SINCE the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the fall of the Soviet Union 2 years later, members of Washington's foreign policy establishment have suffered from what former US ambassador Chas Freeman has described as the "Cold War Deprivation Syndrome".
After all, during the Cold War, the geo-strategic rivalry and ideological struggle between the world's 2 greatest superpowers - a global confrontation that could have ended with the destruction of the human race in a nuclear exchange - US decision-makers saw themselves as the central players in an historical epoch when "the fate of humanity was hanging in the balance", and believed that the choices they made would be recalled with awe by future generations.
My guess is that most Business Times readers were born after the Berlin Crisis of 1961 or the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, and probably do not recall the sense of drama, a pre-apocalypse fear that one may not live to see the next day, that engulfed the entire world whether you lived in Washington, DC, or in Singapore.
The late American president John F Kennedy expressed that consensus during his historic visit to West Berlin in 1963 when - to the applause of residents of the city who 2 years earlier were under the siege of Soviet troops - he declared: "Ich bin ein Berliner" (I am a Berliner).
So here is the following prediction by yours truly: No American president is going to visit Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, in the near or distant future and declare "I am a Kievian". I actually do not know how you say that in Ukrainian, but then the fact that more than a third of the citizens of Ukraine speak Russian reflects the geo-political realities of 2022 that are very different from those of 1963.
But as someone who resides in Washington, DC, where many of my neighbours and friends are government officials, congressional aides and leading journalists, I can report to you about the excitement that overwhelmed the city and its elites against the backdrop of what many here describe as a rerun of the Berlin Crisis of 1961, not to mention the pressures that have been mounting on President Joe Biden not to give an inch to the commies... oops... sorry... the Russians in Moscow.
As an empathetic kind of guy, I can feel the nostalgia of the Cold War sweeping my buddies in Washington, DC, and their hope that the decisions they now make and the news stories they write would enter the history books.
Indeed, we all recall presidents Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln who led Americans during times of wars and international crises. But who remembers president Calvin Coolidge under which the country had enjoyed a period of peace and prosperity?
Hence the attempt to create the impression that we are facing Cold War 2.0, which requires the Americans not to show any sign of weakness when dealing with the supposed successor of dictator Joseph Stalin in the Kremlin.
But then what is happening now is not "like" the Cold War. Experts are even questioning whether we should continue to designate Russia as a superpower. After losing half of its territory and population in 1991, with its gross domestic product smaller than that of Italy's, and the life expectancy of its men being 65, the only reason that Russia is being treated as a global power is that it still controls a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons. Only its large energy resources are helping the Russians avert economic bankruptcy.
President Vladimir Putin recognises this reality and argues that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US and its Western allies have taken advantage of Russian weakness and have expanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) beyond adding Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Germany, and by extending to Russia's borders in a way that poses a direct threat to his country's national security.
What is clear is that since the Baltic states - with their large Russian-speaking populations and long border with Russia - have joined Nato, the Russians have been warning the West that it was playing with fire. It is important to stress that the attitude is not a product of Putin's imagination, but is shared by most Russians.
So when members of Nato proposed the idea of inviting Georgia and Ukraine to join Nato and the European Union, the Russian leadership employed military power to ensure that it did not happen. The message to the US and the West was that they were threatening core Russian national interests and they could expect Moscow to respond to such moves.
That Putin may be a corrupt dictator does not change the fact that the Russians regard its neighbour Ukraine, with its large Russian population and shared history and culture and geographical proximity, as part of its political and strategic sphere of influence. And they would go to war to defend those interests.
Just like the way the US regards Mexico and Central America - in fact, all of Latin America - as its strategic backyard and would certainly not allow the Russians or the Chinese to deploy their military forces there. Which explains why the US forced the Soviets to remove their missiles from Cuba in 1961 and was even willing to risk a nuclear war to ensure it.
No threat to US national interests
And here is the other side of the geo-strategic coin: How does a possible Russian intervention in Ukraine threaten directly US national interests and leave it no choice but to go to war against the Russians? It does not, which is why Biden would not declare war on Russia if it invades parts of Ukraine.
There is no doubt that a Russian intervention in Ukraine would affect the strategic balance in Europe and impact on the interests of Germany and other European countries. In that case, Germany, France and those European countries should lead the response to Russia's moves and defend their interests, and should not expect the United States to do that for them.
In fact, while they criticise Russian policy in Ukraine, the Germans are continuing to do business with Russia and plan to go ahead with the Nord Stream 2 Russia-to-Germany pipeline, which would increase Germany's economic dependence on Russia.
The bottom line is this: Not only is the Cold War over, but the immediate post-Cold War when the US was at the height of its geo-strategic power (the so-called Unipolar Moment) and Russia had hit its geo-strategic rock bottom, is also over. Especially in the aftermath of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the military challenges facing the United States in East Asia. And Putin knows that.