A nation must think before it acts.
Colonel General Valerii Mironov, a former deputy defense minister and now the principal military advisor to Russia’s premier, recently stated that the “Cold War still goes on and only one definite period of it is over.” To be sure, the general did not anticipate any significant military buildup “for at least ten years,” that is, until the Russian economy improves, and indicated that no long-range concept had yet been set forth defining potential threats over the next fifteen years.
It would also seem that the cold war continues in the minds of Russia’s politicians. However, advisors to these civilian policymakers have proposed (as Mironov assuredly knows) a long-range national security concept, offering it for adoption as part of a new Russian military doctrine. For the West, this proposal suggests close monitoring of certain developments in Russia that may evolve into a qualitatively different and much more dangerous threat than that posed by the Russian military doctrine announced almost three years ago.