International security

US–Russian relations: The middle cannot hold

US–Russian relations have been in a downward spiral since Vladimir Putin took the fateful decision to invade Crimea in February 2014. More than two years later, the situation is as grave as it has been since the heated days of the Cold War, in the early 1980s. Russia and the United States are fighting a proxy war in Syria in all but name. Meanwhile, Moscow, still furious after the downing of a Russian bomber in November 2015, seems to be on the brink of war with Turkey, a NATO ally of the United States.

Bilateral diplomatic channels remain open and even active, but they have done little to alleviate the tensions. In the West, distrust of Russia and fear of its aggressive unpredictability means that any concession to Russia inspires fierce accusations of appeasement (Macdonald 2015). In Russia, a sense of historical grievance supports an authoritarian strongman who revels in his willingness to take risks and to assert Russia’s still potent military strength.

This confrontation is quickly becoming a new Cold War. For Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, it already is; as he put it in his remarks at the Munich Security Conference in February, “We have slid into a time of a new Cold War” (Meyer, Wishart, and Biryukov 2016). No two wars, hot or cold, are the same, and a new Cold War will differ greatly from the old. But this new conflict is shaping up to be extraordinarily dangerous, entailing a broad confrontation that will play out in various proxy theaters around the world and bringing back the ever-present possibility of nuclear war (Charap and Shapiro 2015).