This Irish author and political analyst whose views on the current dispute in Ukraine regarding the country's economic integration with Europe versus integration with Russia might suggest to some people that the Cold War never really ended. Actually it did end.
The history of Western capital elites relationship with Russia began in the modern era with the Soviet revolution which created a country in which capital could not function. As such, it was an abomination, a dangerous heresy inflicted upon the earth which capitalist elites could not tolerate. They did everything they could to destroy the Soviet Union immediately after the revolution by invading the country with their armies. Having failed that, the Nazis looked like a promising project to rid this scourge from the earth. But the Nazis were defeated at Stalingrad. Then the budding Anglo-American Empire stepped in to help defeat the Third Reich which represented a threat to their dominance. With the advent of nuclear weapons, world wars became too dangerous for even capitalists to contemplate in their opposition to the Soviet Union. Hence, the Cold War and numerous indirect small wars by proxy.
With the collapse of the hierarchically organized Russian version of socialism (which served a bureaucratic class) in 1989, many thought that peace and disarmament would now reign in a glorious new era. Quite the opposite has happened. Why?
Capitalists always compete for dominance in the race to capture ever more markets, cheap labor, and access to resources. Russia and China refuse to subordinate their proud countries to the diktats of the Empire. Hence, we are in a new period of more insurrections and wars. We will see national disputes like what is happening in Ukraine, and new wars as we've seen and are seeing in the Middle East, Eurasia, and in many other parts of the globe. There will be no peace until capitalism is dismantled and replaced with classless, egalitarian societies.
Given the destabilizing, predatory role played by the EU towards Russia’s neighbouring countries – aided and abetted by Washington – and given the steady encirclement by the NATO military alliance around Russia’s borders, one has to understand the recent turmoil in the Ukraine as part of a bigger geopolitical picture. That picture is a long historical process of Western-dominated capitalism trying to expand and subjugate new markets, and in particular to bring the vast hinterland of Russia within its orbit.