Russia and the West: Are we experiencing another cold war?

It is hard to imagine a period since the end of the Cold War when relations between Russia and the United States have been quite so bad.

US officials have described the joint Russian-Syrian onslaught against Aleppo as "barbarism" and warned that war crimes are being carried out.

The Russian president has spoken explicitly about the worsening climate between Washington and Moscow, insisting that what the Obama administration wants is "diktat" rather than dialogue.

But Russia and the US both realise that they have a vital role to play in Syria

A permanent war in Syria doesn't benefit Moscow any more than Washington.

But without that basic trust and understanding between them, any dialogue rests upon shaky foundations.

It was never supposed to be like this. The end of the Cold War was supposed to usher in a new era.

For a time Russia retreated from the world stage, but now it is back with a vengeance, eager to consolidate its position nearer home; to restore something of its former global role and to make up for perceived slights perpetrated by the West.

Why have things now got so bad and is it correct to describe the present state of affairs as a "new Cold War"?

For Paul R Pillar, a senior fellow at the Centre for Security Studies at Georgetown University the initial fault lies with the West.

"The relationship went wrong when the West did not treat Russia as a nation that had shaken off Soviet Communism,"

"It should have been welcomed as such into a new community of nations - but instead it was regarded as the successor state of the USSR, inheriting its status as the principal focus of Western distrust."

This omission was compounded by the West's enthusiasm for Nato expansion, first taking in countries like Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, who had long struggled against rule from Moscow.

In short, Russia believes that it has been treated unfairly since the end of the Cold War.

This, of course, is not the conventional view in the West, which prefers to focus on Russian "revanchism" (reclaim lost territory) - personified by Vladimir Putin, a man who has described the collapse of the Soviet Union as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th century.

Sir John Sawers, the former head of MI6, prefers to focus on the more recent period Russian action in Syria.

He said that the West had not paid sufficient attention to building the right strategic relationship with Russia over the last eight years.

"If there was a clear understanding between Washington and Moscow about the rules of the road - that we are not trying to bring down each other's systems - then solving regional problems like Syria or Ukraine or North Korea - would be easier

Several experts point to the failure of the Obama administration's diplomacy and the mixed signals it has often sent.

Washington's absolute power may be declining. Is it prepared to back up its rhetoric with force? (In Syria the answer has been no.)

And has it really thought through the implications of the positions that it has taken towards Moscow?

In 2014, in the wake of Russia's annexation of the Crimea, Mr Putin spoke to the Russian Duma, noting that "if you compress the spring all the way to its limit it will snap back hard. You must remember this", he stressed.

As Nikolas K Gvosdev noted  "The prudent response would either be to find ways to de-escalate the pressure on the spring or to prepare for its snapback and to be able to cushion the shock".

So, are we entering a "new Cold War"?

Pillar, thinks this is not the right term. "There is not the sort of global ideological competition that characterised the Cold War and fortunately we do not have another nuclear arms race,”

"What is left is great competition for influence and Russia is a power of a lesser order than the Soviet Union was and than the superpower United States still is."

The situation is reminiscent of 2008 when US-Russia relations went into the freezer in the wake of the Russia-Georgia war. This left the Bush administration's policy towards Moscow in a shambles and it is this mess that President Obama inherited.

Sir John told the BBC that, in his view, "there is a big responsibility on the next US president to establish a different sort of relationship. We are not looking for a warmer relationship with Russia and we are not looking for a frostier relationship with Russia", he asserts.

"What we are looking for is a strategic understanding with Moscow about how we provide for global stability, for stability across Europe between Russia and the US, so that the fundamental stability of the world is put on a firmer basis than it has been."

Pax Americana - the American unipolar moment - he notes, "was very short-lived and it is now over".

Questions

·         What have US officials have described the joint Russian/Syrian attack on Aleppo as, and what does this mean?

·         What did the Russian President say about the Obama administration?

·         What does the article say about trust between the US and Russia?

·         Who does Pillar blame for the relationship going wrong?  What reasons does he give?

·         What is the conventional view in the West about the deterioration of relations?

·         What does Sawers say about the breakdown in the relationship?

·         What do you think Putin meant when he said "if you compress the spring all the way to its limit it will snap back hard. You must remember this"

·         Why does Pillar thing we are not entering a new cold war?