Cold War, Redux?

It seems as though new allegations of Russian involvement to influence the 2016 presidential election surface every few days.  Senior members of both the Trump campaign and the President’s administration have been questioned by congressional committees and investigators from seventeen security and enforcement agencies.  A Washngton Post article published late last week reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally directed the cyber attacks that undermined the election.

Reports surfaced earlier this year of Russian interference in Britain’s recent general election and the French presidential election.  These allegations of interference in Europe politics by Moscow, coupled with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent dismissal of NATO while speaking before the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, has analysts worried about stability in Europe.

Following the 2014 annexation of Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula, there have been heightened fears that Putin may try to rebuild the Soviet empire and threaten the sovereignty of other European nations, compromising security that had been assured throughout the Cold War by NATO.  President Trump’s criticisms of NATO and the UK’s withdraw from the European Union only serve to create more facets of insecurity within the European community.

Tuesday’s Smart Talk discusses Russia’s global strategy and the threat Putin poses to European security, and, in turn, American security.  Colonel Douglas V. Mastriano of the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle specializes in Russian policy and NATO defense in Europe.  He appears on the program to examine the strategies and posturing used by Putin to advance Russian dominance in the region and the threat posed to the United States by these policies.

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