Journalistic references to a “new Cold War” or “Cold War 2.0” 1 in the aftermath of the Russian annexation of Crimea and its political-military interference in eastern Ukraine since February–March 2014 are misleading. Instead, the post-Cold War era best resembles a mix of the pre-World War I and interwar periods—particularly following the disaggregation of the Soviet Empire —more so than the Cold War in which the global constellation of powers had been dominated by the US and Soviet Union . 2
This is not to argue that the Cold War—which directly or indirectly killed an estimated 20–25 million people in interstate conflicts and as much as seventy-six million deaths if one included innerstate “genocide ” and “democide” in the period 1947–1987 3 in what can be considered a quasi-global war that was fought by surrogate forces primarily in semi-peripheral and peripheral regions—was not dangerous. In fact, the Cold War almost exploded into a nuclear conflict during the Cuban Missile Crisis and during NATO’s Able Archer Exercises, as discussed in this book, and on several other occasions despite the belief that mutual assured destruction (MAD) —what was also called the “delicate balance of terror” 4 —would prevent a nuclear war . Yet, in contemporary circumstances, it is no longer as certain (as it at least appeared to be during the Cold War ) that nuclear weaponry possessed by major (or by emerging regional) powers will necessarily serve as a deterrent against other nuclear powers.
The post-1945 atomic age has often been depicted as if it is a totally unique period in human history. And yet, major and regional powers, as well as lesser states, with or without nuclear weaponry, continue to interact in ways that are similar to the pre-atomic age, but manipulating different kinds of tools in differing geostrategic, political-economic, and normative circumstances and contexts. This raises the question as to whether atomic weapons will necessarily deter or prevent direct wars fought between nuclear capable states as neorealists have argued. In the age of asymmetrical and hybrid and cyber-warfare , it is not at all certain that the threat of a nuclear counterstrike will necessarily prevent a catastrophic attack by an anti-state partisan group, or even by a state leadership—particularly if it is believed that it is possible to get away with a first strike without being struck back.
As major powers begin to involve themselves in domestic civil wars or in regional conflicts, it is possible for the major and regional powers to support opposing factions, thus risking being drawn into a conventional, if not nuclear, confrontation. In such a situation, what if an ally of one nuclear weapons state purposely or inadvertently provokes a conflict with another nuclear weapons state or its ally? Or what if that state is made to look as if it provoked that conflict? What might be the response of those nuclear weapons states? Would the nuclear power then risk the “threat that leaves something to chance” in Thomas Schelling ’s words—as if one is already certain of an uncertain outcome? 5
The question thus arises as to whether the significant differences between the global system now, such as state possession of nuclear weapons, will necessarily outweigh the similarities of past state behavior—and hence prevent the possibility of yet another major power war? Will proclaimed US nuclear superiority and “peace through strength” really make a difference in deterring the outbreak of a potential conflict in the post-Cold War era under President Trump or future US administrations as compared to the period before the Cold War “ended” when President Ronald Reagan had previously called for “peace through strength”? What if American global hegemony is challenged in specific regional circumstances in which the rival believes it can seize the advantage?
In the post-Cold War period, nuclear weapons have done nothing to prevent what the French call guéguerres (or relatively limited regional wars) that now take place in very different structural and systemic circumstances than they did during the Cold War. Nor is it certain that nuclear weaponry will necessarily prevent a major power war, nor a war fought by regional states with differing forms of weapons of mass destruction, that is nevertheless backed by the major nuclear powers—in which the threat to use nuclear weaponry remains in the background. Given the miniaturization of nuclear weaponry, which makes tactical nuclear weaponry more usable, coupled with new military tactics of “hybrid” or “non-linear” warfare enhanced by cyber technologies, 6 plus the development of hypersonic weaponry , which could make missile defense systems obsolete, the possibility of war between major nuclear powers cannot be ruled out so easily as it appeared to be in the Cold War .
The point is that the myth of nuclear deterrence did nothing to stop a number of seemingly intractable regional wars that had been initiated during the Cold War and that continue to impact post-Cold War relations. More than that, given the fact that the US and Soviet Union did come close to a nuclear war on several occasions, it was not so much the doctrine of mutual assured destruction that prevented the real possibility of nuclear conflict during the Cold War. More crucially, nuclear war was prevented by the fact that the US and Soviet Union possessed a number of common interests and in fact collaborated to a significant degree with mutual respect and rough parity as the Cold War progressed in keeping potential political-economic and military rivals, Germany , Japan , and China , among other potential “threats,” from upsetting the US–Soviet dominated status quo.
What makes the possibilities of major power conflict more likely today than during the Cold War is the fact that the formerly collaborative aspects of the US–Soviet relationship are now in the process of thoroughly fracturing in the aftermath of German unification , Soviet disaggregation, and NATO and European Union enlargement , and the Russian annexation of Crimea and political-military intervention in eastern Ukraine, coupled with a renewed conventional and nuclear weapons buildup since 2009. Moreover, the rise of China , at least tacitly aligned with Russia , as a major political-economic and military actor, has risked conflict in the South and East China Seas .
In the aftermath of the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, the US and NATO have strengthened financial and military supports for Kiev particularly after the 2017 collapse of the 2014 Minsk II accords that were intended to bring peace to eastern Ukraine . This conflict has risked undermining the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act which sought to gain Russian acceptance for NATO enlargement into post-Soviet spheres of security and influence. And in the Indo-Pacific , in addition to the real threat of a nuclear war with North Korea , the US since has generally increased its diplomatic and military support for Taiwanese independence in Beijing’s eyes—at the risk of breaking Henry Kissinger’s “constructive ambiguity” of the 1972 Shanghai Agreement or “One China” policy that was the basis of US–Chinese cooperation since the Vietnam War. In essence, both the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act and 1972 Shanghai Agreement—which represent the fundamental accords that permit positive US–Russia and US –China collaboration—appear to be in the process of disintegration. This is not to overlook the partial, if not complete, breakdown of international treaties, such as ABM treaty , the CFE treaty , and the INF treaty . One can also mention the general impotence of the UN Security Council , and even the possibility that states will no longer engage in the multilateral Contact Group approach to conflict management and conflict resolution after President Trump dropped out of the 2017 Iran Nuclear Accord (The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) that had been negotiated by the members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany and the European Union in an effort to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapons capability.
While the Cold War was certainly “dangerous,” the contemporary global polycentric system appears even more “dangerous” due to the reality that there are more actual and potential state-supported and anti-state “threats” that could provoke regional and major power conflicts. The greater number of potential threats, which now involve major powers, is combined with the fact that even lesser militant groups can obtain and utilize differing forms of highly destructive technologies and weapons of mass destruction for purposes of attack or blackmail. This is not to overlook ongoing underground wars involving anti-state “terrorist” groups, drug traffickers, and new forms of cyber-sabotage and cyber-warfare taking place in the “dark web” that are engaged in by state security organizations of differing countries, in addition to anti-state organizations and alt-state individual and group “hackers.”
The primary theoretical concern raised in this book is that the nature of global geostrategic, military-technological-industrial, political-economic/financial, and socio-cultural/ideological rivalry does not appear to be moving in the direction of a general self-sustaining regional and global equipoise . Nor do the geo-economic and technological dimensions of this rivalry operate in close and careful interaction with the natural environment . Instead, contemporary interstate rivalry—involving relatively new tactics of strategic leveraging plus new technologies capable of extensive exploitation of the earth’s precious and ultimately limited natural resources—appears to be in the process of forging two potentially countervai...