Special to WorldTribune.com

By Donald Kirk, EastAsiaIntel.com

WASHINGTON ― The term “new cold war” is gaining common currency. That’s because of Russia more than China.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is talking like a latter-day Cold Warrior in nationalist, ethnocentric terms that alarm a new generation of Kremlin-watchers. Putin, they say, is appealing to deep instincts in the Russians as he talks in increasingly tough terms about Russian interests in eastern Europe and the middle east ― and even mentions the N-word, nuclear warfare.

No, Putin doesn’t exactly threaten with the use of nuclear weapons. Rather, he says he would hope tensions would never reach the point at which it might seem necessary to nuke the rebels in Syria whom Russia has up to now been bombing and striking with missiles. Really, no one sees nuclear war about to break out, at least not right away.

Nonetheless, Putin’s mention of nukes, in any context other than getting rid of them by cutting down stockpiles, is alarming. He’s going to be around for a while, probably a long time. There’s no telling what will happen.

Putin’s muscle-flexing has implications for Northeast Asia, for China, the Korean peninsula and Japan.

Russia has long had a stake in the Far East but hasn’t made the most of it.

The Japanese defeated the forces of the Tsar, on land and at sea, in 1905, in a conflict in which control of the Korea peninsula was at stake.

That was the year that Japan assumed control of Korean foreign and military policy ― a prelude to a complete takeover and colonization of the peninsula five years later. The Soviet Union under Josef Stalin got a measure of revenge in 1945 when Soviet forces overran the Japanese in Manchuria and drove half way down the map of Korea in accordance with the deal worked out with the Americans for division of the peninsula at the 38th parallel.

Stalin did not build on these gains, preferring not to confront the Americans in Northeast Asia while consolidating control over Eastern Europe. Nor did Stalin really want to support Kim Il-Sung in his invasion of South Korea in 1950.

Instead Stalin provided valuable air support, hoping to pin down American forces that might otherwise oppose the Red army in Europe. The Korean War ended only after Stalin’s death.

His successor, Nikita Khrushchev, wanted the fighting to stop. The Soviet Union was not a party to the truce talks at Panmunjom, but China, then Moscow’s great Communist ally, was in no position to keep fighting on behalf of North Korea without Soviet support.

With the demise of Communist rule and the break-up of the Soviet bloc, the impression for years was that Russia was out of the game.

How could Russia dream of regaining lost power and prestige when its economy was doing so badly? About all the Russians had to offer, it seemed, was natural gas. Maybe so, but Putin has surrounded himself with politicos and oligarchs eager to encourage a renaissance of historic ambitions ― not Communist, to be sure, but territorial and mercenary.

Russia again is a key player in the Great Game not only for Europe and the Middle East but for Asia as well.

In this latter-day contest, other players are staking out their positions. Russian competition with China is inevitable considering their long border across which their troops fired on occasion after it had become obvious that the two Communist giants were not getting along. Russia also faces Japan, the historic foe that goes on claiming several small islands off the tip of the large northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. The Russians, having refused to consider giving up the islands, are now building a military base on one of them ― a long-term project that the Japanese view as a serious threat.

Russia’s reentry into the sweepstakes comes at a time when Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is playing up Japan’s historic role in collaboration with the United States. As Japan gradually gets around the narrow verbiage of Article Nine of its post-war Peace Constitution, Abe counts on the U.S. to keep its 45,000 troops in Japan, most of them in Okinawa, while forging ahead with construction of a new U.S. Marine air station on Okinawa’s northeast coast over the loud objections of local people.

In recent months, aircraft of the Russian Air Force have swept over the western Pacific as in the Soviet era, setting off alarm bells in the Pentagon, but real confrontation does not seem likely at the moment. The Russians may be hesitant about facing China while the Chinese tighten their claim to islands in the South China Sea and challenge Japanese control of the Senkakus in the East China Sea.

However, historians like to recall that the Tsarist fleet, on its way to defeat by the Japanese 110 years ago, put in for repairs and supplies at Cam Ranh Bay, the Vietnamese port on the South China Sea. Russia’s emergence as a global military power under Putin adds a new dimension to old rivalries with obvious implications for the Korea, North and South, as in the era of Japanese imperial expansionism.

Donald Kirk has been covering the rivalry for the region for decades. He’s at kirkdon4343@gmail.com.