Insecurity in a 'time out of joint'

THE Cold War is over, but the world is an ever more dangerous place. During a recent conference between Russia and western governments, a seasoned US diplomat said that he had never felt so close to disaster in 50 years of professional life. None of the participants questioned the validity of his statement. The new mood of confrontation requires an agonising reappraisal and a return to Realpolitik.

"The time is out of joint" - the quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet is apposite because the crises and conflicts of our time are non-linear, creating their own often uncontrollable dynamics. We need to cast our minds back to October 2014, to a luxury hotel more than 1,000 metres above the city of Sochi, a health resort on the Black Sea. There, members of the Valdai Club, an informal gathering of Russia experts, were greeted by a slogan that captured the new mood in Russia: "New order or no order".

The Kremlin wanted to show that Russia was back in the Great Game, that it wished to be respected as a global power, and that Russian elites were unwilling to live by values other than their own - whatever the cost. The past 10 years have seen a progressive exercise by President Vladimir Putin warning the west not to move too closely to the bear's den. Russia has wanted to remind the US of its near-unlimited escalation power - above all in mobilising patriotic sentiment at home and turning Russian dreams away from western style democracy towards intimidating Russia's neighbourhood - menacingly termed the "near abroad".