No WWIII: The Odd Logic of the New Fake Cold War and the Curious Reality of Feather Pillow Proxy Wars

There has been an awful lot of noise and blowing wind of late across all forms of social media about an impending WWIII between the United States and Russia, most of which involves further involvement and an intensified escalation within Syria. With the US airstrikes (alongside its allied partners, the UK and France) on Friday night (American time), that crescendo is no doubt going to hit an all-time high of anticipation. To that I offer one small contrary warning: don’t hold your breath for the mushroom clouds just yet. There is still too much evidence of designed respectful interaction between the United States and Russia to even begin to suspect a major physical confrontation directly between the two will take place. And this includes last night’s airstrikes.

While there is no doubt that current relations between America and Russia are not exactly glowing and positive, there are also numerous examples of restraint to show that both sides do not wish to pursue a war with each other. In some cases, the very evidence that has put people all over the world in a frothy orgasm of Cold War bloodlust is actually the evidence people should be noting for why war is unlikely. Consider the following incidents/initiatives that have taken place over the past few years and consider how often any one of them could have resulted in war and other serious military repercussions between adversaries:

  • Russia supporting with its own military presence the Crimean secession referendum
  • American retaliatory sanctions for said support, resulting in the Russian ruble losing literally half of its value, significantly damaging the earning and consuming power of regular Russians
  • Russian retaliatory initiatives for those sanctions, most notably the alleged hacking of the 2016 American Presidential election
  • The Magnitskii Act (followed up with still more sanctions just last week), which is basically a form of punishment by hubris: America blacklisting influential friends of Putin (oligarchs) from having access to enter America
  • The closing of diplomatic offices in both Russia and America, with further escalation to a tit-for-tat diplomat rejection plan where both countries keep kicking each other’s diplomats out of their respective countries.
  • One country accuses the other of overlooking chemical gas attacks against the Syrian people
  • One country accuses the other of fabricating chemical gas attacks against the Syrian people
  • Rumors of a ‘pee tape’ morally compromising the President of the United States while on an earlier visit to Russia
  • Rumors of secretly going after to freeze and/or steal billions of dollars President Putin supposedly has stashed all over the globe
  • And, of course, the biggest one of all: both sides intervening in another country’s internal civil war but on opposite sides of the conflict

This is a fairly impressive list of disagreement, discord, conflict, and outright aggression. There have been wars breaking out all over the globe for far fewer incidents and over far less intense accusations and maneuvers. This is why so many today are obsessing over the so-called New Cold War. In fact, the opposite is reality: we should not be welcoming the New Cold War. We should be welcoming the New FAKE Cold War. All of the reasons given above should have been reason enough for kinetic confrontation between the two countries. And yet no direct military conflict has arisen. The United States has now done ‘surprise’ airstrikes in Syria not once but twice. And, “miraculously,” no significant, if at all, formal uniformed Russian military presence has been killed in either of those airstrikes. When the White House goes before the press conference microphones to thank its allies for their cooperation and assistance, the unrecognized reality is that one of those allies is de facto Russia: the two sides have clearly collaborated at least in terms of communication before the airstrikes to ensure that only the proper Syrian military targets are hit and the formal Russian military presence has time to evacuate the direct area. This, of course, is bad news for any and all Syrians: basically, what both countries have been saying throughout the entire civil war is that it is just fine to spill Syrian blood as long as American and Russian blood is not spilled with it. This is the feather pillow of proxy wars. At least when it comes to Americans and Russians. Again, no comment on how much it has been a sledgehammer for both Syrian sides within Syria.

The problem with the analysis ongoing about Russian-American relations is that it is ultimately guilty of that egregious academic sin: a lack of falsifiability. We teach our young doctoral students that whenever any serious investigation is begun, they must ensure that their project has the chance of actually being wrong. This principle of falsifiability is built into our projects and our brains so as to ensure we do not bias or project our desired results into our findings. Given the complex, ambiguous, and competing alternatives nature of global security and war, it is easy to see why this is so important: it is mind-bogglingly easy to ‘get the results you want’ if you are determined to see an issue in one particular way. Finding the data and interpreting the evidence is rather simple. The problem is that the analyst must strive to not ignore competing evidence and alternative explanations that muddy the waters for the desired outcome. This is what has been happening for nearly three years (at least) when it comes to how we analyze Russian-American relations. The very data that so many media outlets and presumed Russian experts in the West use as ‘proof’ for an undeniable New Cold War is just as easily positioned to show how two countries have chosen to NOT go to war with one another and NOT confront one another physically when they easily could have and many other countries in the same position would have. Instead of proven bad news, it is just as easily argued as proof of good news.

Interpretation. This is the essence of our business in global affairs, international security, and intelligence. Right now, we are violating some of our core research principles in order to maintain a single desired analytical outcome. Perhaps most disturbingly, the desired outcome in this case is the more dangerous one, the more violent one, and the more irresponsible one. Perhaps it is odd to say, but at the moment it seems the people we all have to thank for avoiding the precipice of real war are not our intellectuals and scholars, but the leaders of the two countries that everyone keeps trying to say are hell-bent on destroying each other. Welcome to the odd logic of the New Fake Cold War the curious reality of feather pillow proxy wars.

Dr. Matthew Crosston
Dr. Matthew Crosston
Dr. Matthew Crosston is Executive Vice Chairman of ModernDiplomacy.eu and chief analytical strategist of I3, a strategic intelligence consulting company. All inquiries regarding speaking engagements and consulting needs can be referred to his website: https://profmatthewcrosston.academia.edu/