Cold War II, Are We About to Go Again?

I was listening to the NPR Technology podcast the other day and heard some interesting news coming out of Estonia.

Supposedly, Estonia has become a leader in computer technology. Yes, that is surprising. But, that’s not the news.

No, the news is that they took down an old Soviet-era war memorial from a square in one of their towns. This upset the Russians and the two countries have been spatting back and forth. Suddenly, Estonia has come under cyber attack. This "denial of services" attack has been aimed at government institutions and before it knocked everything out, the Estonians were able to trace the start of it back to Russia and "various government institutions in Russia."

Russia’s response? "Prove it."

Ah, as if we needed more proof that Putin is a KGB thug in president’s clothing.

Estonia is a NATO country and has requested and received a NATO cyber security team who is in country tying to get everything back on line. The between the lines is that it knocked out Estonia’s entire air defense system. NATO has said they are going to make cyber attacks a priority, but this is the first test of that policy.

So, what will happen? Estonia says that a cyber attack on a country’s defense grid should be treated the same as a physical attack. No loss of life, but if you can’t defend yourself, you can’t defend yourself and one doesn’t accidentally launch a cyber attack (now, whatever you do, don’t press the flashing, red button….)

Yes, it’s been almost a hundred years since WWI, but a person does wonder what the implication of enough saber rattling in eastern Europe will be. Obviously, Estonia can’t take on Russia. Would Russia do more than attack their computers? If so (and the answer is “yes,” what is the world going to do? No one has implied that this particular event is leading us full-steam into a war, and I don’t think it is. But, if Russia’s hand isn’t slapped over this, how far will they try to extend it the next time and the time after that?

And, is this yet another in a growing list of Russia moving aggressively outside their own borders? The smoking gun points to the Russians on a number of poisonings over the last few years, now this, what haven’t we heard about?

I thought I heard someplace that Estonia has some oil, too. Hmmmm, Putin and oil, we know how that book reads.

On top of this, and on top of Bush feeling the need to remind Putin the Cold War is over, the man being groomed to be Putin's replacement is Sergei Ivanov. If elected, he will carry on with Putin's policies. The BBC casts Ivanov as a member of the old, Cold War era and first met Putin as part of Russia's intelligence (KGB) community where he worked for over twenty years. The Carnegie Center calls him one of the “Russian hawks” and doesn't like being asked questions in English.

Is this a new, aggressive turn by the former CCCP? Let us recall Putin going out of his way eight years ago to tell the USA that he would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons first if he felt the need.

WWI had it's encore, as did the Gulf War. Those are the big ones that come to mind, but we are still living with a Korea split by a DMZ and plenty of other conflicts that come back for a second act. Will we add the Cold War to the growing list? History tells us that if an enemy is not completely and utterly vanquished that there is a good chance that a country can find itself fighting the same war multiple times.

Lenin's own writings talked about what to do if a communist country finds themselves broke. The government fakes a change, keeps their head down, and when the country is solvent once more to re-establish the communist regime. For the workers, of course. Estimated time of such a turnaround was given as ten to fifteen years. Of course, that was a hundred years ago and economics are a bit more complex now and it takes more money to run a military for a major country. You can't just get away with handing a rifle to every three peasants anymore. You need tanks, planes, submarines, nuclear war heads, computers..... you get the idea.

Did Reagan win the Cold War? I think he could have if we had followed through and secretly hunted down the ruling members of Russia's Communist Party. The fact is that we never even learned the identities of all the men sitting on the Supreme Soviet – the core power players during the Iron Curtain days. If we have learned, we never released the information and did a good job of keeping it secret.

Tensions over oil, terrorism, and selling of nuclear secrets grow everyday. Russia is facing huge problems with a diminishing population and a government who can't take care of everything like they did under communism but which is unable to let go enough for anyone other than the criminals to found thriving businesses.

Mark Steyn predicts that Russian will hit a critical point in the next ten years in which the temptation to use their muscle to solve their problems could well be overwhelming. With a man like Putin at the helm and grooming a man like Ivanov to continue on with businesses as usual, it becomes less and less likely that we will be able to avoid a revival of the Cold War in at least one form or another. If it doesn't come to an outright arms race, it seems almost inevitable that we will mutually agree to resume our Mexican standoff while competing for oil and fighting proxy wars with countries like Iran.

There are many chess pieces in play right now, far too many to predict with any accuracy what the end game will look like. A smart motorcyclist “dresses for crash” and we would do well to quietly prepare ourselves to deal with an angry and aggressive Russia at some point in the near (ten years +/-) future.