The Perils of the Cold War Hangover
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By Elizabeth Buchanan
December 19, 2019
The year 2014 was just as significant as 1914. Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula elicited a weak response from the West and highlighted a larger strategic problem: the erosion of the liberal-democratic world order. The West failed to rise to the challenge of Russian resurgence and, since 2014, has all but shrugged at the notion that it must act to sustain the rules-based global order we created after World War II.
Paul Dibb’s recent ASPI report is an important addition to a rather limp debate on great-power warfare and the role of the Sino-Russian relationship in Australia’s strategic outlook. Dibb outlines the ways in which Russia and China are profiting from the West’s strategic disarray. He points to China in the South China Sea and Russia in Crimea as examples of coercion by Beijing and Moscow in their ‘natural sphere
of influence’.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2019/12/19/the_perils_of_the_cold_war_hangover_114940.html
