The New Cold War as a Geopolitical and civilizational Reality

The 90s of the last century, especially their first half, were characterized by the conviction of the ruling elites both in the West and in Russia that the "cold war", which actually lasted from 1945 to 1989, ended with the destruction of the Berlin Wall with the unconditional victory of the West and the defeat of the USSR and its allies in Eastern Europe ^[1].

The author of these lines worked in those years as a senior diplomat (adviser) of the Embassy of the USSR, and then Russia in Washington. I remember, according to the prominent American historian Stephen Cohen, the "triumphalism" of the elite and ordinary citizens of the United States celebrating victory over America's historical enemy in the person of our country ^{[5, p. 550]}, feelings of depression and humiliation that Soviet diplomats then experienced, like most citizens of the USSR. 

These feelings manifested themselves with particular force during the speech of Boris Yeltsin, who was in the United States on an official visit, at a joint session of Congress in June 1992. His triumphant rhetoric, unlike American reasons to rejoice at the Soviet failure, was reduced to insulting humiliation of his own great country in front of its opponents and to praising America ^[15].

Today - although this process has begun for a long time – Russia is going through a process of radical rethinking of such unshakable postulates that seemed to many thirty years ago. For example, in 2021, the First Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia (former President and Prime Minister) Dmitry Medvedev ^[23] and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ^[21] acknowledged that Russia is now in a state of a new cold war with the West, and it is even worse and more dangerous than the previous "cold war".

In the same year, President Vladimir Putin said that in his opinion, after 1991, "the main conditions for the end of the military-political and military confrontation were created in the world," but even then those who, after the end of the cold War, felt like winners who had ascended to Olympus, soon felt that the ground was leaving them from under my feet. The President of Russia sees the main reason for this in the exhaustion of opportunities entangled in the contradictions of the current model of capitalism and in the main of them – the worsening problem of social inequality. Hence his conclusion about the need to build a social state that overcomes these problems ^[16].

In fact, already in the mid-1990s, following the post-Soviet euphoria, Moscow began to feel that something had gone wrong. The expected "friendship" and economic assistance from the West (as payment for the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, and then from the USSR, the rejection of allies in Europe and socialism) turned out to be an illusion. The NATO bloc, based on the decisions of the anniversary session of the Council of this bloc in Washington in April 1999, in the same spring, in violation of all the principles of international law and ignoring the UN Security Council, attacked Yugoslavia, Russia's historical ally. Which, in turn, disrupted the visit of the then Prime Minister E.M. Primakov to the United States.

At the same time, the same bloc, consistently expanding at the expense of our other former Warsaw Pact allies and the former Soviet republics of the Baltic States, began an active advance to the East. As noted by the Russian political scientist A. Kortunov, then it suddenly became clear that "the Berlin Wall, which was destroyed forever, suddenly moved to the borders of the Moscow Kingdom" ^[19].

Gradually, this unexpected and extremely undesirable geopolitical reality began to reach Yeltsin. The minutes of his negotiations with this American leader in the late 90s of the last century, published in the USA in August 2018 on the website of the Presidential library of B. Clinton, are oversaturated with complaints and claims of the Kremlin leader against the background of the ridiculously detached reaction of the American president.

Taking into account the context of this article, the most important is the transcript of the conversation between Yeltsin and Clinton in Helsinki on March 21, 1997, on the eve of the signing of the "Russia-NATO Founding Act". At this meeting, the Russian side, which had begun to sober up politically, tried to insist on non-expansion of NATO into the territory of the former Soviet republics. Yeltsin then called such an expansion a mistake and initially refused to sign an agreement with NATO in the presence of such a direct threat to Russia's national security, especially insisting on the "restraint of the United States on the Ukrainian field" and the rejection of the bloc's maneuvers off the coast of Crimea. 

"... Let's make an oral deal in a gentlemanly way: no former Soviet republic will join NATO. We can conclude an agreement non-publicly," Yeltsin urged the American. In response, Clinton categorically rejected these insistence and the Act was signed in the form proposed by the Americans (for the first time Yeltsin – and also unsuccessfully - raised with Clinton the topic of NATO expansion to the East back in 1995).

Apparently, by the end of his stay in the Kremlin, Yeltsin had a cumulative effect of feelings of disappointment and irritation towards American partners. And this manifested itself in his conversation with Clinton in November 1999: "I ask you one thing. Just give Europe to Russia. The USA is not in Europe. Europe should be dealt with by Europeans. Russia is half Europe, half Asia... Moscow is Europe, and I like it. You can take all the other countries in the world and provide security for them. And I will take Europe and ensure its security. Well, not me, but Russia in general."

It is clear that such claims were rejected by Clinton all the more, and with undisguised mockery. And Yeltsin had to swallow it. After all, almost all of his meetings with the American president consisted of requests from the Russian president: to support the dissolution and execution of his own parliament (which Washington then immediately and openly did), to give money to pay salaries and pensions to citizens in distress during his rule, to approve the candidacy of a successor, etc. ^[36].

By this time, the enthusiasm of the US press for Boris Yeltsin had been replaced there by his offensive cartoons. It reached their newspapers and TV channels that "friend Boris" and "friend Bill" began to quickly lose mutual sympathy. Even then, the opposing geopolitical interests in the relations between Moscow and Washington with their allies began to play an increasingly decisive role in comparison with their initially unnatural "friendship" evaporating before their eyes.

The disappointment in the prospects of this friendship disappeared much faster from the new leader of Russia. Still in the status of acting president, in a New Year's call to the same Clinton on January 1, 2000, V. Putin, inviting the US president to visit "at any time, at any time convenient (for him)" and expressing the hope that "on the main topics we will always be together," has already stated that "there are issues on which we disagree" ^[37].

At one time, according to the current testimony of the Secretary General of NATO in 1999-2004, British General George Robertson, Putin assumed that Russia would be able to join the North Atlantic Alliance, becoming part of Western Europe. And then I was waiting for an invitation from NATO. However, later he radically revised his views on this issue ^[40]. Now the press secretary of the President V. Peskov states that "the Russian side has never had illusions about NATO, we know the essence of this alliance… He is not made for the world… It was conceived, assembled and designed for confrontation"^[26].

As a result of NATO's aggression against Yugoslavia, the mass entry of the former Soviet republics and allies of the USSR in Eastern Europe into this union, the approach of troops and weapons of this bloc to our borders, as well as open support in the West for the raging separatist movements and wars on the territory of the Russian Federation and condemnation of the actions of the Russian leadership there to curb them, then, at the turn of the century the process of mutual disappointment and alienation became even more pronounced – and on both sides.

It has sharply intensified after Vladimir Putin's famous Munich speech in 2007, Russia's recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008, and especially the conflict in Ukraine and the reunification of Crimea in 2014 – events dictated by the awareness of the national interests of our country, the requirements of ensuring its security.

The presence of insurmountable disagreements and contradictions was reflected then not only in the tone of the media on both sides, but also in the publications of leading American and Russian political scientists. It is enough to compare the content of the works of the same Zbigniew Brzezinski in the early and late 90s of the last century. His initial triumphalist assessments of the significance of the "collapse of the USSR", by the end of the century, were replaced by motives of disappointment that Russia's policy did not follow the course expected by Washington and the calculation of the globalist transformation of humanity is not justified ^{[2; 3]}.

At the same time, significant recognition appeared from the Russian side. After the collapse of the USSR, Gorbachev's adviser and one of the fathers of perestroika and new political thinking, Georgy Shakhnazarov, admitted that "our analysis of perestroika in the 1980s was based solely on ideological principles. We sincerely believed that if we removed the severity of the ideological confrontation between communism and socialism, we would minimize the danger of confrontation between the two blocs, reduce the possibility and probability of a nuclear conflict and do good to humanity. At the same time ... we were convinced that the West would accept our proposal based on the same interests. What we didn't take into account is... that there is a deeper confrontation - a geopolitical confrontation between two types of civilizations... which is deeper than the ideological confrontation between capitalism and socialism. That's what we didn't take into account… Now we have lost, it is our fault, it is our tragedy. After that... we lost a great country" ^[14]. 

Although belatedly, Shakhnazarov turned out to be right about the main thing: after all, the total confrontation between Russia and the West dates back at least a thousand years, it began even before the baptism of Russia in 988 ^[6]. And the choice made then by Prince Vladimir towards the adoption of Orthodoxy by Russia as the ruling religion, all the more conditioned the independence of Russia's state policy from Catholicism (that is, from the West) and an insurmountable conflict with it in principle. In fact, there is a fundamental civilizational and geopolitical gap.

Even Peter I, in one of his letters to his son, Tsarevich Alexei, noticed that Europe had lowered an "iron curtain" before Russia ^[27]. If we recall the history, to put it mildly, of the dislike of the same Americans for Russia, it is worth mentioning 1850, when the US Senate discussed the "Cass resolution" in the light of the suppression of the Hungarian revolution. Her active supporter was Democratic Senator John Parker Hell, who called then not to waste time on trifles and "judge the Russian tsar." Already in the 1880s, the US Congress adopted a series of decisions condemning the policy of Alexander III ... ^{[10, p. 124]}.

A century later, in 1946, Winston Churchill, in a speech in Fulton, Missouri, in the presence of the President of the United States, who was completely in solidarity with him, G. Truman, ritually expressing admiration for the "heroic Russian people and respect" for my wartime comrade Marshal Stalin," immediately began talking about Russia's "expansionist aspirations" and the "iron curtain" that had descended on Europe, which the "fraternal union of English-speaking countries" was called upon to resist.

As the subsequent practice has shown, in fact, as in the time of Peter (who sincerely wanted to cooperate with the West), and after the Second World War, our country was interested in the same. In both cases, this curtain was lowered in front of our noses by the West, which did not want to allow the flourishing of an alien civilization, a commercial and military competitor. In 1946, under the pretext of countering the "communist fifth columns" ^[31].

For the third time, the same iron curtain fell before us in two thousand years. The self-destruction of the USSR and socialism in our country and in Europe has by no means made the West an ally or at least a loyal neighbor. The price of this turned out to be terrible for us, and the result was not just zero – negative. The West, led by the United States, has never demonstrated such a degree of hatred towards Russia as it does now – neither before the revolution, nor after it, nor under Stalin, and even more so under Brezhnev, because then the USSR, according to the then recognition of American President R. Nixon, turned into a superpower equal to the United States in power and global influence, which it became the basis of the detente of the 1970s.

Although it is clear that our country seemed closest to Westerners in a state of fragility, weakness and complete dependence on them. Thus, according to surveys, in 1991 71% of Americans began to see post-Soviet Russia as a "friendly country" and even an "ally" ^[29]. But in 2021, when Russia became much stronger in defense terms and began to pursue an independent policy, a record 77% of US citizens already treat Russia badly or very badly ^[30].

This is also understood in the West today. So, according to Professor J. Mearsheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago, the chances of improving his country's relations with Russia in the foreseeable future are very small, even if President Biden wanted it. For in the United States, "Russophobic sentiments are so widespread that it would take enormous efforts to change policy towards Russia" ^[24].

So, even German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was considered relatively loyal to Russia for a long time, admitted when retiring in October 2021 that twenty years ago, during a speech delivered by V. Putin in German in the Bundestag about the good traditions of Russian-German relations, she realized that there were "significant disagreements" with the Russian leader, who called the collapse of the USSR a "sad event" while she herself "feels joy" about it. Later, her negative assessments of the "annexation of Crimea" and military clashes in eastern Ukraine were added to this realization"^[39].

At the same time, until recently, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg generally stated that "relations between Russia and NATO are at the lowest level since the Cold War, and this is due to Russia's aggressive actions, as well as its strengthening of its defense capabilities." Commenting on these statements, the representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, M. Zakharova, aggravated this assessment, noting that NATO "drove our relations into a state in which they were not even in the harshest times of the Cold War" ^[11]. As if to confirm this fact, German Defense Minister A. Kramp-Karrenbauer then called on NATO to "clearly demonstrate to Russia that the alliance is ready for military action" against it" ^[34].

The world community is entering an era of increased strategic instability, in turn, said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces, General Mark Milli. According to him, three centers of power are now being formed in the system of international relations — Russia, China and the United States.

"We are entering a tripolar world where the United States, Russia and China are all great powers," Milli said at a security forum organized by the Aspen Institute. In his opinion, such a world will be more unstable in strategic terms, "than in the last 40, 50, 60 or 70 years" ^[33].

But Stalin understood this pattern just 75 years ago, in his response to the Fulton speech on the pages of Pravda, accusing Churchill of fomenting a new war (the Soviet leader knew from intelligence reports that even before the end of the war in Europe, Churchill was already planning an attack on our country), in violation of the geopolitical interests of the USSR and the right to national security, which we have won at an unheard-of price: "Perhaps," Stalin said at the time, "in some places they are inclined to forget these colossal sacrifices of the Soviet people, who ensured the liberation of Europe from Hitler's yoke. But the Soviet Union cannot forget about them. The question is, what can be surprising in the fact that the Soviet Union, wishing to protect itself for the future, is trying to ensure that in these countries (Eastern and Central Europe – L.D.) there are governments loyal to the Soviet Union? How can we, without going mad, qualify these peaceful aspirations of the Soviet Union as expansionist tendencies of our state?" ^[17].

The experience of our time has once again shown that such fundamental contradictions do not disappear with the change of socio-political systems, as happened in 1991. No matter how acute the confrontation between the USSR and the West was during that "cold war", this war itself and what happened after its completion prove:  despite all the socio-political and class antagonisms within the framework of the confrontation between liberalism and Marxism (bearing in mind that both these philosophical and economic doctrines were born in the West), they were not the main ones in the confrontation even then.  As Sergey Kortunov notes on this occasion, "liberal and communist ideologies are not antipodes, but only two branches of rationalistic Western philosophy" ^[19].

The study of Western documents (which laid the foundation for the ideology and practice of this confrontation in the 40s - 80s of the last century) shows that the struggle against socialism as an ideology and system was an important, but far from decisive motive for the West. In these documents, even the word "USSR" was used extremely rarely. It was not by chance that "Russia" appeared there as an eternal civilizational and geopolitical opponent of the West, and the Soviet Union was considered as a temporary reincarnation of this concept.

In the same 1942, when the USSR was fighting alone with Europe attacking us, and Churchill, who arrived in Moscow, swearing allegiance to the allies, explained to Stalin the impossibility of opening the second front promised to us at that time, he also told members of his cabinet: "All my thoughts are turned, first of all, to Europe." as the progenitor of modern nations and civilization. A terrible catastrophe would have occurred if Russian barbarism had destroyed the culture and independence of the ancient European states" ^[32].

As you can see, there is no particular fear of "communism" in Russia here. We are talking about the fear of "Russian barbarism", allegedly originated many centuries before. In 1948, in the document of the US National Security Council "Goals against Russia", the main task was defined as "to minimize the power and influence of Moscow." It said in relation to Russia: "We must create automatic guarantees to ensure that even a non-communist and nominally friendly regime: a) does not have great military power; b) is economically heavily dependent on the outside world" ^[38]. And in the directive of the National Security Council adopted in the same year on August 18, the goal was set: "To implement basic changes in the theory and practice of international relations of the current government of Russia" ^[20].

In what way? This is reported in his monograph by the leading American historian of the Cold War, John Gaddis. According to his testimony, in September 1945, a delegation of American legislators was received by Stalin, who, for obvious reasons, was then extremely interested in a loan from the United States to restore the national economy destroyed by the war. However, the Americans, who knew about this desire of his, immediately, with their characteristic brusqueness, which in no way resembled the reaction of a country that was still a military-political ally of the USSR at that time, presented the leader of our state with a list of conditions for such a loan. Namely, Americans would like to know what Washington can get in return?

In the delegation's report to Secretary of State J. Byrnes and President G. Truman were told that the loan could take place, but with "certain obligations of the Russians." Namely, they will have to report what proportion of their production goes into service and provide detailed data on the state of the Soviet economy.  In addition, according to the members of the American delegation, the Soviet Union should not have provided assistance for political purposes to Eastern Europe and reported on the contents of its trade agreements with these countries. At the same time, both in the USSR and in the countries of Eastern Europe, the Kremlin had to guarantee full protection of American property, the right to distribute American books, magazines, newspapers and films.  And finally, to give an obligation to withdraw Soviet troops from Europe, it is clear that all these demands were rejected by Stalin (but the loan, of course, did not take place).

The same applies to the exceptionally effective plan put forward in 1947 by US Secretary of State George Marshall (for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize) from the point of view of ensuring the geopolitical interests of the United States. The plan put forward (and implemented) the idea of massive American investments to restore the war-torn economy and social structure of Europe. Initially, the USSR and some of its Eastern European allies became interested in the plan. However, already at the Paris meeting of foreign ministers in the summer of 1947 with the participation of Marshall (and, from the USSR, V.M. Molotov), it became clear that the Americans intend to make the actual subordination of the USSR and our country's allies to Washington's economic, political and ideological demands, which hit the very basis of our sovereignty and the fruits of the victory of the Soviet people, a condition for granting loans. The plan was rejected by Moscow, and under its influence, by the countries of Eastern Europe ^[25].

The conclusion from all that was said two decades ago in her monograph "Russia and Russians in World History" was rightly expressed by the famous Russian historian and political scientist N.A. Narochnitskaya: "Since the goal of foreign policy and international diplomacy (of the West) has long been not national interests, but "the happiness of mankind", "eternal peace", "democracy", a rival becomes an enemy of humanity and thereby a "scapegoat". But in their essence, the problems and contradictions of real international relations of the Cold War period only repeated the geopolitical constants and historical and cultural gravitations of the past… Realizing that the USSR is a geopolitical giant similar to themselves with all the properties inherent in such a phenomenon, the United States adopted a strategy of all–out deterrence ..." ^[8].

As Narochnitskaya points out in her work, the collection of selected analytical developments of the US CIA of the 50s declassified in the 1990s demonstrates that these confidential developments at that time "did not talk about communist messianism as a cause of aggravation, but assessed the USSR exclusively as a geopolitical and military magnitude, noting only the role of communist ideology to justify potential expansion".

        She is also right in her statement that "although the communist doctrine of the USSR, of course, colored the Cold War and gave it specific features, it is also obvious that the cold war would have taken place in a different form, even if in 1945, in place of the communist USSR, it revived and restored its historical and national-religious hypostasis of the Russian Empire …

Reducing the confrontation between the West and the geopolitical phenomenon of the USSR–Russia exclusively to demagoguery about the struggle of communism and democracy was necessary in order to then justify the legitimacy of replacing the results of the Second World War, which the USSR won, with the results of the Cold War ^[7]. 

In fact, his (the West's) strategy was not "patient, prolonged and vigilant deterrence" (according to J. Kennan, the author of the official doctrine of the USA), but in the denial of the entire historical and geopolitical phenomenon of the USSR as the successor of Russia" ^{[8, pp. 334-335, p. 343]}.

In our opinion, this is George Kennan, a well-known American scientist and diplomat, the actual architect of the very idea of the "cold war" and the containment of the USSR/Russia, convincingly confirms this approach in his works ^[4].

In the famous "long telegram" (in February 1946, sent by him from the American embassy in Moscow, where he then worked, and actually laid the foundation for the entire post-war US policy towards the USSR), Kennan came to the conclusion that "at the origins of the Kremlin's manic point of view on international relations lies a traditional and instinctive feeling for Russia insecurity" and fear of a "more developed, powerful, competent and organized" West. According to his statement at the time, "the Soviet regime is, in fact, a police regime originating from the time of tsarist political intrigues" and that the dominant political force in the USSR ... originates in the deep and powerful currents of Russian nationalism." Based on this, Kennan argued, the Russian rulers "sought ways to ensure their security only in a stubborn and deadly struggle for the complete destruction of competing powers..." ^[13]. That is, even then Kennan put forward the thesis, fundamental for the West and for today, that Soviet socialism was a direct reincarnation of tsarism. It is clear that now the same idea of continuity with tsarism and the USSR is flourishing there, already "Putin's" Russia.

It is known that the American political and military elite in the years immediately following the end of World War II (if not earlier) was already gripped by anti-Soviet hysteria and militaristic psychosis.

In an article published at her insistence on the same topic in the leading magazine Foreign Affairs under the pseudonym "X", Kennan elaborated even more on the ideas that became the cornerstones of the ideology and practice of the Cold War for many decades to come, up to the present day. And again, all these conclusions and recommendations to the leaders of US foreign policy are based on a one-sided and overflowing with false stereotypes about Russian history. 

Russian Russians, despite all the facts, Kennon claims that "disbelief in the possibility of peaceful coexistence with political rivals passed from their Russian-Asian ancestors to them (Soviet leaders – L.D.)," because "the mighty forces of Russian history and tradition helped to strengthen this belief in them." And they, in turn, have always formed in the leaders of Russia "caution and prudence, resourcefulness and deception."

As a result of the Russophobic hysteria played out, despite the friendly feelings of the majority of Americans towards us as comrades in arms during the war, by 1947, according to polls, 66% of US citizens already perceived the USSR as an "aggressor" ^{[9, p. 153]}.

The same article by Kennan, based on his extremely dubious historical and psychological research concerning our people and their leaders, became the fundamental basis of the containment theory, which is still the fundamental basis of Western policy in relation to Russia (although Kennan himself later claimed that he had nothing to do with it).

Almost 70 years later, in 2014, President Putin did not accidentally speak on this topic: "Even during the Cold War, such a theory of deterrence was born… This is the theory and practice that were aimed at restraining the development of the Soviet Union. And, unfortunately, ... the atavisms of this theory of deterrence, they manifest themselves here and there. When Russia demonstrates some positive development, it is clear that the emergence of additional strong players, competitors, in general, causes some concerns in the economy, politics, and security. And attempts to restrain Russia are manifested here and there" ^[28]. 

Another thing is that Kennan later realized and publicly acknowledged how much he was wrong in exploring the "origins of Soviet behavior" based on stereotypes of Western historiography of Russia, and most importantly, what conclusions were drawn in the United States from the interpretation of his writings. In the second half of his long life, he became an active proponent of positive relations between the United States and our country (this happened long before the phenomenon of perestroika and Yeltsin, in particular, in his memoirs published in 1972). And in them - however, as in his early works - there are many fulfilled prophecies and revelations.

In particular, back in the 50s, he tried to convey to the consciousness of the military-political leadership of the United States the idea that it is impossible to achieve a complete military victory in the war with Russia: firstly, America will not be able to capture the entire territory of the USSR, and secondly, "not in the tradition of the psychology of Soviet leaders surrender to the enemy, who occupied a significant part of their land. They will retreat if necessary... to the most remote Siberian village, but whatever territory they have left behind, they will retain their power."

But at the same time Kennan came to an even more prescient conclusion: he called the assumption that in the event of the defeat of the Communists and the USSR, "a wonderful pro-American government consisting of democratic elements" would be in power there. Our experience of interacting with anti-Soviet defectors, he wrote, testifies to one thing: no matter how much these people hated the Soviet regime, "their ideas about democracy were primitive and proceeded solely from the expectation that after they dealt with the former masters of their country, they would be allowed to continue to rule ... within their own model of dictatorship".

In his program article regarding his vision of the "right" American policy in the Russian direction in the same magazine Foreign Affairs in April 1951, Kennan explicitly stated: "We cannot expect the emergence of a liberal democratic Russia created on the American model." And therefore, "Russian liberals have a difficult path ahead of them." Have Andrey Kozyrev and the company, as well as their inspirers and curators in Washington, read Kennan, and this article of his, in particular (it was not by chance reprinted by the same magazine in the spring of 1990)? This is very unlikely. But even if they had, they would hardly have been able to get rid of their illusions then. This required their complete collapse in the following years.

And one more assumption of Kennan, which has been fully justified in our time: while the absolute number of Americans did not want war with Russia in the 50s (and does not want it now - L.D.), many refugees and emigrants from non–Russian parts of the USSR, as well as immigrants from Eastern European countries, proceed from the belief that "The United States should, in their interests, wage war against the Russian people in order to ultimately disintegrate the Russian state and establish themselves as regimes in the "liberated territories". Among these national elements, Kennan first of all singled out Ukrainians, primarily from the west of the Ukrainian SSR, especially immigrants from Galicia. 

According to the scientist, most of them were eager for America's war with Russia, and it should have been, according to their ideas, a war not against the Soviet Union as such, but against the Russian people, who represented the main target for them. Even then, the extremely active and influential Ukrainian lobby in America was acting in this direction. The "Law on Enslaved Peoples", lobbied by them for their nationalist purposes in the USA in 1959 (and still in force), was one of the fundamental foundations of the policy and practice of the Cold War.

Today, in the midst of a new cold war, this law continues to operate, and the Ukrainian factor has become the most important direction of the struggle of the United States and the West as a whole against modern Russia. This became clear to the author of these lines back in August 1991, when, at an official conversation in the US Senate Intelligence Committee, I, as a Soviet diplomat in Washington at that time, was directly told about the foreign policy consequences of the failure of the State Emergency Committee in August 1991: "You have lost Ukraine. And we got it." As it soon turned out, as one of the main tools of countering Russia.

                                                           *    *     *

So, it is clear that the Cold War is far from over. For example, NATO allies still consider the doctrine of nuclear deterrence to be the basis of their entire policy towards Russia. This, in particular, is evidenced by the secret directive signed in November 1997 by Bill Clinton and later made public ^[12]. In it, the statements of the Russian Foreign Ministry that Russia considers the entire territory of the CIS as zones of its vital interests were already qualified as "imperial ambitions".

But in fact, now there is a new, much more fierce and dangerous civilizational and geopolitical confrontation between both the United States and Russia, and between the West and the East, represented primarily by the PRC and the Russian Federation. Many statements of politicians and opinions of scientists have been published on this topic in recent years. For the first time, the thesis about the natural (though unexpected for the elites of Russia and the United States) emergence of a new cold war was expressed by the already mentioned Professor Stephen Cohen ^{[5, p. 548]}.

It seems that the article of another American scientist, Professor of George Mason University (Virginia), is generalizing at the time of publication of this work Mark Katz in The National Interest magazine titled "Great Power Clashes will Change America." He, like many Western researchers, in recent years has been forced to admit the collapse of the seemingly unshakable axiom about the creation of an eternal unipolar (under the auspices of the United States) world after the destruction of the USSR with its system of alliances. And he admits: such a world under the leadership of America is coming to an end.

The most significant in this regard was President Biden's speech to the American audience justifying the incompetent flight of US troops from Afghanistan. Among other things, the speech stated that the interests of national security, which he understood in a new way after the Afghan catastrophe, dictate for the United States the need to "end the era of major military operations to remake other countries" and "abandon the previous thinking" ^[35].

At the same time, the most important thing is contained in the same speech of the American president. According to him, "human rights" are still at the center of US foreign policy, although Washington will now do this "not with the help of endless military deployments, but with the help of diplomacy, economic instruments and rallying the rest of the countries" ^[35]. That is, the United States is returning to the method of conducting a subversive policy that they used against the USSR and its allies in Europe during the first Cold War.

In the context of the topic of our article, we come to the conclusion that the world in the 20s of the new century, contrary to assumptions, found itself in a situation of confrontation, in comparison with the old cold war, characterized by an almost completely destroyed system of international law and deterrence of the arms race. At the same time, the NATO Secretary General began calling the Russian government a "regime", which in the practice of this bloc usually indicates the transition of attitudes towards such countries to the pre-war stage, which manifested itself in 2022 in a tough confrontation between the United States and the NATO bloc with Russia using the Ukrainian factor.

In the new strategic concept of NATO, adopted at the session of the bloc's Council in Madrid in June of the same year, Russia is called the most significant threat to the security of this alliance.

Under the influence of these events, Russia has come to the conclusion that the West has declared a total hybrid war on our country, and all this is happening at a time when Russia, as in 1917 and 1991, is facing a choice of its historical path in conditions when "we have long lost faith in the ability and reliability of our Western colleagues... and since then they have begun to rely on their own strength, on contacts and connections with reliable partners" ^{[18; 22]}.

In this situation, one thing remains for us: to build the security system of our state practically anew, discarding all previous illusions and relying primarily on military and economic power, convincing social policy and state ideology for the people, a new system of alliances.