It's not always Russia's fault

Here it is - that one one big issue on which I wholeheartedly agree with Vladimir Putin: there is a New Cold War, it didn't have to happen, and Russia didn't start it.

There. I said it.

Russia and the West are strategic adversaries again because:

1) During the 1990s, the West treated Russia as a weakling (it was) whose interests it didn't need to pay attention to.

2) Since 2000, the West has treated Russia like a hostile entity. It was a self-fulfilling prophesy.

The second point is the one the New Cold Warriors in Washington and Brussels are most likely to take issue with. But the common Western narrative - that Putin is KGB to the soul and was always going to be hell-bent on avenging the collapse of the USSR - overlooks Putin's initial moves to befriend the West after taking office, particularly his overt willingness to help after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

True, he was motivated by his own interests - getting the West to see his dirty war in Chechnya as part of a wider "war on terror" - but the steps he took were genuine. By easing the way for the U.S. to establish airbases in the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, he greenlighted the first-ever NATO military presence in an area that had been Russia's zone of influence since the time of the Tsars. Russia also offered to share its intelligence and advice on Afghanistan, something that perhaps should have been of more interest to the U.S. and its allies, since we now find ourselves just as bogged down there as the Red Army was in the 1980s.

What did Russia get in return? American troops in Georgia. The eastward expansion of NATO all the way into the Baltic states, with talk of Ukraine being eventually added as well. The planned missile defense shield based in Poland and the Czech Republic.

None of these moves is necessarily threatening until you combine them with the West's refusal to talk seriously about including Russia in NATO, or the White House's stubborn refusal to contemplate a missile shield based in Azerbaijan (the country closest to the alleged Iranian threat) instead of Eastern Europe.

"It's not our fault, we didn't start … funnelling multi-billions of dollars into developing weapons systems," Putin said today in announcing that Russia would join what he defined as "a new arms race."

He went on: "We drew down our bases in Cuba and in Vietnam. What did we get? New American bases in Romania, Bulgaria. A new third missile defence region in Poland." That's not just how the Kremlin and its ultranationalist friends view it - that's how most Russians see things.

It's worth noting that as Putin gave his speech, NATO was meeting in Vilnius, the capital of ex-Soviet Lithuania. If NATO is not an anti-Russian alliance, why does it expand up to the Russian border without inviting Moscow to join? If the missile shield is not directed against Russia, why not base it in Azerbaijan?

The West - after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism - laughed at its defeated adversary and ignored its concerns. Now that Russia is resurgent and has the funds to rejoin the fight, that arrogance comes home to roost. We treated it as an enemy until it became one.

It didn't have to be this way.

Good morning Guam?

I got a chuckle a few days ago out of the latest display of the new Russian swagger - media reports that a pair of TU-95 long-range bombers flew some 5,120 kilometres to do an unannounced flyby of a major U.S. military exercise off the Pacific island of Guam:

"Whenever we saw U.S. planes during our flights over the ocean, we greeted them," Air Force Major General Pavel Androsov told reporters. "On Wednesday, we renewed the tradition when our young pilots flew by Guam in two planes. We exchanged smiles with our counterparts, who flew up from a U.S. carrier and returned home."

If it happened the way Androsov suggests, it would have been the first such Russian sortie since the end of the Cold War, and yet another major statement that Moscow is back playing on the global map. But then came this response from Washington:

"We prepared to intercept the bombers but they did not come close enough to a US Navy ship or to the island of Guam to warrant an air-to-air intercept," a Pentagon spokesman said.

So what really happened? My guess is we'll never know how close the Russian planes really got to Guam or what measures the American forces there took to counter the presumptive threat.

What we do learn from this is that the propaganda machines of the Kremlin and the White House are already humming along, whether or not the war machines are "exchanging smiles."

Another act of war

Count me among those unsurprised this morning when Georgia reported that a pair of Russian SU-24 fighter jets had entered Georgian airspace and fired a surface-to-air missile that landed near the town of Tsitelubani, outside Tbilisi. Thankfully it didn't explode - that's a picture of the crumpled dud at left.

This is at least the fourth time in six years that Russia's air force has attacked Georgian territory. Five years ago (while I was in Georgia on a reporting trip) the cause was ostensibly to root out Chechen fighters holed up in the Pankisi Gorge. These days, (there was another attack, confirmed by the United Nations, back in March) the attacks seem linked to Russia's dissatisfaction with the American-supported President Mikhail Saakashvili and a broader problem the Kremlin has accepting the influence Washington now wields over the tiny ex-Soviet republic.

In particular, Saakashvili has made no secret of his intention to bring the Russian-backed separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia back under Tbilisi's control. The March attack by Russian helicopters occurred in the Kodori Gorge, a part of Abkhazia still under Tbilisi's. Yesterday's attack happened near the informal border with South Ossetia. These attacks are very clear, if very clumsy, warning signals about the position Russia will take if Saakashvili pushes too hard.

The Russian military, for the record, has denied the attack and said no Russian planes were anywhere near Tsitelubani. The South Ossetian separatist leader, meanwhile, has suggested that Georgia fired the missile at its own territory as part of a plan to discredit Russia. Given the history, I'll wait for the next UN report before I put much credibility in such the Russian air force's version of events.

In the meantime, I'm beginning to sympathize more and more with something I previously didn't agree with - Saakashvili's quest to bring Russia into NATO.

Russia back in the Mideast?

Just days after planting the white-blue-and-red Russian flag under the ice of the North Pole, the Russian navy is planning another expansionist expedition.

“The Mediterranean Sea is very important strategically for the Black Sea fleet,” the head of the Russian fleet Admiral Vladimir Masorin said last week as he toured the Russian base at the Ukrainian port city of Sevastopol. “I propose that, with the involvement of the Northern and Baltic fleets, the Russian Navy should restore its permanent presence there.”

Russian military experts say the intent is to return warships to a Soviet-era naval base at the Syrian port of Tartus, which is still open though largely in disuse. (The base is said to currently consist of three floating docks - of which only one is operational - a floating workshop, storage facilities, barracks and other facilities.)

Admiral Masorin's statement - reported prominently by the state-run RIA Novosti newswire, a sure sign he wasn't speaking strictly for himself - has caused major ruffles here in Jerusalem. Israel's mass-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper's front-page headline yesterday was right out of the movie Red Dawn: "The Russians are coming."

“A Russian flag on Syrian soil has significant strategic implications. Firstly, it challenges the US and the dominance of the Sixth Fleet stationed in the Mediterranean. Secondly, with its actual presence in Syria, Russia is announcing that it is actively participating in any process and conflict in the Middle East, that it has a stance of its own, and that it must be reckoned with,” the article read.

It's not just the idea of a Russian fleet in Tartus that has the Jewish state and its American backers concerned. It's the wider pattern of Kremlin backing for those the U.S. and Israel consider to be enemies in the region.

- Russia has continued to sell its technology to Tehran for use in in Iran’s controversial nuclear program.

- Russia’s relations with Syria have warmed even as Washington has sought to isolate Damascus over its ties with Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as its alleged support for insurgents in Iraq. Two years ago, Moscow wrote off a nearly $10-billion Soviet-era debt owed to it by Syria. Now it’s reportedly in the midst of selling medium-range missiles and MiG-31 fighter planes to Damascus.

- The Kremlin has also happily bucked the White House line when it comes to dealing with Hamas, the Islamist movement that recently seized control of the Gaza Strip from the American and Israeli-backed Fatah movement. "The level of relations with Russia is excellent," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said recently.

As I wrote in an article in today's The Globe and Mail, much of the motivation for backing Syria and Iran can be attributed to crass commercialism – there are few markets these days for Russian military hardware – the underlying policy increasingly appears to be that Russia supports whatever America is against, and will throw its lot in with anyone willing to stand up to U.S. hegemony.

Sounds, uh, a little like the Cold War.