Back in the Cold War again

If there was any doubt that we are living through a period of retrenchment, reaction and reversal, one in which many of the progressive measures of previous years and decades are being systematically picked apart and annulled, then the recent abandonment of the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty by America and Russia should put those doubts to rest.

The USA has argued that Russia has been contravening the treaty for some time with their deployment of Novator 9M729 missiles (SSC-8 in NATO parlance) in Eastern Europe, and Canada, Europe and the rest of NATO agree with them on that. As long ago as 2007, Vladimir Putin declared that the treaty no longer served Russian purposes, particularly with a nuclear-armed China just next door and not constrained by any treaty obligations, and the source of the breakdown in the treaty can probably be fairly laid at Russia's door (or, more specifically, at Putin's door). The USA announced yesterday that it was suspending its participation in the treaty, due to Russia's non-conformity, and that has given Putin the excuse he has been looking for to officially suspend it himself. Putin now openly says that Russia will begin creating new weapons and, with Trump in the White House, you can imagine what the American response will be.

So, here we are back in the Cold War again, Mutually Assured Destruction and all the rest of it. You can imagine an alternative scenario, where more reasonable people take more measured responses to provocations. But this is not that scenario. It all feels so 1980s somehow, and that same feeling of instability and powerlessness is starting to seep into my bones again.