Pointers to a new Cold War

Vladimir Putin’s Cold War-style mass expulsion of diplomats from 27 countries, including two Australians, is no surprise after the expulsion of Russian diplomats, suspected of being spies, by Western nations and NATO. It is a form of retaliation the former spymaster and KGB colonel in East Germany knows well from his decades of service to the old Soviet Union.

Invoking it now, however, does not help his cause in the face of outrage over the use of the uniquely Russian, military-grade chemical weapon, novichok, in an attack on British soil on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia.

Mr Putin and his voluble ambassador in Canberra, Grigory Logvinov, can huff and puff all they like but, as Malcolm Turnbull pointed out, Mr Putin remains firmly in the dock of world opinion over the first use of a chemical weapon in Europe since World War II. Amid much self-congratulation, Mr Putin announced last year that Russia had destroyed all its stocks of chemical weapons, as required under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. But the traces found after the attack on Mr Skripal and his daughter were incontrovertibly established by Britain’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down to be novichok. Russia alone is known to have developed that agent, with work beginning in the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Russian chemist Vil Mirzayanov disclosed details of the program in 1991.

No other country has novichok. Yet, as the Prime Minister said, Russia has not explained why its novichok program has not been declared to the Organisation for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, as required by the Chemical Weapons Convention. “The Russian government must explain how a military-grade nerve agent developed by Russia was used in the UK, endangering hundreds of lives,” Mr Turnbull said.

Mr Putin’s response, in expelling more than 200 diplomats, provides no answer. It is redolent of the belligerent conduct of successive Cold War despots such as Joseph Stalin, Nikita Krushchev, Leonid Brezhnev and the former KGB boss Yuri Andropov. In such circumstances, the unprecedented unity among the 27 free world countries — including Donald Trump’s US — in jointly confronting Mr Putin over use of a chemical weapon in a foreign country must be maintained. Pressure on the Russian ruler has to be unrelenting.

Whether the novichok outrage points to a new Cold War remains to be seen. Many signs suggest it does. Added to Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, which unilaterally redrew Europe’s boundaries, the invasion of Eastern Ukraine, the shooting down of MH17 and Russian aggression in Syria, it suggests a pattern of behaviour reminiscent of the Cold War.

Mr Putin has frequently lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union. The West must ensure he is prevented from reconstructing it.