By Jeff Mullin, Senior Writer
For history buffs who, given the financial upheaval the country has endured of late, feel like they are looking back through a time warp at the crash of 1929, here’s another bit of deja vu for you — the Cold War is back.
Well not back, exactly, but at least waiting in the wings.
You remember the Cold War, the good old, bad old days of the Cuban missile crisis, shoe-pounding, Mutually Assured Destruction and, eventually, the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union, like Elvis, is still dead, but the enmity between Russia and the United States is very much alive.
Last month Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said his nation was “not afraid of anything, including the prospect of a new Cold War.”
The new Russia is beginning to look, and sound, a lot like the old Soviet Union.
There was the Russian incursion this summer into the former Soviet republic of Georgia, and Russia’s recognition of the breakaway territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
U.S. officials decried the brief, violent war, and Russia’s recognition of the breakaway territories. The U.S. even sent military aid ships to a Georgian port city still controlled by Russian troops. The Russians didn’t blink.
The old Soviet Union’s strongest ally in the Western Hemisphere during the first Cold War was Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Russia’s Western Hemisphere toe hold this time is in Venezuela.
Early this month a pair of Russian Tu-160 Blackjack long-range bombers capable of nuclear weapons were warmly welcomed when they landed in Venezuela.
The Russians have sent Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets, Mi-17 transport helicopters and thousands of Kalashnikov assault rifles to Venezuela, whose leader, Hugo Chavez, once referred to President Bush as “the devil.”
Russia and Venezuela have signed an agreement to loan Venezuela $1 billion to purchase more military equipment, presumably from Russia.
More recently, Russia announced it was sending war ships from its Northern Fleet, including the nuclear missile cruiser Peter the Great, to hold joint naval maneuvers with Venezuela.
Medvedev also has announced that, by 2020, Russia would build new types of war ships, including nuclear submarines armed with cruise missiles, and some sort of space defense system.
Much of this posturing seems to be in response to Western recognition of an independent Kosovo, NATO’s expansion into former Soviet territory and America’s plan to build a missile defense system in eastern Europe.
In the long term, this renewed antagonism between Russia and the United States might lead to another arms race. In the shorter term it will impact the U.S. space program.
Once the aging space shuttle fleet is retired in 2010, the U.S. is facing a five-year gap in its manned space program before the replacement craft, the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, is ready for liftoff.
That means, for five years, the only way we will be able to get American astronauts up to the International Space Station will be on Russian Soyuz craft.
NASA’s present agreement with Russia ends in 2011, and it would take an act of Congress to approve an extension, which seems unlikely given recent tensions between the two nations. That means the ISS will likely be manned solely by Russians between 2012 and 2015.
In the meantime China has launched its third manned space mission and intends to land men on the moon by 2020.
Our economy is floundering, the Russians are blustering, they are setting up shop in our backyard and we find ourselves falling behind in space.
As they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Mullin is senior writer of the News & Eagle.
