Featured Book - "The New Cold War: How the Kremlin Menaces both Russia and the West"

Edward Lucas
The New Cold War: How the Kremlin Menaces both Russia and the West
Bloomsbury, 2008, 327.4 LUC

The foreign journalists in Moscow may be finding the run-up to Sunday's election boring, and its true that American pre-election elections get a lot more coverage, but the lack of headlines being generated by national politics hasn’t meant a decline in commentary on Russia and its continuing role in the international arena.

Recent RSA Thursday speaker Edward Lucas’ new book, The New Cold War: How the Kremlin Menaces both Russia and the West deals with both, discussing the domestic power structures built up by Vladimir Putin that in the process of being handed over to Dmitry Medvedev, and how these men to international business. Almost a year ago Matthew Bryza, deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, attacked Russia’s state-owned natural gas company Gazprom for pursuing control of European energy infrastructure, but as Timothy Garton Ash reported yesterday, Europe is yet to formulate a coherent policy.

As The Telegraph’s review points out, it’s a misleading title; the conflict in question is being waged with energy sources and against their customers, not with nuclear bombs aimed at military complexes. This book is a valuable explanation of the seemingly inert Russia politics, and why watching nothing happening is interesting right now.

To borrow a copy of The New Cold War: How the Kremlin Menaces both Russia and the West, please contact the RSA Library.