Is the Cold War over? Textbooks say yes and even cite the date that hostilities ended: Dec. 3, 1989, during the Malta Summit of Mikhail Gorbachev and President George H.W. Bush. But some doubts still remain — or have reappeared.
Today, leaders in Russia are playing their cards exactly by the Leonid Brezhnev playbook. Domestically they are whipping up anti-Western hysteria, accusing the West and its allies of various forms of "interference in Russia's domestic affairs" — mostly when voices in the West protest the repression of Russian opposition activists. The country continues to support an enormous army, and the defense budget is growing by leaps and bounds (its projected growth is 35 percent over the next three years). In foreign affairs, Russia, like the Soviet Union before it, is always ready to lend a hand to any rogue state on any continent. The fruits of its "cooperation" with Iran, Syria and North Korea are a diplomatic headache for the rest of the world.
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