Dear Editor,
As I keep insisting, the Cold War has been warmed over and it is up and running at more than a pedestrian pace. The hope is that it does not heat up too much nor accelerate too powerfully, especially around this neighbourhood, which already has more than its share of tensions. Unfortunately, the signs and portents are not too favourable.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin has gone on record to put any residual doubts to rest: he has no fears about a second Cuban Missile Crisis. No qualms. No hesitancy. No recoiling. He does not strike me as the withdrawing kind. His thinking and words are, as was articulated by George W. Bush: bring it on. Let the mat be rolled out and the field of battle be readied: a nuclear winter does not bring flinching. I believe that the soothing times of glasnost and perestroika are history; have been so for a while now. It is a different world today; different and new, but old in some of the old ways, and in Russia, there is the man that the moment and hour require. This man has the instincts (and expertise) of a judoka: he looks to throw down, to turn on the head.
I sense in this Russian chief a cold, calculating ruthlessness; don’t mess with me is the aura that he projects. Though he might be insulted by the label of Vlad the Impaler, I do not think that he would mind being termed Vlad the Destroyer. In fact, I believe he would relish such a title, accept it as an honorific, as his due. That fateful choice of words from the Bhagavad Gita, as intoned by Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atom bomb, in a later reflection on the culmination of his handiwork from that dawn in the sands of New Mexico, now ring ominously: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” A fireball and holocausts were dodged in October 1962. Nikita Khrushchev blinked then; he lost his head. Vladimir Putin today is giving preemptive notice: that was then, this is now. That was him, this is me. Deal with me at your peril.
That, too, is part of the problem and peril. For his counterpart is almost the diametrical opposite of the Russian Bear. The supposed American Eagle flies jerkily around the ground; and lacks the panoramic vision that comes from those accustomed to operating at 30,000 feet, while equipped with the big picture of a world vision. The American is bogged down in the weeds and delighted at himself, while the world passes by; a study of leadership mantle wasted and diminished. There is no method to that particular and peculiar example of madness; it is simply just madness of a different variety. In many regards, this stewardship is a classic case of political delirium tremens in action and on full display. There is the restless spirit -spasmodic; the reckless nature -erratic; the loose lips -caustic. In this time of hotlines and higher temperatures, loose lips can do more than sink ships.
Clearly, the American is at a distinct disadvantage. The Russian knows this, and has every intention of capitalizing on this deficit through his own sharp signals and increasing intransigence. Whereas the westerner is haphazard and hazardous, the Slav is clinical and resolute. He is more evenly calibrated, more astute, and definitely more unfettered. He, also, has a long memory and the smarting still felt in his part of the world where 1962 is accepted as more than leadership failure and opportunity, but as a loss of manhood and that aura of invincibility. The commitment is that there must be no repeat of the ignominy of 1962. And that is the final word; the tools are better; the scales believed to be tilted towards superiority. Therein, too, reside the foundations of what could turn out to be grievous miscalculation and worse misjudgment, the playbook for misadventure. Right around the corner, Venezuela increasingly assumes the contours of a testing ground; China muddied the mix by throwing in its lot with the Russians. Guyana is too close for comfort in all of this big power strategizing and maneuvering. Their ambitions are not that of the locals preoccupied with their own tempests and traumas. The Cold War is back; it threatens to come home, right here.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
