The new US-Russian Cold War – and the pseudo-independence of Abkhazia

(Editorial, Crescent International, September 2008.)

For people above a certain age, there is something almost comfortingly familiar about the international politicking over Russia’s invasion of Georgia and its subsequent recognition of the ‘independence’ of the two separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.  When US officials began talking about the risk of a new Cold War, it was supposed to be with a hint of menace.  Instead, it came across almost as wistful, as harking back to the simpler international politics of a time when the world was neatly divided into two clearly demarcated imperial power blocs, when the US knew and understood its enemy, largely because it was a mirror image of the West itself.