'Cold War' fears overblown, say experts
Secret "Russian subs" off Sweden, tit-for-tat sanctions, Nato fighters scrambling to intercept Russian warplanes: relations between the West and Moscow over Ukraine have sparked incidents reminiscent of the Cold War that terrified the world for decades.
Even Cold War doyen Mikhail Gorbachev used the highly symbolic 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall to warn the world was "on the brink of a new Cold War", adding that "some are even saying that it has already begun".
And it's not just former leaders. Finland's PM also sounded the alarm, saying that Russia's actions over Ukraine were bringing the world to the "brink of a Cold War."
But while experts agree that the current situation is extremely dangerous, they say it is very different to when the two nuclear-armed superpowers faced off, seemingly only minutes away from all-out global destruction.
Instead of a Cold War, experts see a period of geopolitical rebalancing after years of the United States assuming the role of sole superpower.
"Saying that we're in a Cold War is to misunderstand the situation," says Vladimir Evseev, director of the Moscow-based think-tank NCO Public Political Studies Center.
"This isn't a Cold War, but a period of transition. Western domination is coming to an end. The West can no longer impose its will on the world," added the expert.
"The most important difference today is the factor of China," said Sergey Radchenko, an expert on Russia and the Cold War at Britain's Aberystwyth University.
"Today, China is the greatest assurance Russia has that it will not be isolated, neither politically nor economically. The difference is great, and the gist of it is that the West will find it a lot more difficult to deter Russia through a show of force," Radchenko told AFP.
G20 vows to 'extinguish' Ebola
Afp, Brisbane
The world's most powerful economies yesterday vowed to "extinguish" the Ebola epidemic ravaging west Africa, as the vast desert nation of Mali scrambled to prevent a new outbreak of the killer disease.
"G20 members are committed to do what is necessary to ensure the international effort can extinguish the outbreak and address its medium-term economic and humanitarian costs," the leaders said in a statement, as they welcomed the International Monetary Funds's initiative to release $300 million to combat Ebola.
The Democratic Republic of Congo -- where a three-month outbreak of a different strain of the disease claimed at least 49 lives since August -- declared itself Ebola-free yesterday.
Comments