our heavy weapons beyond the Urals and reduced our military forces by 300,000. But what do we have in return?" he asked.

"We see that Eastern Europe is being filled with new equipment ... Unilateral disarmament of Russia is happening."

From the New York Times :

''We are being told the anti-missile defense system is targeted against something that does not exist. Doesn't it seem funny to you, to say the least?'' a clearly irritated Putin said.

''If a part of the strategic nuclear potential of the United States appears in Europe and, in the opinion of our military specialists will threaten us, then we will have to take appropriate steps in response,'' Putin said. ''What kind of steps? We will have to have new targets in Europe.''

These could be targeted with ''ballistic or cruise missiles or maybe a completely new system.''

US Secretary Of State, Condoleezza Rice has warned Russia that the US-EU partnership cannot, and will not, be divided by Russia :

"The security of the United States and the security of European allies is indivisible," Dr Rice said on the margins of the Organisation of American States gathering here. "It doesn't really help anybody to start threatening Europeans."

Dr Rice said US officials "don't consider Russia an adversary and I hope they don't consider the United States an adversary".

"This is 2007 and not 1987," Dr Rice said. "This isn't the Soviet Union and we need to drop the rhetoric that sounds like what the United States and the Soviet Union used to say about each other, and realise that the United States and Russia are in a very different period."

Jason Burke, writing in the UK Observer, discusses the changing face of the former Soviet states, as they grow closer to America and Europe, much to the alleged chagrin of Russia, who would prefer to keep them close, and under the thumb :

The storm is large and potentially very dangerous. Locally, Russia is blamed for stoking riots in Tallinn last month in which one died and 153 were injured, for the roughing up of Estonian diplomats in Moscow and for a massive 'cyber-attack' on the infrastructure of the small Baltic state.

According to Andres Kasekamp, director of Tallinn's Foreign Policy Institute, the Russian government is mounting a deliberate attempt to destabilise former Soviet republics. 'This strategy is intensifying as Moscow's attitude to the US, the UK and the EU becomes more aggressive and assertive,' Kasekamp said.

'They are seeing how far they can push us, the European Union, Nato, the Americans, everybody.'

Some Estonians even fear Moscow may be searching for a casus belli. At the international level the Russian testing last week of an inter-continental ballistic missile led to an extraordinary diplomatic spat between the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice - who deplored Moscow's 'missile diplomacy' - and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who attacked American 'imperialism'.

For the UK, already strained relations were put under new stress when the dispute with Moscow over the poisoning in London of Russian dissident and British citizen Alexander Litvinenko six months ago took another turn for the worse. Last week the prime suspect, whose extradition has been demanded by Britain and refused by Russia, surfaced on Wednesday in Moscow. Andrei Lugovoi told TV cameras that the British secret services were behind Litvinenko's murder.

Then there are profound disagreements over the future of Kosovo and policy on Iran, a row over the rights of major British commercial investors to parts of the massive Siberian gasfields, harassment of British officials and diplomats in Moscow, and a series of apparently state-encouraged propaganda pieces in the Russian media against the West. Analysts are talking of relations between Moscow and London being at a 25-year low.

'This is a delayed confrontation between the Soviet past and the European future,' Igor Grazin, an Estonian MP, told The Observer. And his country, home to 1.3 million, is in the middle.

For James Nixey, of Chatham House - the Royal Institute of International Affairs, based in London - Russia's recent broadside against Estonia is part of a wider vision of the region. 'It seems that Russia feels that those countries around it which are democratic and have liberal attitudes are a threat and those that are illiberal and autocratic are not,' he said last week.

Analysts and diplomats are working to decipher the logic behind Russia's hardening stance. The missile test last week was partly provoked by American plans to install an anti-missile defence system in Eastern Europe. 'The most explicit message from Moscow was that Russia is the main strategic partner for America,' said Thomas Gomart, of the French Institute of International Relations in Paris. 'It's a way of marginalising the Europeans and other emerging powers.'

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Relations between Russia and the United States remain tense, despite the surprise visit to Moscow by US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.The visit was also a surprise to Israel, who were expecting Rice to visit them. But problems between Russia and the United States are multiplying so rapidly, Rice had little choice but to change her plans.

That Rice saw the need to visit Russia and meet with Russian president Putin, and his senior ministers, is being viewed in the Russian media as the US showing signs of weakness and fear in the face of Russia's growing power and influence, while the United States' power and influence fades, mostly off the back of the churning defeat of the US military in Iraq.

The new round of Russia demonisation in the US, by the media and prominent politicians, began with a fairly mundane statement by Russian president Vladimir Putin about the global threats Russia faces as it re-secures its place in the pantheon of world powers. Putin was speaking during annual Russian celebrations that mark the stunning, but costly, Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War 2.

Putin said that he could see parallels between the threats his people faced during World War 2 and the rapidly changing power paradigms of today. The quote was enough for the American media to go hog wild about how Russia had "compared the US to Nazis".

Putin's quotes, however, were far more interesting, and nuanced, than that simple tabloid quality headline :

“We do not have the right to forget the causes of any war, which must be sought in the mistakes and errors of peacetime.”

“Moreover, in our time, these threats are not diminishing,” he said. “They are only transforming, changing their appearance. In these new threats, as during the time of the Third Reich, are the same contempt for human life and the same claims of exceptionality and diktat in the world.”

Of course it is in the interests of the Bush administration, and their media allies, to demonise Putin's Russia as much as possible, mostly due to Russia's opposition to American plans to seed missile caches across Europe, under the 'missile shield' cache.

Americans, by and large, see no problem with the US deploying missiles to friendly nations in Europe, even if they happen to be hard up against Russia's borders.

But Russians hate the US plans with a passion, as do the Chinese, though far more quietly than their Russian allies.

Russia is also opposed to an independent Kosovo, now being shuttled towards reality by the UN, and fully backed by the Bush administration, and frowns on the expansion of NATO. Iraq, of course, still concerns the Russians immensely, as they fear the spread of the war into other Middle East countries, particularly Iran, with whom they have multi-billion dollar energy and trade deals.

From the New York Times :

Mr. Putin’s analogy was a small part of a larger speech, otherwise unambiguously congratulating Russian veterans of World War II, known here as the Great Patriotic War. Mr. Putin spoke from a podium in front of Lenin’s mausoleum on Red Square before troops mustered for a military parade.

The United States, Mr. Putin has maintained, is seeking to establish a unipolar world to replace the bipolar balance of power of the cold war era.

In a speech in Munich on Feb. 10, he characterized the United States as “One single center of power: One single center of force. One single center of decision making. This is the world of one master, one sovereign.”

On the growing US threat to Russia via its missile shield expansion, the Gulf Times reports :

Russia will take “counter-measures” against elements of a US missile defence shield planned for Europe, the head of the Russian armed forces’ General Staff said yesterday.

“If we see a threat emanating from those objects ... we will unambiguously plan actions against them,” Yury Baluyevsky, head of the military council, said of the 10 interceptor missiles planned for Poland and radar for the Czech Republic, Interfax reported.

The military man’s language was among the most direct yet used against the shield, which Russian officials have been frequently and uniformly critical of since Washington’s negotiations with Prague and Warsaw came to light last fall.

Speaking in Moscow, Baluyevsky said that Russia was changing its military doctrine and that while the country was not yet altering plans for military hardware acquisition before 2010, that was subject to “radical changes” going on in the world.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates met with Putin and other officials last month in an emergency visit to offer Moscow partnership in the shield, a trip the US official called “excellent”.

As part of the expanding talks between Russia and the US over the future of their relations and the US 'missile shield', a big meeting is planning for September.

From the Brisbane Times :

Russia and the US will bring together their defence and foreign ministers in an unusual top-level bid to ease escalating bilateral tensions.

"We have agreed to a Russian suggestion that the secretaries of Defence and State meet with their Russian counterparts and do so in a so-called 2+2 format," US Assistant Secretary of State Dan Fried said.

He said the first meeting was planned for September and could be expanded to include the White House and Kremlin national security advisers.

The Russians suggested the enhanced negotiations during a visit to Moscow last month by Defence Secretary Robert Gates focused on addressing Russian concerns about US plans to station 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a tracking radar in the Czech Republic.

President Vladimir Putin, already angry about the expansion of the NATO alliance into former Soviet bloc countries, escalated the dispute last month by announcing Russia was suspending compliance with a key Cold War-era defence pact, the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty.

This report from the Anotolian Times explains more on the changing NATO paradigms, and why Russia no longer sees the need to inform the West of its troop movements, even when they are across internationally recognised borders. Something that makes NATO diplomats very nervous :

Russia and the West are at odds over a growing number of issues, from Kosovo to the US missile shield, and the discord may undermine their cautiously built post-Cold War partnership, NATO diplomats say.

Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, a favourite to replace President Vladimir Putin next year, said Thursday that Moscow would no longer inform partners when it moves troops across its territory.

The announcement, the application of a freeze Putin made on the Soviet-era Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, was the first concrete move in what are tense and possibly changing times.

In the past, the West "accepted the rhetoric when Russian leaders denounced the United States or NATO, but it's not so easy any more," said a diplomat at the military alliance.

At a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Norway late last month, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, reacting to the Russian treaty freeze, said it was vital to keep relations between Moscow and Washington calm.

"We must avoid an escalation," he said.

But a NATO official said "the tone between the (NATO) allies and Russia has now hardened."

....problems of political and military nature, which have simmered almost unnoticed for years, are now bubbling to the surface.

NATO's willingness to continue expanding eastward -- into former Soviet republics and satellite states -- or the installation of US military bases in Bulgaria and Romania last year -- are perceived by Russia as threats.

In February, Moscow threatened to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) so that it could resume production of tactical nuclear missiles.

"Russia seems to want to try to end the relationship that it built up with the United States in the 1990s and in the most theatrical way possible," experts at the Paris-based Strategic Research Foundation said last month.

In this atmosphere of confrontation, some at NATO fear that Kosovo, where the alliance has some 16,000 troops and whose ethnic Albanian majority is impatient for independence, could ultimately pay the price.

"A Russian veto on independence for the Serbian province followed by the US unilaterally recognising Kosovo (as independent) can no longer be ruled out," a diplomat warned.

Russia is not going to wait to see if the United States backs down on its plans to expand its 'missile shield' through Eastern Europe. They are quietly ramping up plans to make sure they have "counter measures" in place, should the United States complete its expansion of missile deployments close to Russian borders.

From Novosti :

Russia's Strategic Missile Forces will complete the deployment of silo-based Topol-M ICBMs by 2010, the SMF commander in chief said Tuesday.

"Alongside the deployment of Topol-M mobile complexes, we are planning to finalize the deployment of fixed-site Topol-M systems by 2010," Col. Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov said.

He said Monday the Topol-M system will be equipped with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV) in the next two or three years, adding the new system will help penetrate missile defenses more effectively.

His statement comes against the background of growing tensions between Moscow and the West regarding plans by the United States to deploy elements of its global antiballistic missile defense system in Central Europe.

Washington has insisted that placing missile shield components in Poland and the Czech Republic is aimed against possible nuclear strikes from rogue states, such as Iran and North Korea, whose controversial nuclear programs have caused international concerns. But Moscow, already unnerved by NATO expansion to former Warsaw Pact member states, has condemned the plans as a threat to national security and a destabilizing factor for Europe.

Gen. Solovtsov said the Strategic Missile Forces would factor in the new threats.

"If the U.S. proceeds with missile defense plans, despite serious opposition from people in Europe, the Strategic Missile Forces will manage to take adequate measures to counter threats to Russia," he said.

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Russia under Vladimir Putin continues to position itself in the top tiers of the 'New World Order', as the United States' influence and standing in global affairs diminishes off the back of the tragic failures of the Iraq War, and the international view that its internal troubles are fast growing out of control. The US-initiated 'War on Terror' has failed to curb terror attacks, and it is beyond a fact that it has led to an upsurge in support for Islamic extremism and anti-Americanism across the planet.

Russia counts China and Iran as close, and powerful, allies in the restructuring of the global order, and a new Cold War looms over missile defence, as the United States pushes for an expansion of NATO that will bring in more countries closer to Russia's borders under the missile defence umbrella.

China and Russia, and Iran to a lesser degree, are re-arming on a phenomenal scale, and the United States is attempting to hammer their international credibility through harassing and negative human rights reports, while badgering India and smaller nations to be wary of Russia and China's future plans.

But India, and most recently Japan, are closing ranks with China, in particular, and forming massive multi-billion dollar trade deals with Russia and Iran.

Analysts said the Iraq War was risky on a global scale for the United States, long before the war began, because if they failed to win a total victory, allowing greater expansion of US-backed democracy across the Middle East, and instead got bogged down fighting a protracted guerrilla war, it would deplete American military and Treasury resources, allowing China and Russia to make their move. Clearly, this is now exactly what Russia, and China, are doing.

For now, at least, Russia it would appear is taking the lead in challenging the United States' recruitment of Eastern Europe allies, and their subsequent re-arming, and agitating against the US-led destabilising of the Iranian regime.

From the UK Guardian :

The news that an arms race may be underway once more between Washington and Moscow has brought back some unpleasant memories, but it is also a pointer to a more complicated future.

The Kremlin's threat to counter US missile defence installations in eastern Europe is a sign that Russia will no longer acquiesce in a Pax Americana.

What seemed in the west like a post cold-war honeymoon in the nineties is remembered more as a rape by Moscow's new leaders. In their eyes Russia was taken advantage of at a moment of economic weakness by Washington, London and a band of unscrupulous Russian oligarchs. A new Russian foreign policy, published by the government in recent days makes it clear that Moscow believes the era of American hegemony is now over.

"The myth about the unipolar world fell apart once and for all in Iraq," the review says. "A strong, more self-confident Russia has become an integral part of positive changes in the world."

The policy document is an elaboration of an anti-American polemic delivered two months ago by Vladimir Putin to a roomful of shocked western diplomats in Munich. "The Munich speech may be an event ... we look back to and say: that's when everything changed, but we should have seen it coming," said Cliff Kupchan, a former US state department official now at the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy.

Around the world, Putin's Russia has been serving notice for some time it is prepared to challenge US leadership of the international community. It is beginning to push back hard against missile defence and Nato's eastward expansion. It has resisted tough sanctions against Iran, and so far refused to go along with a UN-brokered plan to hand Kosovo autonomy. Moscow is also signalling it wants to be treated as a serious player in the Middle East, meeting Hamas officials at a time they are being ostracised by the US and western Europe.

Washington may be in the throes of intellectual ferment over the Bush doctrine, of defeating extremism by exporting democracy, but the Putin doctrine is by contrast, an exercise in pragmatism. It stresses the importance of national sovereignty and the primacy of the UN in resolving disputes. The common theme is Moscow's demand for its views to be taken into account.

Soaring oil and gas prices have transformed the environment. Russia is no longer a debtor nation. A new self-assuredness was on show when the Russians hosted the G8 meeting at St Petersburg in 2006. "Suddenly, they had all the right suits, watches and the right cars," said a western official who was there.

Along with all the trappings of western affluence came a new determination that Russia would not be absorbed by the west. The Yeltsin government toyed with the idea of joining the European Union, but that idea is now dead. In an article to mark the EU's 50th anniversary, Mr Putin stated openly that Russia has "no intention of either joining the EU or establishing any form of institutional association with it".

Moscow's relationship with Europe is now defined by its role as the continent's oil and gas supplier. Its tactics have been those of a giant corporation seeking to maximise its market power.

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