Cold War II

Cold War II, also called the New Cold War,Second Cold War and Cold War 2.0, refers to a renewed state of political and military tension between opposing geopolitical power-blocs, with one bloc typically reported as being led by either Russia or China, and the other led by the United States or NATO. This is akin to the original Cold War that saw a global confrontation between the Western Bloc led by the United States and the Eastern Bloc led by the Soviet Union, Russia's predecessor. American political scientist Robert Legvold posits that the ″new Cold War began the moment we went over the cliff, and that happened with the Ukraine crisis.″ Others, such as Andrew C. Kuchins in 2016, believe that the term is ″unsuited to the present conflict,″ but the situation is arguably more dangerous than during the original Cold War.

Past sources, such as academics Fred Halliday and David S. Painter used the interchangeable terms to refer to the 1979–1985 and 1985–1991 phases of the Cold War.

Some sources use the term as a possible or unlikely future event, while others have used the term to describe ongoing renewed tensions, hostilities, and political rivalry that intensified dramatically in 2014 between the Russian Federation on the one hand, and the United States, NATO, European Union, and some other countries on the other.Michael Klare, a RealClearPolitics writer and an academic, in June 2013 compared tensions between Russia and the West to the ongoing proxy conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Oxford Professor Philip N. Howard argued that the new cold war has a distinct media dimension in that the battles are being fought over control of Russia's media broadcasters and through cyberwar between authoritarian governments and their own civil society groups. While some notable figures such as Mikhail Gorbachev warned in 2014, against the backdrop of Russia–West political confrontation over the Ukrainian crisis, that the world was on the brink of a New Cold War, or that a New Cold War was already occurring, others argued that the term did not accurately describe the nature of relations between Russia and the West. While the new tensions between Russia and the West have similarities with those during the original Cold War, there are also major dissimilarities such as modern Russia's increased economic ties with the outside world, which may potentially constrain Russia's actions and provides it with new avenues for exerting influence, such as in Belarus and Central Asia, which have not brought on the type of direct military action in which Russia engaged in less cooperative former Soviet states like Ukraine or the Caucasus. The term "Cold War II" has therefore been described as a misnomer.

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