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Comment by blamestross | Hacker News Reader

Umm, The cold war never ended. It has waxed and waned, and it has rotated into economic, information, and mimetic warfare over the decades. The US government and NATO have been investing in our military for decades for more reasons than just corruption.

The only real surprise here is that Russia/Putin has decided to light some sparks on the kerosene laden mess to drive it hot. Nobody wants a hot war in an industrialized nation, our weapons and our defenses are too effective to "take" anywhere without destroying all the infrastructure that makes it valuable. Armed conflict in industrial nations will yield only pyrrhic victories.

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> Umm, The cold war never ended. It has waxed and waned, and it has rotated into economic, information, and mimetic warfare over the decades. The US government and NATO have been investing in our military for decades for more reasons than just corruption.

Can we avoid the "We have always been at war with Eurasia" style rhetoric?

There have been explicit conflicts and wars over the years (US/Middle East, Israel/Palestine, etc) but we aren't at a constant state of global war or global Cold War.

China too.

Just because we haven't been shooting the entire time and because we are polite on the world stage doesn't change that those in power have made choices and policy with the understanding that we are in a cold war. I don't know what criteria you require to call it a "Cold War" or "War with Eurasia" or some other state of affairs, but it seems a reasonable description of reality to me.

The fact that one side of 'The Cold War' collapsed and no longer exists seems relevant.

Putin clearly disagrees. Literally. All of this is based on the narrative that he and his government are successors to the legacy of the USSR and the "fall" was a mild inconvenience.

He roots Russia's claim to Ukraine in the Russian Empire, not the USSR.

There's very little distinction there. Stalin made the same claims:

> An anecdote attributed to Molotov showed Stalin perusing a map of the Soviet Union saying: “Everything is all right to the north. Finland has offended us, so we moved the border to Leningrad. Baltic States ‑ that’s age-old Russian land! ‑ and they are ours again. All the Belorussians live together now, Ukrainians together, Moldovans together. It’s ok to the west.”

https://drb.ie/articles/a-voracious-reader-2/

The territorial claims have continued unabated. This is why Russia was so peeved (and remains peeved) about NATO intervention in Bosnia; why Russia supports the breakaway Moldovan province of Transnistria; why it props up the Belarusian dictatorship, and has tried to do the same in Ukraine, ultimately resorting to a full-scale invasion.

There's continuity because there's alot of truth in Putin's claims regarding historical cultural affinity. The problem is, it's not the whole truth, and becomes less so every day, only accelerating since the breakup of the USSR.

FYI He has been recorded numerous times saying, something along te lines that it was the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century” not “mild inconvenience”.

Though, I can think of another leader in the 20th century who’s country collapsed and made a comeback a few decades later under a different flag.

There is an excellent podcast series * that explains that we have in fact been in conflict with Russia for all these years. Grey Zone warfare is when you indirectly fight your opponent, of fight then in such a way that they don't even realise it. Everyone does this as hot wars between nuclear armed powers makes no sense.

* https://news.sky.com/story/into-the-grey-zone-podcast-episod...

Yes and:

Moving from bipolar to unipolar, Cold War morphed into Forever War.

Multipolar will be the likely next arrangement. I can't even guess how warfare will adapt. Free for all? Move from meatspace into cyberspace? First to weaponize space wins? All of the above?

Who knows.

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