{"id":17332,"date":"2015-05-14T13:00:06","date_gmt":"2015-05-14T12:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=17332"},"modified":"2015-05-14T13:00:59","modified_gmt":"2015-05-14T12:00:59","slug":"has-the-new-cold-war-already-begun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=17332","title":{"rendered":"Has the new Cold War already begun?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It seems that, for the Russians, it already has. In the West, we see the Russians as the aggressors: intervening militarily in Georgia and Ukraine, constantly testing the security defences of other European nations, and backing a president who seems to want to isolate his country more and more from international norms.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the Russians see it totally different as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2015\/may\/14\/west-cold-war-russia-west-ukraine\">this article<\/a> in today&#8217;s &#8220;Guardian&#8221; newspaper makes clear:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Rather than disbanding our cold war defence arrangement, Nato, we reinvented it as an alliance that could be construed only as being arrayed against Russia. We kept expanding it ever eastward, closer to Russia\u2019s borders.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Whichever interpretation we endorse, it is essential that we maintain a dialogue and seek to understand the intentions of the other side. Susan Richards makes the telling point:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;In America and Britain, government support for research on old Soviet bloc countries was slashed. The State Department and Foreign Office disbanded research units that kept politicians informed. Embassies focused on opening up commercial opportunities. Meanwhile, the press, facing its own economic crisis, also cut back on foreign correspondents. The west simply stopped thinking seriously, and in depth, about Russia and its neighbours.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It seems that, for the Russians, it already has. In the West, we see the Russians as the aggressors: intervening militarily in Georgia and Ukraine, constantly testing the security defences of other European nations, and backing a president who seems to want to isolate his country more and more from international norms. Of course, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17332"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17336,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17332\/revisions\/17336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}