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Nobel peace prize laureate and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has warned that US Russian relations are moving toward a new Cold War. US-Russian relations began to go downhill in January 2006 when Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice summoned experts on Russian affairs to revaluate the relations between the two nations. If the old Cold War was an ideological divide between the capitalists and the communists, new Cold War or Cold War II will be fought for energy security, creating a multipolar world and to regain and maintain the status of fair a superpower.
The Western world has shown concerns about the Russia’s increasing control over oil and gas resources, the pre-Cold War attitude, support to Iran, decline of democratic institutions in Russia, Russia’s position on Kosovo crisis, and Russia’s interference in the internal affairs of the post-Soviet satellites. On the other hand, Russia is worried about NATO extension towards Russian borders, proposed missile defence system, war on terror, US support for regime changes in countries allied with Russia and Russia itself.
The central issue in the tensions between Russia and US the proposed missile defence system near Russian territories and energy security. Recently a Russian mini-sub released a capsule containing a Russian flag at the North Pole to support Russia’s claim on oil and gas reserves of the Arctic. Russia has benefited from increasing gas production and rising oil prices, which has brought back Russia into the fray of leading economies. However the concern for worry is the increasing state control over oil resources and kicking out the western oil companies and investment from the Russian Gas fields. Shell was forced to sell its share in Sakhalin gas fields and same was done to British BP. Moreover Russia is expanding its control over world oil resources. Russia is actively lobbying to remapping the Caspian self to control the oil pipelines from the east to west to get control over the...