Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussion of the increasingly dangerous crisis in US/NATO-Russian relations. Cohen emphasizes that as the Minsk agreement to negotiate the Ukrainian civil and proxy war is being rejected by all participants (except Moscow), the New Cold War is rapidly being militarized and spreading to many countries in Eastern Europe. The result may be a confrontation more dangerous than the preceding 40-year Cold War, for several reasons: its epicenter is not in Berlin but on Russia’s borders; unlike during that cold war, there are no shared rules of behavior or, as evidenced by the apparent collapse of the Minsk accord, ongoing diplomacy; and a new nuclear arms race is beginning without the traditional arms control process. Also discussed is whether the upcoming summit in Russia of Shanghai Cooperation and BRICS nations indicates that the Obama administration’s policy of “isolating Putin’s Russia” has failed and instead spurred a process toward a “multipolar” world order. Positions taken, or not taken, on the crisis by current candidates for the US presidency are also examined.
