Russain President Vladimir Putin has compared hostile moves against his country by US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to the attack by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union. This may be dismissed as hyperbolic, but there is no denying that relations between Washington and Moscow are "worse than at any time since the Cold War," as Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia, said early this month. McFaul has reasons to feel concerned. After all, he was the chief architect of the Obama administration's so-called "reset" with Russia, indicating Washington's desire to improve relations with Moscow. The reset deteriorated mainly because of Russia's decision to harbor Edward Snowden who leaked National Security Agency's secrets. But the thaw was not without its beneficial effects for America like the new START arms treaty and Russia's support of UN Security Council resolutions on Libya. However, things took a turn for the worse after Russia's annexation of Crimea and tensions have been clearly rising. Russian jets buzz US planes and ships in the Baltic Sea, while American armored brigades deployed to Europe and NATO start military drills near the Russian border. So much so NATO's retiring supreme allied commander, Europe says that "trying to prevent a Cold War" was now his successor's responsibility. It may be too early to talk of a Cold War II. Russia is no Soviet Union and Russia-West rivalry lacks an ideological component (preventing the spread of communism) and global reach. Still the situation is fraught with danger. There is a general feeling that Hillary Clinton, known for her hawkish foreign policy views, will keenly push a bellicose agenda toward Russia, if elected president. It was Clinton who as secretary of state in the first Obama administration in 2009-2013 plunged bilateral relations into the freezer. Some blame her for the present geopolitical tensions. There are any number of flash points — the Baltic region, Eastern Europe, Ukraine, the Southern Caucus region, or the Black Sea — where one wrong step by either of the two antagonists could lead to a confrontation. The situation calls for more dialogue and cooperation with Russia, as suggested by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and endorsed by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. NATO maneuvers could further inflame the security situation in Eastern Europe, Steinmeier said this week. Both sides are responsible for the present situation. US made the mistake of eastward expansion of NATO though Secretary of State James Baker (under President H.W. Bush) had assured the Soviets that NATO would not expand "one inch" further east if they would allow reunification of Germany. In 1996, George Kennan, architect of the US containment policy toward the Soviet Union, had warned that NATO's expansion into former Soviet territories would be a "strategic blunder of potentially epic proportions." As for Russia, its "hybrid warfare" which included fomenting pro-Russian demonstrations in eastern Ukraine, supporting local military proxies, and infiltrating Ukraine's intelligence agency was not calculated to improve relations with the West or inspire Western confidence in its good intentions. But past history and present military and economic realities don't justify US fears of an "existential threat" from Russia. Currently, the $18 trillion American economy is approximately ten times the size of Russia's. With a 2015 military budget of $600 billion, Washington spends approximately ten times the amount on defense as does Moscow. At the same time, Russia has reasons for worry. Western hostility toward Russia goes back to French Emperor Napoleon and German Chancellor Adolf Hitler. Soviet Union lost 30 million of its citizens in its heroic resistance against German aggression in World War II. Everybody would do well to remember that Putin made his Nazi comparison while speaking at the 75-year anniversary of the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. How appropriate a German official last week described the largest-ever NATO war exercises being conducted in Poland as "warmongering!"
