A New Strategy for a New Cold War

Russia is bound and determined to re-establish the Soviet Hegemony over Southern and Eastern Europe.  That is clear from today's decision to officially recognize the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.  Their stark aggression in Georgia this past month is nothing less than aggressive war -- the kind of war launched by Stalin and Hitler sixty nine years ago in Poland.

We are most certainly facing at least a new Cold War, if not a new Hot War.  And we need a new strategy to confront a new enemy using old tactics.

Of course, the irony is that the current makeup and borders of the former Soviet republics was a Russian policy decision from the Yeltsin regime to not allow republics to break up along ethnic lines.  The inclusion of South Ossetia and Abhazia in the Republic of Georgia was a Russian decision, not a Georgian one. It is the perfect case of "be careful what you wish for, you may just get it".

Russia is clearly using the US recognition of Kosovo as a pretext for these moves -- stark aggression, hostile war against sovereign nations, and so on.  And the move of former Soviet slave states like Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia into the Western sphere of influence is serving as a greater pretext (in their view) of a need to defend and expand "The Motherland" to regain the influence they once had under Soviet Facism and Communism.

Witness their threats to use nuclear weapons against Poland.  Once again, the Poles are center stage as a buttress against Russian imperialism.

This new threat, whether it is hot or cold, demands a new strategy -- on all four fronts:  diplomacy, economics, intelligence, and military.

We need to consider our needs -- and the needs of our friends and allies -- first, and the needs of the Russians last. 

And we need to started.