More than three decades since the end of the Cold War, there have been a series of attempts to analyze the international power structure of the 21^st century. During the early days of the post-Cold War era, the theory of ‘Unipolarity,’ according to which the U.S singlehandedly rules the global economy and security as the only ‘Hyper-power,’ dominated the attempts to understand the international power structure. However, as American leadership faltered after the protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s, the thesis of ‘unipolar world order’ became controversial. The economic rise of China since the 2010s and the military resurgence of Russia under the consolidation of Putin’s tyrannical autocracy during the same period redoubled the altercation. As such, beginning from the 2010s, there has been an increasingly visible perspective which advocates the view that the international power structure has either returned to the Cold War structure, or become more multipolar and multilateral (Shor 2010; Roberts 2011; Shifrinson and Beckley 2012; Mansbach and Ferguson 2021, 89-140).

The initial works on reinterpreting the international power structure focused mostly on US-China relations. The ascendance of Xi Jinping as President of the People’s Republic of China in 2013 marked the beginning of intensifying competition between the U.S and China over the next ten years, leading to increasing concern that US-China relations in the 21^st century might escalate into a ‘Neo-Cold War.’ With the enthusiastic support of realist theorists in international relations, the thesis of US-China hegemonic conflicts seemed to determine the gist of the international power structure of the 21^st century (Kang 2010; Huntington 2011; Mearsheimer 2014; Glenn 2016; Allison 2017; Mearsheimer 2019; Khong 2019). However, as Russia, which had largely been neglected since the collapse of the Soviet Union, began to restart its aggressive territorial expansion in the 2020s, the view that current international relations are dominated by the US-China bipolarity has become less convincing.

In fact, Russia’s offensive move already began in 2014 when it forcibly annexed the Crimean Peninsula, but due to the limited scope of war a full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine could be avoided at that time, and it was not considered an event that could reorganize the international power structure. The Western states led by the U.S certainly expressed their concern about Russia’s long-term ambition under Putin’s dictatorial regime, but they still viewed Russia as a declining, anachronistic state rather than a succeeding state of the Soviet Union, as it was generally believed that the consolidation of Putin’s autocratic power in Russia’s domestic realm would not directly lead to external military expansion. Moreover, the fact that more than half of the population on the Crimean Peninsula were of Slav ethnicity, and that Russia relied largely on paramilitary units rather than regular Russian troops further discredited the argument that this could cause international incidents with lasting impact on the power structure. In most cases, the Russian invasion of the Crimean Peninsula was considered a local skirmish (Delahunty 2014; Saluschev 2014).

However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which swiftly became a full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine, dramatically changed the conditions. It not only resulted in a protracted war of more than three consecutive years, but it also clearly demonstrated that the concentration of political power in Russia’s domestic realm can lead to external military expansion (Demir 2022). Regardless of the final outcome of the war, it became more than clear that Russia, a great power with evident anti-West tendencies, cannot be neglected even in the 21^st century, indicating that the previous research trend focusing exclusively on US-China relations no longer bears a proper reflection of reality. In other words, it has become apparent that the analysis on the international power structure of the 21^st century must take into account the complex relations between all three major powers, namely, the U.S, China, and Russia.

Against this background, this paper attempts to examine US-Russia relations which have relatively lacked systematic analysis compared to US-China relations. Therefore, the rest of this paper is structured as follows. It will first introduce the existing literature on US-Russia relations and clarify their limits. It will then take a closer look at the fundamental structures of the Cold War in the 20^th century to build an analytical framework as current US-Russia relations largely originate from US-Soviet relations in the previous century. As for the case study, it will investigate the recent conditions of US-Russia relations under the three general theses of ‘power equivalence (i.e., power balance),’ ‘propaganda campaigns,’ and ‘proxy wars and nuclear close calls,’ each of which will be represented by ‘the existence of MAD (i.e., Vertical Nuclear Proliferation),’ ‘information warfare between the U.S and Russia,’ and ‘Russo-Ukrainian War since 2014,’ respectively. After the analysis of recent conditions of US-Russia relations described in the case study, it will conclude that US-Russia relations today significantly resemble US-Soviet relations in the 20^th century (i.e., the Cold War).

Previous research on US-Russia relations has focused on the success and failure of Russian and U.S. foreign policy as well as attempts to offer some possible institutional solutions for the deteriorating relationship between the two countries.

To begin with, it is generally argued that Russia has been successfully operating foreign policies that can best serve its national interests since the mid-2010s. The attitudes of political elites in Russia are sufficiently well-united under Putin’s policy agenda, which strongly advocates the use of coercive forces to protect Russia’s national security and territorial integrity (Bashkirova et al. 2019). As a result, Russia has been expanding its naval forces in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean with significant success, as it has built a widespread naval network across the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf during the last decade, threatening not only the security of the nearby Baltic States, but also the interests of their Western allies (Kim and Blank 2020). In much the same context, Russia’s active disinformation campaigns have successfully stimulatied extremist political factions in European states, most notably, Germany. These campaigns have increasingly demandied ‘pro-Russia policies,’ such as mutual dialogue and conciliation with Russia, regardless of its current posture that is largely threatening to the European society (Wood 2021). Even after the outbreak of the Ukrainian War (2022~), Russia has deliberately used existing international legal frameworks to justify its invasion of Ukraine by exploiting the remnants of their former imperialism, which acquiesce the use of coercive forces under the conditions of inter-imperial rivalry (Kotova and Tzouvala 2022). Overall, even under the multiple obstacles, such as a declining population, weak economy, and unstable political system, with the clear vision of what it attempts to achieve and promote, Russia has successfully proven its remarkable capability as a resilient actor (Mankoff 2021).

On the contrary, assessments of U.S foreign policy in light of its deteriorating relationship with Russia has been mostly negative. The reckless enlargement of NATO since the 1990s, which has not considered the acceptance of Russia as its official member, has often been criticized as motivation for Russia’s increasingly anti-American and anti-West narrative in its foreign policy (Radchenko 2020). The projection of global influence, a natural extension of America’s desire to become a global hegemon, has also been regarded as an important factor contributing to the deteriorating conditions for US-Russia relations. For instance, the failure of improving bilateral relations between the U.S and Russia during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev (2008-2012) led to closer ties between Russia and Iran, another major anti-American state with significant military potential, when JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) eventually failed in 2018 with the unilateral withdrawal of the U.S from the pact. The desire for global hegemony and influence in American foreign policy, which inherently contains elements of unilateralism and intransigence on mutually beneficial negotiation, the argument goes, led to the loss of a strategic opportunity to improve relations with its two great potential enemies (Mousavi and Naeni 2019; Rebro 2020; German 2024). The idealistic approach of foreign policy, another natural element in American politics, causes additional problems in America’s power projection, as it often deploys its troops in distant regions with unrealistic goals. Furthermore, a preference for conventional interstate war over unconventional civil war, ultimately results in strategic failure (Tierney 2021). Lack of transparency in the Trump administration during the pivotal period of the late 2010s has also been blamed as another factor that further aggravated the failure of American foreign policy and the degeneration of US-Russia relations. The internal confusion and widespread uncertainty in the Trump administration’s foreign policies denigrated its relations with allies, which had already been damaged as a result of Russian interference in 2016 US presidential election, as it reduced the credibility of US foreign policies even further (Deyermond 2023; Goldsmith and Horiuchi 2023).

Previous research has also attempted to offer possible solutions for deteriorating US-Russia relations. For example, based on the historical fact during the Cold War that the two conflicting governments of the U.S and the Soviet Union often reached a partial consensus in terms of reducing their nuclear arsenals to alleviate the risk of MAD (i.e., Mutual Assured Destruction), it is argued that ‘GRIT (i.e., Graduated Reciprocation in Tension-reduction),’ which advocates “unilateral, reciprocal steps to reduce the military budgets for creating a credibility in one’s effort to reduce the external threat,” must be renewed today (Bidgood 2021). In addition to specific policy suggestions, more holistic approaches have also been offered. For instance, it is argued that US policy toward Russia needs to be converted from its current obsession with Moscow to the more multifaceted and multilateral approach to Russia’s peripheries, replicating its regional policies in Southeast Asia and the Pacific in the face of China’s increasingly expansionist maneuver. In other words, an overly Kremlin-centric Russia policy should be avoided, while a more regionalized policy, which focuses on Russia’s neighboring countries (i.e., those in Central Asia and Eastern Europe) through the method of ‘region-building,’ needs to be promoted further (Ohanyan 2021). Meanwhile, with the emphasis on the diffusion of global power and the diversification of international interests in the 21^st century, a request for ‘rules-based order’ led by the U.S, whose foreign policy has previously been predicated on the unilateral exercise of hegemony, is also put forward (Jentleson 2023).

Although existing literature offers some useful insight into the foreign policies of Russia and the U.S over the last few decades, as well as potential strategies for improving their relations, they lack a systematic analysis on what exactly constitutes US-Russia relations in the 2020s. Instead of providing a concrete analytical framework by which current US-Russia relations can be examined, they focus either on describing the recent conditions of the two countries’ foreign policies or on drawing some institutional and abstract solutions whose practicality and feasibility are largely untested. Moreover, most of them are based on the premise of ‘democracy versus authoritarianism,’ in which the primacy of analysis becomes the negative impact of Russian politics on American liberalism and some possible ways to reinvigorate the American-led order.

Overall, the existing literature does not properly explain what specific form of relationship the U.S and Russia currently have, nor do they explicate how such a relationship is expected to affect and shape the international power structure of the 21^st century. They tend to be either descriptive essays or arguments in favor of or against the foreign policies of Russia and the U.S. Therefore, this paper attempts to provide a more concrete analytical framework that can increase the clarity of the analysis on US-Russia relations based on the major components of the Cold War from which the current US-Russia relations largely originate. By doing so, it also purports to bring about some important implications for current US-Russia relations in the international power structure of the 21^st century.

The bilateral relations between the U.S and Russia essentially originated from the Cold War period. Although there had been a few cases in which the two countries made some official contact before the second half of the 20^th century, such as the Alaska Purchase of 1867 and the Treaty of Portsmouth of 1905, their pre-Cold War relations were largely sporadic and inconsistent, since Russia had suffered from internal political instability, while the U.S had been either a colonial state (1492-1776) or an isolationist state under the Monroe Doctrine (1823-1948). Official diplomatic relations between the two countries were established in 1933. However, due to the subsequent outbreak of WWII which turned the foreign policies of all countries into military strategies for survival, their relations could not be developed any further. Following the three interstate conferences for the postwar plans (i.e., Tehran Conference of 1943, Yalta Conference of 1945, and Potsdam Conference of 1945), the diplomatic talks between the U.S and Soviet Russia began to renew, and their first bilateral treaty was signed in Moscow in 1964 when their relations were already tied to the Cold War structure (Mayers 2003; Powaski 1997, 35-166).

Thereafter, there have been been a series of influential bilateral treaties, such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 (ABMT), the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (1972 & 1979), the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987 (INF Treaty), the Malta Summit of 1989, and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of 1991 (START I), many of which have been succeeded by more recent bilateral treaties such as START II (De-MIRV-ing Agreement), SORT (Treaty of Moscow), and New START in the post-Cold War decades. Furthermore, when the Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991, among the fifteen independent states separated from the Union, Russia inherited all the rights and obligations of the Soviet Union in accordance with the UN Charter, succeeding the Soviet Union’s permanent membership of UNSC, while undertaking the remaining nuclear arsenals and other key conventional weaponries of the Red Army. As such, Russia practically became the succeeding state of the Soviet Union since 1991, as it was further supported by the fact that all the former Soviet embassies on foreign soil became Russian embassies (Powaski, 167-294).

The era of the Post-Cold War, which effectively constitutes the last three decades and an ongoing state of affairs, tends to go back to the old pattern of the Cold War except for a few brief moments of reconciliation. For instance, although the Russian President Boris Yeltsin seemed to have established more cooperative relationships with the U.S in the early years of his presidency when he agreed on a collaborative approach to issues like arms control and counterterrorism, he withdrew his cooperation as soon as there was the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe during his second term. Similarly, Vladimir Putin showed cooperative gestures when the U.S initiated wars in Afghanistan and Iraq after the 9/11 attacks, but a series of subsequent events - the outbreak of the Russo-Georgian War (2008), the development of new U.S. missile defense system (2002-present), Russia’s annexation of Crimea (2014), the Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War (2015), and Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections - led to the dramatic rise of tension between the two countries, culminating in the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 (Sarotte 2021; German 2024).

As current US-Russia relations are the byproduct of the Cold War structure, the analysis on the US-Russia relations as of the 2020s requires an analytical framework building on major components of the Cold War. Accordingly, the rest of this section examines the fundamental structure of the Cold War in the 20^th century to elucidate its major components and thereby to see whether current US-Russia relations reproduce them, or significantly deviate from their previous relations.

The period of the Cold War (1947-1991), which was essentially an extension of two great wars in the previous decades (i.e., WWI and WWII), was dominated by two superpowers, namely, the U.S and the Soviet Union. The former succeeded the British Empire as a new leading state in the West, while the latter absorbed a significant portion of Eastern Europe as its satellite states, both of which took place at the end of the first half of the 20^th century as a result of their major contribution to defeating the Axis powers. As such, ‘power equivalence (i.e., power balance)’ constituted the general conditions of the Cold War as well as one of its major characteristics (Betts 1986).

The power of the U.S during the Cold War was formidable. Following its involvement in both of the two great wars, the U.S broke from its former tradition of the Monroe Doctrine (i.e., Classical Isolationism) by the end of the Second World War and began to solidify its military prominence across the Western Hemisphere. As a policy of containment against the Soviet Sphere, the U.S formed a strategic military alliance with over 50 countries along with a half million troops actively deployed abroad.¹ In addition, the dramatic growth of military-industrial complexes was combined with a massive miliary funding of science, culminating in more than \$8 trillion of military expenditures (Cypher 1991) and a number of pro-military legislations such as ‘the national security act of 1947’ and ‘the Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 (i.e., Goldwater–Nichols Act),’ all of which promoted the militarist characteristics of the American politics and the use of force in its foreign policy (Avey 2012). Most importantly, with its first development of the nuclear weapons in 1945 under the aegis of the Manhattan Project (1942-1946), the U.S enjoyed the most powerful force of deterrence against any attempts to invade its strategic key points, not to mention its mainland. Indeed, between 1945 and 1992, the U.S conducted more than 1,032 nuclear tests to consolidate its nuclear prominence whose stockpile could only be compared with that of the Soviet Union (Siracusa 2020, 39-59).

The power of the Soviet Union was equally redoubtable. Beginning from the period of revolution and civil war (1917-1922), the Soviet Armed Forces, famously known as ‘the Red Army,’ were composed of all three highly developed units of the Ground Forces, the Navy, and the Air Forces, along with the Strategic Rocket Forces which were developed in the later decades. One of the most noticeable features of the Soviet forces was its tremendous manpower. During the Second World War, when it was directly involved in the notorious ‘Eastern Front’ where it had to face the German forces almost singlehandedly, the Soviet Union enjoyed roughly 5 million troops at the beginning, and it additionally conscripted nearly 30 million more soldiers as the war proceeded.² After the end of WWII, the number of troops in the Soviet forces dropped significantly as a full-scale war with equivalent power no longer existed However, with the beginning of the Cold War which generated a constant fear of being breached by Western forces, the Soviet forces maintained between 4 million and 5 million troops, constituting the largest armed forces in the world.³ Meanwhile, just like the American containment policy under which American military bases on foreign soil were actively implemented on a massive scale, the Soviet Union built its own system of foreign military bases across Eastern Europe, the Baltic Sea Region, the Middle East, Africa, and, to a limited extent, even Asia.⁴ With the construction of the Warsaw Pact (WP) in 1955 against a US-led NATO (The North Atlantic Treaty Organization), Soviet influence over the foreign soil grew dramatically to match that of the U.S (Reese 2002). Finally, following the American invention of nuclear weapons in 1945, which effectively gave the U.S a temporary monopoly over the most destructive weapons in human history, the Soviet Union developed its own nuclear weapons in 1949 with the Soviet atomic bomb project. Thereafter, it conducted more than 715 nuclear tests between 1949 and 1990, building the largest nuclear stockpile in the world.⁵

Another major characteristic of the Cold War was the prevalence of propaganda campaigns which constituted its ideological aspects. Throughout the Cold War period, the U.S and the Soviet Union performed propaganda campaigns to improve their national unity and public image.⁶ As a product of the first socialist revolution, the ideological bellicosity of the Soviet Union was predetermined. Under the strict inculcation of Marxism–Leninism, the Soviet government promoted a variety of anti-liberal concepts such as ‘a New Soviet man,’ ‘collective way of life,’ ‘the world revolution,’ and ‘the class enemy,’ all of which naturally led to the denigration of the American political system.⁷ Together with the use of education as a direct way to instill these anti-liberal concepts in Soviet youngsters, the Soviet government harnessed a wide range of media, including radio broadcasting, poster, cinema, newspapers, books, theaters, and art, to use more subtle and indirect ways to consolidate its ideological stance. Not surprisingly, its propaganda campaigns expanded abroad under the supervision of Soviet intelligence agencies. With more than \$4 billion of specified budgets for international propaganda movements, they actively facilitated anti-war sentiments among the American public and other anti-American conspiracies, achieving some meaningful success (Barghoorn 2015).⁸

The conditions in the U.S were not so much different. Even though the process of the American revolution, which began when it declared its independence from the British Empire in 1776, proceeded much more gradually compared to the Soviet Socialist Revolution, just like the Soviet government, the U.S government not only used its educational system to instill anti-Soviet notions in American youngsters, but it also used a variety of contemporary media to create the impression that the US-led liberal and capitalist system is superior to the Soviet-led communist system. For instance, the American education during the Cold War frequently emphasized the values of political liberalism and capitalism along with the importance of patriotic attitudes.⁹ Moreover, with the dramatic rise of funding for tertiary education, especially in the spheres of applied science and area studies, the advanced technologies and knowledge that could be harnessed against the Soviet bloc were systematically fostered, often under the exaggerated assessment on the urgency of Soviet encroachment on the American mainland. In the meantime, just as the Soviet government did, the American government also used a wide scope of media to achieve a dual purpose of enhancing its ideological legitimacy and stigmatizing the Soviet Union’s Communist ideology as a tool for cold-blooded dictatorship. This includes motion pictures (i.e., movies and television shows), literature (i.e., a full-length novel, pulp-fiction novels, and cartoons), arts (i.e., music and ballet), and sport (i.e., Olympic Games).¹⁰ Similarly, in response to the active intervention of Soviet intelligence agencies in propaganda campaigns, the U.S government initiated a number of propaganda programs controlled by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), such as ‘Operation Mockingbird’ and ‘Crusade for Freedom,’ replicating the same pattern of using organized state resources to win the ideological legitimacy (Belmonte 2013).¹¹

The last and the most noticeable feature of the Cold War, which effectively constituted its conflictual aspects, was ‘proxy wars and nuclear close calls.’ As an armed conflict between two or more conflicting parties supported by two competing superpowers, the purpose of proxy wars for the U.S and the Soviet Union during the Cold War was to deteriorate each other’s material and reputational assets (Hughes 2014). As such, their scope and casualties were worldwide and devastating. For instance, Asia was a stage for the Korean War (1950-1953) and Vietnam War (1955-1975), two of the most destructive proxy wars during the Cold War, with casualties of 2 to 3 million and 3.8 million, respectively (Cumings 2011; Hastings 2019). The Middle East and Africa also suffered from the Soviet Afghan War (1979-1989), another major proxy war between the U.S and the Soviet Union which caused casualties of at least 2 million, together with many other cases with equally devastating results, such as the Lebanese Civil War (1975 –1990), the War in Mozambique (1977-1992), the Somali Rebellion (1978-1991), the Angolan Civil War (1975-2002), the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005), and the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988). Even in Latin America, the U.S and the Soviet Union actively intervened in a number of local conflicts in the form of proxy warfare (i.e., Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Grenada, El Salvador, Colombia, etc.), especially throughout the 1980s (Westad 2007).

Meanwhile, as an incident that could have led to the full-scale war between two superpowers (Tertrais 2017), nuclear close calls constantly took place between the U.S and the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War. For example, during the 1960s, the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) dominated the politics of two countries, as they nearly reached the beginning of a full-scale war between the U.S and Soviet forces.¹² After a brief period of détente in the 1970s, another series of nuclear close calls - Operation RYAN, Korean Air Lines flight 007 (KAL-007), Exercise Able Archer-83, etc. - occurred in 1983, which became known as the ‘year of crisis.’¹³ In all these cases, it later turned out that any further miscommunication could easily have ignited a nuclear confrontation (Seo 2024).

Considering their resources and the scope of foreign policy, it is not uncommon to see the relations between great powers result in ‘great power competition.’ The relations between the U.S and the Soviet Union followed the general pattern of the great power competition. However, the Cold War structure was unique in that it contained all three factors of ‘power equivalence,’ ‘propaganda campaigns,’ and ‘proxy wars and nuclear close calls.’ As ‘power equivalence’ constituted the general conditions of the Cold War, direct military clashes were replaced with more indirect means of confrontation represented by widespread propaganda campaigns (i.e., ideological aspects) and global proxy wars and nuclear close calls (i.e., conflictual aspects).

As figure 1 above shows, the overall military power of both sides, whose destructiveness was spearheaded by the rapidly growing nuclear arsenals, brought about the notion of MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction), under which the primary strategies for competition became subtler and more insidious. As such, even when it was the unprecedented period of global power competition dominated by two conflicting superpowers, propaganda campaigns through information warfare (i.e., the ‘Good Democratic West’ and ‘Evil Communist Soviets’ or vice versa), and the global scale of proxy wars and nuclear close calls (i.e., military support mostly in the Third World) constituted the main columns of the Cold War structure. In short, unlike the conventional notion that the Cold War can simply be understood as the expansion of military and economic power or increasing bilateral rivalry, the bilateral relations under the Cold War structure take place when all three elements of ‘power equivalence,’ ‘propaganda campaigns,’ and ‘proxy wars and nuclear close calls’ overlap as figure 2 below describes.

Accordingly, the Cold War structure is not a universal form of great power competition. It clearly belongs to the category of great power competition, but it constitutes one of the more specific ways such competition unfolds, as not all great power competitions contain all three elements of ‘power equivalence,’ ‘propaganda campaigns,’ and ‘proxy wars and nuclear close calls’ at the same time. Indeed, many of great power competitions that have been historically observed over the last century did not fulfill the standards of the Cold War structure as is depicted in figure 3 below.

For example, the U.S and Japan engaged in a fierce great power competition during WWII, but the size of their resources and military forces never reached the point of equivalence. Throughout the war, Japan was completely overwhelmed by the U.S in both economy and military equipment almost by 10 to 1 (Sagan 1988; Ford 2008). The U.S and the British Empire competed with each other in the economic realm during the first half of the 20^th century, and their overall capabilities were more or less equivalent until the end of WWII. However, they did not initiate global propaganda campaigns against each other, nor did they suffer proxy wars and nuclear close calls, eventually achieving a peaceful power transition by the mid-20^th century (Yongping 2006). The U.S and China in recent decades (2010s-2020s) are undoubtedly involved in a great power competition, and they seem to fulfill the first two elements of power equivalence and propaganda campaigns. However, even under the increasing concern that their continuing competition might bring about regional and global insecurity, whose logical integrity is fairly assured, they have not yet engaged in proxy wars and nuclear close calls in the same pattern of the Cold War period (Saunders and Bowie 2016; Zaidi and Saud 2020). So far, the bilateral relations which belong to the great power competition and contain all three elements of ‘power equivalence,’ ‘propaganda campaigns,’ and ‘proxy wars and nuclear close calls’ at the same time can be found only in US-Soviet relations during the Cold War.

As the bilateral relations between the U.S and Russia essentially originated from the Cold War structure, it is legitimate to examine whether the current US-Russia relations reproduce it by applying three major components of the Cold War analyzed above. As such, the following section of this paper will closely look into current US-Russia relations in terms of their ‘power balance,’ ‘information warfare,’ and ‘active involvement in the Russo-Ukrainian War since 2014.’

US-Russia Power Balance

Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union which allegedly brought about a significant reduction in the overall military power of Russia, the power balance between the U.S and Russia seems to still remain as of 2024. For instance, the comparison of the military power between NATO and Russia (Statista Research Department 2024) shows that while NATO forces outnumber Russian forces in the total number of active military personnel (3.39 million to 1.32 million), aircrafts (22,308 to 4,814), and naval vessels (2,258 to 781), Russian forces outcompeted NATO forces in other realms, such as the total number of ground combat vehicles (14,777 to 11,390) and nuclear warheads (5,977 to 5,943).¹⁴

Indeed, the most noticeable factor contributing to their power equivalence today is their nuclear parity, as both countries have not abandoned the principle of MAD which they inherited from the Cold War structure. As one of the five recognized nuclear powers in NPT, although the total number of actively deployed warheads has been reduced since 1991, the U.S still maintains and deploys thousands of nuclear arsenals with more advanced technologies compared to the Cold War era. After a brief period of downsizing the nuclear forces during the Clinton administration which primarily focused on stockpile stewardship and anti-nuclear proliferation programs, the nuclear weapons programs began to rise again in the U.S under the Bush administration. After it suffered the September 11 attacks in 2001, the Bush administration renewed nuclear testing for developing new types of nuclear weapons, such as ‘Low-yield weapons,’ and ‘Nuclear Bunker Busters,’ by repealing the Spratt-Furse ban in 2003. The subsequent Obama administration both inherited and consummated these new nuclear weapons programs by successfully inventing a new smart-guided, low-yield nuclear weapon called ‘the B61-12.’ The outbreak of the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014 further consolidated the increasing trend of reactivating various nuclear weapons programs in the U.S., as the Obama administration permitted a budget of more than a trillion dollars for such programs during its last two years whose essential agenda (i.e., renovating the nuclear weapons facilities and developing more effective warheads and delivery systems) was inherited by both the Trump and Biden administrations (Roberts 2015, 11-50, 106-140). As of 2024, with more than 400 Minuteman III ICBMs, 14 nuclear-capable Ohio-class Trident submarines, and 60 nuclear-capable heavy bombers, the U.S is expected to possess a total of 5,044 nuclear arsenals (Kristensen et al. 2024).

The same goes for Russia. Just like the U.S, it is one of the five recognized nuclear powers in NPT, and to compensate for the reduction of the nuclear warheads compared to the Cold War era, it has constantly upgraded its actively deployed nuclear arsenals with more advanced technologies. As soon as the Soviet Union was disintegrated in 1991, Russia earned the title of the successor state to the Soviet Union, and thereby brought back all the Soviet nuclear warheads located in three other states (i.e., Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan) in addition to those already in the territory of the Russian Federation. Although it signed START I (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) in 1991 in collaboration with the U.S., Russia did not ratify the START II and the START III. It later signed SORT (the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty) and the New START in 2002 and 2010, respectively, but against the military expansion of the U.S under the Bush administration in the early 2000s, Russia began to modernize its own nuclear arsenals. Moreover, in the middle of its invasion of Ukraine since 2014 by which its relations with the U.S rapidly deteriorated, Russia did not join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in 2017, and withdrew from the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 2023, the same year when it unilaterally suspended New START, which was the only functioning arms reduction treaty between the U.S and Russia in the 2020s (Federov 2019; Tertrais 2023). As of 2024, with a number of newly developed nuclear weapons such as the RS-28 Sarmat (SATAN 2), the Status-6 Ocean Multipurpose System (2M39 Poseidon), the Avangard (Objekt 4202), and the SSC-X-9 Skyfall (9M730 Burevestnik), Russia is expected to possess a total of 5,977 nuclear arsenals, confirming its status as a nuclear power with the largest reserves of nuclear warheads in the world (Kristensen et al. 2024).¹⁵

Under the persistence of power balance in their bilateral relations, the U.S and Russia have not underestimated each other’s military capabilities, refraining from direct confrontation, and limiting the scale of power projection even when the tension escalated rapidly. For example, amid the protracted Ukrainian war which it originally planned to end within two weeks, Russia has refrained from using more deadly strategic weapons with the concern that such an act would provoke the U.S to intervene in the war more actively. In much the same context, the U.S and its Western allies have focused mostly on logistical support instead of directly engaging in the war, as they are concerned that their direct military involvement would provoke Russia to use more deadly strategic weapons, threatening the security of all belligerent parties.¹⁶ Overall, the U.S and Russia still form a breathtaking power balance as of 2024, replicating one of the major components of the Cold War structure.

Information Warfare between the U.S and Russia

The prevalence of propaganda campaigns, which constituted one of the major characteristics of the Cold War as well as its ideological aspects, continues to dominate the bilateral relations between the U.S and Russia as well (Baumann 2020). As a successor state to the Soviet Union, Russia has constantly developed various propaganda programs to improve its national interests, while actively spreading anti-West and anti-American sentiments both within and without its mainland. Just as Soviet style propaganda campaigns began from the early education of its youngsters, Russia has been relying on the early education system for the base of its propaganda movements since the establishment of Putin’s government in 2000. Under the direct instructions of the government, the values of ‘patriotism’ and ‘loyalty’ have been consistently emphasized in Russian schools, while the idea of freedom of speech and critical thinking has visibly declined as the persecution against the free political expression is widely perpetrated (Koesel 2020). The occupation of Crimea in 2014 and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 further intensified the Soviet style education system in Russia with the introduction of a new set of history textbooks and more reinforced ‘patriotic education’ best represented by ‘All-Russia Open Lesson’ and ‘the Important Conversations lessons,’ all of which focused mostly on justifying the invasion of Ukraine and criticizing the provocative role of NATO in the outbreak of war (Hirwani 2022). In addition to active control of the early education system, with the state-controlled media companies such as RT (i.e., Russia Today) and Sputnik news agencies, Russia has also actively engaged in the idolization of its political leader and comprehensive disinformation campaigns.¹⁷ Meanwhile, the development of internet technologies offered another and potentially more powerful tool for Russia to perform its propaganda campaigns. For instance, Russian web brigades, a group of Internet political commentators sponsored by the Russian government, have performed a wide range of disinformation campaigns from the intervention of the 2016 US presidential election to spreading misinformation on the Ukrainian War through various online platforms, including TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Telegram, denigrating the political integrity in the West, and increasing anti-American and anti-West sentiments across the peripheral regions in the middle of its own invasive warfare (Prier 2017, 66-75).¹⁸

The conditions in the U.S are not so much different. The U.S government has already been well-known for its own propaganda campaigns against anti-American forces even after the collapse of the Soviet Union. For instance, by using multiple sock puppet accounts, it performed comprehensive pro-American and anti-Islamic propaganda movements in countries like Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan during the 2010s as a part of Operation Earnest Voice (OEV), which is an extension of Operation Mockingbird during the Cold War.¹⁹ The #ChinaAngVirus disinformation campaign (i.e., #ChinaIsTheVirus) was another representative case of U.S-led propaganda campaigns during the recent decades. After the outbreak of the Covid-19 crisis, between 2020 and 2021, the U.S government and its contractor General Dynamics IT spread the disinformation that the ingredients of the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine include gelatin from pork, which is forbidden in Islamic law, and thereby attempted to debase China’s public image and the credibility of its pharmaceutical industry (Regilme Jr 2024).²⁰ As such, against the widespread disinformation campaigns perpetrated by Russia, the U.S government has actively engaged in more explicit propaganda campaigns under the excuse of performing ‘counter-propaganda measures.’ For example, as a part of psychological operations (PSYOP), the equivalent of Russia’s informational-psychological war operation, the U.S. military has created a large volume of fake accounts (i.e., sock puppet accounts) in various social media platforms, not only of American companies like Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, and Twitter, but also of Arabic and Russian companies such as Balatarin, Odnoklassniki, and VKontakte, posting more than 300,000 incendiary writings and photographs to discredit Russia while spreading pro-Western and pro-American messages. The continuous use of foreign propaganda media institutes, such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) under the supervision of the International Broadcasting Bureau, a successor organization to the United States Information Agency during the Cold War, redoubles the scope of PSYOP (Chernobrov and Briant 2022).

Also, in the middle of the protracted Ukrainian War, the U.S government has also actively cooperated with major domestic news agencies (e.g., CNN Newsroom and Fox News Special Report) to describe the war as an ‘illegal, unprovoked, and unjustified’ invasion exclusively made by ‘Putin’s choice,’ and thereby to justify its own intervention in the conflict. Unlike the Russian disinformation campaigns, the U.S media does not directly spread misinformation and false accusations. However, by deliberately framing the war as a conflict between the ‘Free World (i.e., Ukraine)’ and ‘the totalitarian aggressors (i.e., Russia and Belarus),’ and setting up the agenda in which the U.S. involvement is taken for granted while some untold details about the context of war are intentionally excluded or ignored, they meticulously form the pro-American and Anti-Russian propaganda messages that ‘the war is entirely the enemy’s fault’ (Hyzen and Bulck 2024).²¹ International sanctions against Russia, which began in 2014 and recently became much more intensified amid the full-scale invasion in 2022, have served as yet another tool for the U.S government to discredit Russia’s international standing. The net economic effect of sanctions has been more or less controversial as Russia enforces mutual damage by imposing its own sanctions against Western states and finds new trade partners like China and North Korea. However, holistic sanctions against Russia and Belarus have effectively created the impression that Russia’s foreign policy is illegitimate, and its territorial occupation should be reversed, constituting one of the major columns in the U.S-led nonrecognition policy against Russia (Christie 2016; Hosoe 2023).

Overall, under the mutually aggressive information warfare, the U.S and Russia still engage in propaganda campaigns against each other as of 2024, replicating another major component of the Cold War structure.

The Russo-Ukrainian War since 2014

Proxy wars and nuclear close calls, which constituted yet another major feature of the Cold War as well as its conflictual aspects, also reemerge to characterize the bilateral relations between the U.S and Russia. Beginning from the late 2000s, proxy wars between the two countries began to resurface with the representative cases of Russo-Georgian War of 2008 and Syrian Civil War (2011-2020).²² The most noticeable case of proxy wars between the U.S and Russia, however, can be found from the Russo-Ukrainian War since 2014.

As president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted by ‘Euromaidan’ protests (i.e., the Revolution of Dignity), under the excuse of addressing a threat to its national security by preventing Ukraine from joining the EU and NATO, Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula of Ukraine in February 2014. This led to the Crimean Status Referendum and the Declaration of Crimea’s Independence on 16 March 2014, establishing the pro-Russian puppet government under Sergey Aksyonov. With the failure of reaching the termination of hostilities, the Crimean war was followed by wars in Donbas from which the proclamation of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) as additional pro-Russian puppet states resulted. The conditions in the region soon turned into protracted border conflicts between Russia and Ukraine until Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, whose initial signs were already observed in 2021 when Russia began to build up massive military forces near Ukraine’s borders. Under the incendiary slogan that Russia must ‘denazify’ Ukraine, Russia attempted to occupy the entire Ukrainian territory only to face fierce resistance from the Ukrainian forces which were heavily supported by the U.S-led Western states. With the failure of its initial attempt to occupy Kyiv within a short span of time, Russia quickly declared the annexation of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, four partially occupied provinces by the Russian forces during the early phase of the invasion, converting its strategy from Blitzkrieg operations into a war of attrition. Since then, Ukrainian counteroffensives have continued with the results not only of retaking the majority of Kherson by the end of 2022, but also of launching an incursion into Russia’s Kursk Oblast in August 2024, consolidating the conditions of war in which both belligerents are at a stalemate (Kyrydon and Troyan 2022; Frankel 2024).

The most visible characteristic of the Russo-Ukrainian War is the extensive foreign intervention in support of Ukraine. As soon as Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, along with comprehensive economic sanctions against it, Russia was dismissed from G8 meeting, while the United Nations General Assembly ratified a resolution emphasizing the invalidity of the 2014 Crimean annexation (i.e., United Nations General Assembly Resolution 68/262). The same went for the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe on 16 March 2022, and the United Nations General Assembly ratified another resolution demanding a reversal of Russian invasion of Ukraine (i.e., United Nations General Assembly Resolution ES-11/1). Moreover, the International Court of Justice (ICC) announced that Russian military invasion must be immediately put to an end and that it would investigate a case of crimes against humanity perpetrated by Russian forces. The U.S and its Western allies stood at the forefront of all these anti-Russian international movements since 2014. Not surprisingly, since 2022 when Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, along with additional economic sanctions on Russia, they have actively provided Ukraine with various offensive military weapons, including M1A1 Abrams, Javelin anti-tank missiles, and AeroVironment Switchblade (i.e., suicide drones), all of which have contributed to the current stalemate of the war (Szőke and Kusica 2023).²³ By doing so, the U.S and its Western allies made it clear that they join the war by taking sides with particular belligerent (i.e., Ukraine) and providing it with war materials (i.e., muti-billion aid package), constituting the same pattern of proxy wars observed during the Cold War.

In addition to following the pattern of proxy wars, the Russo-Ukrainian War also increases the concern of nuclear close calls as it proceeds. The failure of Russia’s initial plan to win the war within the first two weeks and the success of Ukraine’s imposition of martial law and general mobilization as an attempt to defend its territory led to massive casualties on both sides, including the loss of more than 300,000 troops and 2,200 tanks for Russia.²⁴ The intensive military support of the Western states on the side Ukraine redoubled the burden of war for Russia. As such, along with the unilateral suspension of New START on 21 February 2023, between the late 2023 and the mid-2024, Russia had increased the use of drone strikes and ballistic missiles at the risk of escalating the war. Moreover, facing intensifying Western intervention in the war, Putin has increasingly resorted to his threat of using nuclear weapons against Ukraine and any country ‘threatening Russia’s territorial integrity and national security.’ For example, since 2022, Putin has imposed high alert on the nuclear deterrence units of Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces, while deploying tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus since March 2023. Meanwhile, threats of nuclear retaliation against the West has been repeatedly used by Putin himself in his public announcement and war briefing.²⁵

Ukraine’s Kursk Oblast incursion in August 2024 further increases the danger of nuclear close calls. Although it is estimated that Ukraine initiated the incursion as an attempt to draw the Russian forces away from its internal battlefields, and thereby its primary purpose is expected to be far from the permanent occupation of Russian territory, it does not change the fact that the August 2024 incursion is the first time that Russian mainland is breached and occupied by foreign forces since WWII. With dozens of settlements now under direct control of the Ukrainian military administration, and the widespread allegation that Ukraine attempts to shift the momentum of war in its favor by inflicting as much damage as they could on the Russian forces and thereby enforcing it to reconsider its position in the war, Russia now takes the incursion as a serious threat to its territorial integrity and national security. As many of military experts have concerned, the chance for Russia to use a controversial strategy of ‘escalate to de-escalate (i.e., launching a limited nuclear strike to take the upper hand in the negotiating table)’ is now visibly increasing as of 2024 (Zysk 2018; Welch 2024; Bowen 2024; Watling and Reynolds 2024).

Overall, with the intensifying Russo-Ukrainian War, the U.S and Russia still engage in proxy wars and nuclear close calls against each other as of 2024, reproducing the third and the last important element of the Cold War structure.

Just like the relations between the U.S and the Soviet Union during the second half of the 20^th century, current bilateral relations between the U.S and the Russian Federation not only follow the general pattern of the great power competition, but they also contain all three factors of ‘power equivalence,’ ‘propaganda campaigns,’ and ‘proxy wars and nuclear close calls,’ which constituted the uniqueness of the Cold War structure. As such, under the general conditions of power equivalence, mutual propaganda campaigns and proxy wars and nuclear close calls consist of the ideological and conflictual aspects of the US-Russia relations, respectively.

As figure 4 above shows, ‘the nuclear parity’ between the U.S and Russia still makes the prospect of MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) persist, allowing them to maintain a breathtaking power balance, and making their competition subtler and more insidious. As such, their competition has been dominated by ‘mutual information warfare’ and ‘Russo-Ukrainian war since 2014,’ which form the contemporary versions of propaganda campaigns and proxy wars and nuclear close calls. For instance, Russia has constantly developed various propaganda programs through a wide scope of media ranging from the early education system to the state-controlled media companies and web brigades, spreading anti-West and anti-American sentiments both within and without its mainland. Similarly, the U.S government has also used a variety of methods for its own propaganda campaigns, such as fake accounts (i.e., sock puppet accounts), foreign propaganda media institutes, cooperation with major domestic news agencies, and the imposition of international sanctions against Russia, spreading pro-American and anti-Russian propaganda messages around the world. In the meantime, with extensive foreign intervention in support of Ukraine primarily led by the U.S and the intensifying conditions of war which eventually resulted in the Ukrainian counteroffensives against the Russian mainland (i.e., Ukraine’s Kursk Oblast incursion in August 2024), the Russo-Ukrainian War since 2014 recreates the pattern of proxy wars and nuclear close calls. In short, bilateral relations between the U.S and Russia have unfolded under the conditions in which all three elements of ‘power equivalence,’ ‘propaganda campaigns,’ and ‘proxy wars and nuclear close calls’ overlap as figure 5 below describes.

It is noticeable that the bilateral relations between the U.S and Russia belong to the great power competition and contain all three elements of ‘power equivalence,’ ‘propaganda campaigns,’ and ‘proxy wars and nuclear close calls’ at the same time, as such relations had previously been observed only from the US-Soviet relations during the Cold War.

As figure 6 above shows, even under the general pattern of great power competition, there are many variants which do not fully meet the standards of the Cold War, for instance, by not reaching the power equivalence (i.e., power inequivalence), or by lacking propaganda campaigns and proxy wars and nuclear close calls (i.e., absence of propaganda campaigns and absence of proxy wars and nuclear close calls). However, the analysis in this paper reveals that the nuclear parity between the two countries, mutual information warfare, and Russo-Ukrainian war since 2014 are all combined together to reproduce the Cold War structure within contemporary US-Russia relations.

Accordingly, several implications can be drawn from the result of this paper. First, there seems to be a persistent path dependence in US-Russia relations originating from the Cold War structure. As it is examined above, current bilateral relations between the U.S and Russia essentially stem from the Cold War period. For example, their first bilateral treaty was signed in 1964 when their relations were already enrooted in the Cold War structure, and Russia inherited all the rights and obligations of the Soviet Union when it was dissolved in December 1991. The primary purpose of this paper, therefore, was to examine whether the current US-Russia relations reproduce the Cold War structure by applying three major components of the Cold War (i.e., power equivalence, propaganda campaigns, and proxy wars and nuclear close calls). The analysis in this paper shows that the persistence of three major factors of the Cold War has not only contributed to the gradual and ongoing deterioration of the US-Russia relations, but it has also made the bilateral relations largely recreate the Cold War structure, implying that the closest parallel to the Cold War today can be found in current US-Russia relations.

Second, it indicates that conventional arguments on the Neo-Cold War, which focus extensively on the US-China relations and pay relatively less attention to US-Russia relations, need to be reconsidered. As is revealed in this paper, the Cold War structure is not the universal form of great power competition. It clearly belongs to the category of great power competition, but it constitutes one of the more specific ways such competition unfolds. It is confirmed that the US-Russia relations currently fulfill all three elements of ‘power equivalence,’ ‘propaganda campaigns,’ and ‘proxy wars and nuclear close calls,’ which together constitute the essence of the Cold War structure. As such, even though the long-term potential of China as a challenging state is more promising than that of Russia, and thereby US-China relations are now being taken seriously, this does not mean that the US-China relations replicate the Cold War structure. The analysis in this paper shows that the Cold War structure remains today, but it does so mostly in US-Russia relations, rather than US-China relations.

Third, as the current bilateral relations between the U.S and Russia are still developing, even though they contain all three elements of the Cold War structure, in some respects, they have not yet reached the same level of conflict. For instance, Russo-Ukrainian war since 2014 clearly replicates the general pattern of proxy wars and nuclear close calls during the Cold War, but it is currently confined to Eastern Europe (i.e., Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia), contrary to those during the Cold War which covered a much wider space across the globe.²⁶ Similarly, unlike the rigid alliance structures of the Cold War, which were strictly divided between the U.S.-led Western bloc (i.e., NATO) and the Soviet-led Eastern bloc (i.e., The Warsaw Pact), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) - a military alliance led by Russia since 2002 - lacks the cohesion and strength to effectively counter a U.S.-led NATO, which has persisted even after the end of the Cold War in 1991.²⁷ Moreover, the level of ideological conflict between the U.S. and Russia, which has not yet reached the intensity of the U.S.-Soviet ideological confrontation, and the recent rise of the Global South, whose growing influence could serve as an additional moderating force amid rising tensions between major powers, including the U.S. and Russia, might be added to the remaining differences between the US-Soviet Cold War and today’s US-Russia relations.²⁸ As such, the subsequent development of US-Russia relations will be decisive in determining whether bilateral relations between the U.S and Russia eventually consolidate into the enduring structure of the Cold War.

This paper attempted to examine US-Russia relations which have relatively lacked systematic analysis compared to US-China relations. It first introduced existing literature on US-Russia relations and clarified their limits. It then took a closer look at the fundamental structures of the Cold War in the 20^th century to build an analytical framework as current US-Russia relations largely originate from US-Soviet relations in the previous century. As for the case study, it investigated the recent conditions of US-Russia relations under the three general theses of ‘power equivalence (i.e., power balance),’ ‘propaganda campaigns,’ and ‘proxy wars and nuclear close calls,’ each of which was represented by ‘the existence of MAD (i.e., Vertical Nuclear Proliferation),’ ‘information warfare between the U.S and Russia,’ and ‘Russo-Ukrainian War since 2014,’ respectively. After the analysis of the recent conditions of the US-Russia relations described in the case study, it concluded that US-Russia relations today significantly resemble US-Soviet relations in the 20^th century (i.e., the Cold War).

This paper still contains some limitations. First, as it pays most of its attention to examining US-Russia relations, it fails to give sufficient attention to another important bilateral relation in 2024, namely, US-China relations. This is the result of this paper’s attempt to examine US-Russia relations which have relatively lacked systematic analysis compared to US-China relations. However, as it indicates that US-China relations are different from US-Russia relations which currently recreate the Cold War structure, there needs to be further research on US-China relations in a new perspective. Second, in much the same context, it lacks an explanation of the trilateral relations between the U.S, China, and Russia. As mentioned in the introduction, the analysis on the international power structure of the 21^st century now requires taking into account the complex relations between all three major powers (i.e., the U.S, China, and Russia). Therefore, additional research needs to address the trilateral relations between three major international actors. Third, as it focuses on analyzing the structure of US-Russia relations, it lacks policy suggestions for the future. As such, further research might be required to present some more practical policy recommendations for de-escalating the tension between the U.S and Russia. Finally, each segment of case studies in this paper – ‘power equivalence,’ ‘propaganda campaigns,’ and ‘proxy wars and nuclear close calls – has the potential to be explored in greater detail, potentially as separate articles. Thus, future research will need to analyze each factor in more detail to further enhance our understanding of contemporary US-Russia relations.