Analysis: Brace yourself for a new world order, a lot like the Cold War order

Jim Van Nostrand

The phone rang early in the predawn hours of a midwinter morning. The deadpan voice on the line uttered only two words — “lariat advance” — then click.

I sprang out of bed, hastily donned my uniform and boots, and bolted out the door into the cold, dark night, grabbing my “go” bag on the way.

This was the mid-1980s in Germany. I was a young lieutenant in the Army’s 1st Infantry Division. The code phrase meant my platoon of 44 soldiers and four armored vehicles had to be ready to roll out the gate of a base called Panzer Kaserne, fully loaded for war, in less than an hour.

It turned out to be only a drill, a drill that would repeat itself many times in the course of a three-year tour. The specter of a Russian invasion of Europe dominated our lives. We practiced relentlessly, snow or rain or shine, how to stop tank columns in their tracks if they came thundering across the German border. Deterring that threat was our sole reason for existence.

We feared — and trained for — fighting the Russians house to house in the streets of German cities. We feared even more — and trained for — the enemy using nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

Thank God those fears never became reality.

Those memories of a darker, more pessimistic time — the Cold War — came flooding back this week while reading the accounts of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians fighting Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of their country.

The Ukrainians are living the nightmare that haunted our waking dreams more than three decades ago.

Some are armed with only rifles, pistols and Molotov cocktails — glass bottles of gasoline, alcohol and perhaps some motor oil, usually lit by a burning cloth wick. Those simple, homemade weapons splatter flaming gas on the outside of a tank, seep into the turrets and other openings, ignite the fuel and ammunition inside, and incinerate the crew.

The luckiest Ukrainians have American-made Javelin portable antitank missiles, which can kill from much farther away. Early reports suggest they have been effective, with burning Russian armored vehicles littering Ukraine’s streets and roads.

Later in the 1980s, I commanded an anti-armor company in the Oregon Army National Guard. We had Tow II missiles, wire-guided weapons that can destroy a tank at a range of more than 4,000 meters, mounted on humvee all-terrain vehicles. We became experts in every detail of warfare against tanks — their blind spots, where the thinnest armor is, how to disable the tracks and render them sitting ducks, and how to misdirect them so as to expose the back exhaust grills of their engines, the surest spot for a fatal shot up the rear end.

The Ukrainian army likely studied those same tactics. Ukrainian volunteers have had to learn them on the job. It takes a special kind of courage (insanity, really) to get close enough to a tank to take it out with a Molotov cocktail. But getting close is the point — a tank commander’s worst nightmare is dismounted infantry running around in his blind spot.

A new Cold War?

The United States military was still at least partially focused on Russia when I left the Army in the mid-1990s, well after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The theoretical enemy units we practiced against in our war gaming exercises were still modeled on the Soviet order of battle — we just called them “Krasnovians” or some other moniker instead of “Russians.” I learned more than I will ever need to know again about the march speed of a Russian motorized rifle division on the move, and the operational characteristics of a T-80 main battle tank.

We didn’t fully pivot away from that until the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, followed by our preemptive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, demanded our full attention.

Now Putin’s aggression, and his dreams of resurrecting Russian glory, combined with the rise of China, presage a terrible new world order. The drawdown of our military presence in Europe might have been a bit premature.

Putin cannot back down. The resulting loss of face would mean his downfall. I believe he will bring whatever force to bear that is necessary, even if it means leveling Ukraine’s cities. Russia’s Cold War doctrine, modeled on what worked in World War II, was to line up tanks and artillery axle-to-axle along a broad, miles-long front and unleash hell, wreaking destruction on anything in its path.

Putin has been relatively restrained so far, but make no mistake, he will do whatever it takes to win. Just look at what he did in Aleppo (Syria) and Grozny (Chechnya) to envision what he is capable of. They were reduced to ruin. We have already seen signs of this in Russian bombardments of residential areas in Ukraine’s two biggest cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv.

It’s hard to see how this ends well for the Ukrainians, no matter how bravely they fight.

Prepare for pain

People too young to remember the Cold War are going to be very surprised about how fundamentally their lives are going to change from here on.

The possibility of thermonuclear war has again risen its ugly head, with Putin dusting off Russia’s arsenal, putting his nuclear forces on high alert and threatening retaliation against the West. Those of a certain age remember sheltering under our desks during school drills, hoping that the threat of “mutual assured destruction” would save us from the unthinkable. The nukes never went away when the Cold War ended. And now, hypersonic technology allows them to travel to their targets faster than ever before.

Sending our sons and daughters off to fight in distant corners of the Earth against overmatched third-world opponents, while we go about our daily lives as if nothing is happening, will no longer be sufficient.

Russia and China are entirely different propositions. Prepare for more economic conflict, more fights over precious natural resources, more proxy wars, and massive military buildups as these nuclear-armed, authoritarian superpowers seek to impose their will on the rest of the world.

Alarmist? Perhaps a little, but the trend lines are clear. Ask the good citizens of Taiwan how safe they feel, with China studying the West’s response to the invasion of Ukraine.

Americans will soon face hard choices, such as absorbing more economic hardship or authorizing war in Europe. Winning the Cold War required shared sacrifices and unity of purpose that are sadly nonexistent today. 

Jim Van Nostrand is executive editor of The Missoulian. Reach him at jimvan@missoulian.com

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