Why kowtow to brutal, cynical Russia?
We have a new Cold War and we’re losing it. The West must stand up to the Kremlin now Edward Lucas Sixty years ago the Berlin Airlift highlighted the menace of Stalin’s Kremlin. Forty years ago Soviet tanks crushed both the Prague Spring and any remaining illusions about the Kremlin’s grip on the captive nations. Twenty years ago we began dropping our guard, as totalitarianism withered under Mikhail Gorbachev. Now it is time to acknowledge the inconvenient truth. Russia is back: rich, powerful and hostile. Partnership is giving way to rivalry, with increasingly threatening overtones. The new Cold War has begun – but just as in the 1940s, we are alarmingly slow to notice it. The loudest alarm signal is Russia’s predictable yet mystifying presidential election on March 2. Predictable because everyone knows who will win: Dmitri Medvedev, Vladimir Putin’s polite, lawyerly sidekick; mystifying because the meaning of that victory is so unclear. Will Mr Medvedev be a mere figurehead? Will he
