‫الحرب الباردة الجديدة‬

by Gilbert Achcar, جلبير الأشقر, عمر الشافعي (translator)

A leading international relations expert uncovers the key stages that led from the end of the Cold War to the War in Ukraine.

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, warnings of a new Cold War proliferated. In fact, argues Gilbert Achcar in this timely new account, the New Cold War has been ongoing since the late 1990s.
Racing to solidify its position as the last remaining superpower, the US alienated Russia and China, pushing them closer and rebooting the ‘old’ Cold War with disastrous implications. Vladimir Putin’s consequent rise and imperialist reinvention, along with Xi Jinping’s own ascendancy and increasingly autocratic tendencies, would culminate, respectively, in the invasion of Ukraine and mounting tensions over Taiwan and trade.
Was all this inevitable? What comes after Ukraine, and what might the contours of a more peaceful world look like? These questions and many others are addressed in this essential book by one of the most seasoned analysts of international relations.
With erudition and sobering analysis, Achcar argues that only by understanding this new landscape can we begin to imagine the contours of an alternative, more peaceful world.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Russia, China, War

310 pages, Kindle Edition

About the author

Gilbert Achcar is a Lebanese academic, writer, and socialist. He is a Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. His research interests cover the Near East and North Africa, the foreign policy of the United States, Globalisation, Islam, and Islamic fundamentalism. He is also a Fellow at the International Institute for Research and Education.

Reviews

[Rhuff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gilbert Achcar's "The New Cold War" is a very ambitious and passionate recoup of his articles and essays over the last thirty years, from initial NATO expansion after the last cold war, and the events of the new one through the Ukraine invasion. I see that his ground somewhat shifts from the earliest essays, from a critique of Zbigniew Brzezinski's Grand Chessboard Theory to a modified acceptance. In his hundred pages devoted to "Vladimir the Terrible," Achcar seems to split the difference holding NATO and Putin equally accountable for the result.

Except . . . While Putin punched first, there's little doubt, which even Achcar must admit, that he didn't start the quarrel that led to the fight which bloomed into full bloodhood in early '22. Russia's presence in Ukraine was no existential threat to Atlantic or European security; those who spout otherwise are wrong and they know it. (Imagine their attitude if Mexico allowed a Chinese military presence up to the Rio Grande.) The only reason to render Ukraine "safe in the confines of the West," per The Atlantic Monthly, is to push Putin not only out of Ukraine but of Europe as the Atlanticists conceive it, to isolate him as a Eurasian Castro. (The irony of subsidizing Zelensky as a Ukrainian Castro is nicely lost here.)

Achcar delineates Putin's evolution from St. Petersburg reformer to hardcore nationalist while examining NATO expansion from the West and the disaster of post-Soviet neoliberalism. At first he connects the dots, then subsequently tries to sever them. Putin's rhetorical nationalism and disparagement of Ukraine rose in tandem with NATO's drive to swallow it, just as the Russian move into Crimea and Donbas would not have happened without the Maidan revolt/coup of 2014; they were not just reflexes of Great Russian empire or Putin's desperate need to justify an unconstitutional third term, as pressing as these were at home. A country at war is never democratic; however much Putin "needed" war to assert credibility, even Achcar concedes there could not have been one without hard-right Ukrainian nationalism and NATO's need for an anti-Russian proxy.

One can contrast Achcar's split-the-difference, condemn-both-sides stance on Putin and Russia with his more tolerant view on China. "Beijing is unlikely to cross the Rubicon - in this case, the Taiwan Strait," Achcar writes on p. 286, "unless it's provoked to do so by Washington and/or Taipei beyond its limits of tolerance." One need only substitute Moscow, the Kerch, (Washington remains) / Kiev to see a perfect analogy; yet China is given the benefit of doubt. Pro-Third World liberalism, as opposed to demonizing a poor white European Trump?

Achcar's take is a good example of the respectable British left: critical, yet not too far "out there" for fear of becoming "Corbynized" by a vengeful British establishment. Still, I give it a good ration of stars for its depth and breadth of argument, not for a middle-roadism that is impossible on the front lines.

[Dmitry]

(The English review is placed beneath the Russian one)

Очень мутная и скучная книга по геополитике из-за чего возникает ощущение, что статьи в газетах на эту же тему и то интересней читать.
Автору стоило бы более сжато и ясней излагать свои мысли. Возникает ощущение, что автор пустотой своих слов и излишним их количеством хочет замаскировать либо популярную идею о нарушении негласного условия данного России не расширять НАТО на восток либо просто пустоту своих мыслей (аргументов).

It's a very vague and boring book on geopolitics, which makes one feel that articles in newspapers on the same topic are even more interesting to read.
The author should have presented his thoughts more concisely and clearly. There is a feeling that the author, by the emptiness of his words and the excessive number of them, wants to disguise either the popular idea about the violation of the unspoken condition given to Russia not to expand NATO to the east or just the emptiness of his thoughts (arguments).

[Bogdan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty weak. TLDR: it’s all America’s fault.

And the author reaches this conclusion despite the book flagging so many problems, lies, deceits perpetrated by Russia (and to a lesser extent China).

Among the things I really disliked:

He argues that the US should have done more during Russia’s collapse in the 90s to ensure it became democratic (huge lift and not sure how they could achieve this).

Argues that the West should have been lenient to Russia (not allow new countries to join NATO) in the hope that Russia would now be a responsible global actor . Even though the EU has made massive investments and purchases in Russia, and it didn’t change their behaviour at all (even emboldened it).

TL/DR2 : accurate chronology of the broad events, but a few gaps (like aggressive Russian action pre-2008 invasion of Georgia) and questionable conclusions.

[Dan · Rating 1 out of 5]

The "America bad" trope—in which every geopolitical problem lies squarely at the feet of Washington—gets tired very quickly. About half-way through reading I discovered the author is a typical leftist professor, at SOAS no less, and then everything made a lot more sense. Mearsheimer's lecture on Russian motivation is a lot more interesting if you want to understand the background for Putin's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. This is a tedious and incredibly repetitive rehash.

[Julia Henry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super interesting read, though it took me longer than I thought it would to finish it. I think Achcar’s foresight in the first chapters, combined with his insights into the U.S.’s ideal future policy steps, establishes him as one of the important thinkers on the impact of continued U.S. imperialist thought and the future of Sino-Russian-American relations.

[Manuel Nunez]

Deben leer este libro para poder entender el conflicto en Ucrania. Les recomiendo que lean los libros del Coronel Pedro Baños, y los libros de Scott Ritter. The New Cold War Book es un libro perfecto en estos momentos de caos.

[Dale · Rating 4 out of 5]

strategic triad

So interesting that the author traces the new Cold War from Kosovo through Moldavia, Georgia, to the current conflict in Ukraine. Heavy on Russia but does highlight the rise of China and the strategic dilemmas presented to the US with two emerging problem sets.

[Naveed Bokhari · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant account of how the U.S. has pushed Russia and China closer to each other in opposition to its predominance in the world order.