Welcome to Cold War 2.0

September ended with Vladimir Putin all but declaring war on Ukraine, NATO, the United States, and indeed the world. He made a calamitous mistake in thinking his army could roll through the fractious nation that had won its freedom from the Soviet Union in 1991, only to be humiliated by the Ukrainian army and valiant civilians outside Kyiv. 

Repelled from the capital, Putin spent the spring and summer expanding his footprint in Ukraine's east and south, but was blindsided when the Ukrainians themselves went on the offensive in September. The Russians fled, abandoning their tanks and the bodies of their dead. Putin announced the call-up of 300,000 former soldiers, whereupon an estimated 280,000 young men fled the country. And he staged sham elections in four provinces where fighting is still going on, and with Stalin-like precision discovered that, oh, 90-98 percent of their populations want to come under Moscow's rules. So any further Ukrainian advance will, ipso facto, be an attack upon Russia itself, to be repulsed with all the weapons at his disposal, and what do you think of that, Joe Biden? (And according to London's Guardian newspaper, he deployed underwater drones to damage the Nord Stream gas lines to Germany and the rest of Europe.)

I really don't know what to make of all this. The change in America has been astounding. Our most high-faluting periodicals now read like Bill Buckley's National Review, or the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal. Here's Anne Applebaum, writing in The Atlantic online yesterday:

"Vladimir Putin today announced his annexation of four provinces of Ukraine's four provinces that he does not fully control, that did not vote to join Russia, that have been the site of mass murder and mass deportation since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. With this statement, the Russian president is also declaring war. But this is not merely a war on Ukraine." 

Indeed not. It's war against Europe, against the United States, and against democracy itself. To its credit, the Biden administration isn't waffling. The New York Times reports that the US is preparing for a years-long effort to supply Ukraine with money, weapons, and training. Reversing the draw-down of American forces in Germany after Cold War 1.0 ended thirty years ago, the Pentagon will set up a new regional "command" in Wiesbaden. There, an initial staff of 300 will coordinate the weapons and other aid flowing to Ukraine from forty countries around the world, and also the American, British, and Danish training programs for the Ukrainian military.