The New Cold War: Putin's Russia and the Threat to the West (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Lucas makes a powerful case …The New Cold War is intelligent [and] thoughtful … the first comprehensive compendium of the Kremlin's crimes against Russians and non-Russians alike.”--Peter Savodnik, TIME

"Lucas is a fine writer, and his prose has all the verve and punch that the best of his magazine, The Economist, has to offer."--Foreign Affairs

 “A meticulously constructed indictment of Putin's strong-arm tactics at home and his increasingly aggressive tone in dealing with his immediate neighbors and any other countries that try to question his behavior.”—Newsweek.com “Brilliantly reported, morally unblinkered look at what has happened to Russia under Mr. Putin…For bringing the nature of the threat so vividly to light, Mr. Lucas has performed a public service.” – Brent Stephens, Wall Street Journal

“Highly informed, crisply written and alarming... Wise up and stick together is the concluding message in Lucas's outstanding book.”-- Michael Burleigh, Evening Standard

“Lucas has a vivid, highly readable style.” –George Walden, Bloomberg.com 

“Whether this campaign of bullying is comparable to the Cold War is a matter of huge importance to the West. Hence it matters which experts we pay attention to….I can unreservedly recommend Edward Lucas. The New Cold War is about the fate that has yet again befallen the unfortunate region of Europe that lies on the borderlands of East and West.”  -- Daniel Johnson, New York Sun

"The New Cold War powerfully argues that America and Europe's excessive focus on Iraq and Afghanistan has blinded them to a threat closer to home. Thoroughly informed, steeped in his subject's recent history, with a flinty, caustic style that usually sizes up political phenomena with exacting precision, Lucas reminds us why longtime foreign correspondents surpass rookies who parachute into a foreign hotspot....Lucas offers one of the best briefs on how Yeltsin's Wild West became Putin's chilly petrofascism, detailing the return of rigged elections, forced psychiatric medication, the use of natural resources as foreign-policy bludgeons, and the rogue nations that are once again Moscow's best friends." --Philadelphia Inquirer

  "Edward Lucas is one of the best-informed, best-connected, and most perceptive journalists writing about Putin's Russia. The New Cold War is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what is happening in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union today."--Anne Applebaum, author of Gulag, A History "Edward Lucas's absorbing book shows the forces that are turning Russia against the West. They include militarism, greed, and a failure to understand that national greatness can be based only on civilized values. It is an invaluable primer for students of the Russian situation and a cautionary tale for those who prefer to treat Russia as it pretends to be rather than as it is."--David Satter, author of Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State "While the West is preoccupied with the Middle East and Islamic terrorism, Edward Lucas warns, Russia is quietly reinventing herself as a milder version of the Soviet Union and hence as a new threat to the West. Conceding Putin's domestic achievements, the seasoned East European correspondent of The Economist tracks post-Communist Russia's skillful exploitation of the capitalist world's greed to divide and thus to dominate it. It is a chilling account that needs to be taken seriously."--Richard Pipes, author of The Russian Revolution  "Veteran Moscow news correspondent Edward Lucas provides an authoritative analysis of the disturbing events in Russia today in this thoughtful, thoroughly researched and brilliantly written book that deserves the widest possible readership."—Robert Gellately, author of Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe

"Edward Lucas offers a devastating but apt critique of Vladimir Putin’s domestic repression and increasingly aggressive foreign policy. This stark and clear-sighted book is an excellent read. It makes evident the need for a new Western policy. Russia’s political development is one of the key issues of our time."—Anders Åslund, senior fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington, D.C.

"Edward Lucas has written a brilliant and profoundly disturbing study of modern Russia.  It is the history of rediscovered authoritarianism and the stunning brutality with which the KGB elite returned to power.  It is also the story of how Western venality and political credulity made this possible and placed the security of Europe at risk.  Above all, this is the tale of how President Putin methodically destroyed the vestiges of democracy in Russia and launched a New Cold War against the West.  It is difficult to overstate the importance of Edward Lucas's latest work for US and European policymakers."—Bruce P. Jackson, President, Project on Transitional Democracies

Product Description

In late 1999 when Vladimir Putin was named Prime Minister, Russia was a budding democracy. Multiple parties campaigned for seats in the Duma, the nation’s parliament. The media criticized the government freely. Eight years later as Putin completes his second term as president of Russia and announces his bid for prime minister, the country is under a repressive regime. Human rights abuses are widespread. The Kremlin is openly hostile to the West. Yet the United States and Europe have been slow to confront the new reality, in effect, helping Russia win what experts are now calling the New Cold War.

Edward Lucas, former Moscow Bureau Chief for The Economist, offers a harrowing portrait from inside Russia as well as a sobering political assessment of what the New Cold War will mean for the world. In this big, hard hitting and urgently needed book, he shows how

* Russia is pursuing global energy markets
* Neighboring nations are being coerced back into the former Soviet orbit
* Journalists and dissidents are being silenced
* Foreign investments and private enterprises are routinely defrauded
* Putin is laying the groundwork for controlling industry and planning his new role as prime minister

Drawing on new and hitherto reported material, The New Cold War brilliantly anticipates what is in store for the new Russia and what the world should be doing.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (February 19, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0230606121
• ISBN-13: 978-0230606128
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #76,024 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An entertaining read, but take it with a grain of salt, August 26, 2008

By	Mladen Nesic (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I read this book because I would like to add a Russian component to the masters thesis I am working on, and thought it would give me good background. Alas, while the book was an entertaining read, it is practically useless academically. Mr Lucas' prose drips with outrage and disdain toward Russia's leaders--and I sometimes got the feeling that his attitude extends toward all Russian people. Although I don't have a deep background in this field, it was pretty obvious that Mr Lucas glosses over very complicated events in order to substantiate his own rather simplistic argument. The book quotes very few sources and mostly regurgitates events that have already been widely reported on. The author's lack of nuance is the most troubling--everything boils down to Putin/Russia = power/control/corruption/bad--which left me with very little I could use in a serious paper. By the end of the book, I had the impression that I had read a polemic summary of everything bad the mainstream Western media has had to say about Russia over the past couple of years, which might explain why it appears to have gotten so many good reviews from major news outlets.

Mr Lucas may be right, and he certainly has a valid opinion on Russia's politics and the direction the country is going. However, I hope that anyone who would like to read this book understands what it is--the strongly written personal opinion of a journalist who has been covering Russia for a few years. It is certainly not an objective or meticulous study of any aspect of contemporary Russia.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars KGB Unmasked, January 13, 2009

By	David F. Wall - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Great book, well-researched by the author who spent many years inside Russia and, as such, has personal and first hand insight to the changes that have taken place since Putin came to power. A great read for the patient reader. The only drawback is that the chapters are extremely long requiring at least an hour to read each. The book could have been organized better to make it more readable. Nonethless, I highly recommend it for the serious Russian observer.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good history, wrong prognosis, October 17, 2008

By	Paul E. Richardson "Russian Life" (Montpelier, VT) - See all my reviews

That this book was hastened to press is evident from the numerous typos that occasionally blunder over into silly factual errors (Henry Truman, Kirgistan). The prose is also, while engaging, at times under-edited. Yet one wants to overlook these shortcomings, as Edward Lucas is an important and influential observer of things Russian, having served for several years as the Economist magazine's bureau chief in Moscow.

Drawing on this experience, Lucas recounts a decade of Russian domestic and foreign policy crises, arguing that Russia is a dangerous foe, bullying its neighbors, cornering natural resource markets, crushing internal dissent and defrauding foreign investors. "Repression at home is matched by aggression abroad," Lucas writes. "Russia is reverting to behavior last seen during the Soviet era," yet now it is not "the Kremlin's tanks thundering into Afghanistan that signal[s] the West's weakness; now it is Kremlin banks thundering through the city of London."

Yet, Lucas notes that, while Russia's "tactics are increasingly clear and effective... the goal is still puzzling." Imputing intent from actions, he concludes that Russia "...wants to be respected, trusted, and liked, but will not act in a way that gains respect, nurtures trust, or wins affection. It settles for being noticed - even when that comes as a result of behavior that alienates and intimidates other countries. It compensates for real weakness by showing pretend strength." In short, we should be worried about Russia because it is reasserting itself in the world, and it is doing so with methods that scorn (or undermine) the cherished values of Western Liberal Societies: free trade, primacy of individual liberties, the rule of law.

Fair enough. The facts of the Putinera events are presented well. And his argument is logical. Yet flawed. For none of these things are certainties: that a richer, more emboldened Russia will threaten international stability, that Russia will become more authoritarian over time, rather than less, that Russian civil or commercial interests will continue to quietly acquiesce in the erosion of civil liberties, that Russian actions over the past decade are part of a coordinated Eastern Front in a New Cold War.

This latter is the weakest leg of Lucas' argument. Many Russian actions internally and externally over this period have been reprehensible. But to assert that those actions belie an orchestrated intent is to give Russian policymakers more credit than is their due.

In fact, events seem to show nothing so much as that Russia is blundering about blindly in its foreign policy. There is no wizard behind the Kremlin curtain, shaping a cohesive international plan. Indeed, The New Cold War is a ruthless cataloguing of Russia's nearly unbroken string of foreign policy failures since 2000: Chechnya, Estonia, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia... Lucas repeatedly shows how Russia has overplayed its hand in its attempts to influence and cajole its neighbors, in the end assenting to an outcome it initially insisted was untenable (e.g. the current missile defense debate). Russia, Lucas writes, "is too weak to have a truly effective independent foreign policy, but it is too disgruntled and neurotic to have a sensible and constructive one."

So which is it? Should Russian foreign policy make us tremble with fear or with laughter? Maybe both. Lucas' treatment of domestic issues suffers from the same disconnect. Recounting the decline of pluralism and a free press, and the rise of corruption and statism in business,

Lucas forecasts gloom and doom while at the same time pointing out the massive inefficiencies of state-run enterprises. It is not clear: are the behemoths taking over the economy or teetering on the brink of collapse? And if one believes (as Lucas seems to) that modern commerce needs a free and open society to survive, how can one not have confidence in the power of the market to eventually overrun any government gates that hem it in?

The mind yearns for simple, logical explanations. But it is not always good to give the mind what it wants. Sometimes it is best to accept complexity and not try to explain irrational behavior with logical arguments. Recommendation: Read this book for its superb account of the Putin era, but overlook its typographical and theoretical errors. (Reviewed in Russian Life)