Miles A. Pomper
Gabrielle Tarini
March 23, 2016
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The following is an excerpt from an E-International Relations article published March 22, 2016.
During an appearance at the Munich Security Conference last month, Russian Prime Minister Dimitri Medvedev lamented that strained relations between the US and Russia have pushed the world toward “a new Cold War.” While such a characterization of the current relationship is misleading and imprecise – the stark ideological differences that divided the world into two distinct blocs have given way to a more complex set of global affairs – relations between the two countries have indeed reached a post-Cold War low. Over the past two years, in the view of the West, Russia’s annexation and destabilization of parts of Ukraine, Putin’s intervention in Syria, Russia’s military modernization, and the Kremlin’s inflammatory rhetoric and intransigence in the nuclear arena have contributed to increasing tensions, distrust, and hostilities between the two countries.
