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PROLOGUE
THE MOTHER LODE
In October 2021, a top-secret set of briefings revealed that Russian President Vladimir V. Putin was planning to seize Ukraine, a country he considered an integral part of the old Russian empire. The intelligence report was comprehensive, including electronic intercepts, cyber penetration of Russia's networks, and reports from informants nurtured by the CIA. President Joe Biden, who had been tasked with halting Russian ransomware attacks on American infrastructure, debated whether to confront Putin directly.
Jake Sullivan, a Minnesota wunderkind, was deep in the details of the intelligence and believed that the plan was to restore Russia to its former glory. However, it would be too great a risk to confront the Russians with evidence that U.S. officials were so plugged into their top leadership that the White House knew what Putin was planning.
Biden decided to send an emissary, William J. "Bill" Burns, to warn the Russian leader of the danger he faced if he tried to topple Volodymyr Zelensky's government and occupy the country. Burns had served as the American ambassador to Russia during the heady days when Putin was taking power and Russia seemed neutered.
Burns's objective was clear: engage Putin in a conversation, tell him that the United States knew exactly what he was planning, and try to slow or derail his final decision. It wasn't until Burns landed in Moscow aboard an unmarked CIA plane that he learned that the Russian leader was in isolation in his Sochi dacha. The Russians offered Burns a phone call with the president, but he agreed to convey his message by phone.
In December 2021, American intelligence warned Putin that an invasion of Ukraine would be a horrific mistake that would cost both Putin and Russia dearly. By February 2022, there was no doubt in the minds of America's top national security officials that Putin was preparing to redraw the borders of Europe by force. Intelligence suggested that it would happen as follows: first, a mad dash from the north down to Kyiv, then an amphibious landing in Odessa, cutting off Ukraine's access to the sea and linking the Crimean Peninsula overland to Russian territory.
Russian President Vladimir Putin declared this series of American-orchestrated leaks to be fake news. General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called his Russian counterpart, Valery Gerasimov, a straight-up denial that invasion was imminent. Antony J. Blinken, Biden's secretary of state and confidant on global issues, conducted a similarly dead-end conversation with the infuriating Sergey Lavrov, the longtime Russian foreign minister. Lavrov was in high dudgeon about the American warnings of an imminent invasion, insisted that it was all Western disinformation, the latest effort to spur "Russophobia."
Europeans were also in denial, unable to imagine that part of their continent could soon be in flames, with Ukrainian populations massing in subway stations to avoid bombardment. In mid-February, European foreign and defense ministers adamantly insisted that an invasion would not happen. They believed that Putin was putting on a show to scare the world and wouldn't threaten his own economic interests, most significantly the imminent opening of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would pump gas directly from Russia to Western Europe, routing around Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Zelensky arrived in Munich to address the growing concern over an invasion of Ukraine. He urged leaders to act immediately and not wait for Putin to pull the trigger. Zelensky also warned his partners and friends not to agree on anything behind their back with Putin.
Putin had recently emerged from isolation for his biggest gamble yet, flying to Beijing to make a show of his relationship with China's president, Xi Jinping. They had been courting each other for years, and each cemented their authority and became more nationalistic. Now, Putin needed Xi to demonstrate that he and his fellow autocrat could combine their power and influence.
Some U.S. national security and intelligence officials believe Putin simply assured Xi there would be no invasion during the Olympics, which would distract from China's big moment on the world stage. Senior U.S. intelligence officials later concluded that Putin described to Xi plans for a limited military operation.
At Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, the warning signs looked more like June 2017, when Russian hackers targeted the Ukrainian economy with an innovative cyberattack called "NotPetya." The fallout was devastating, crippling small businesses and large firms, and flattening Western firms in the region. Microsoft's chief of trust and safety, Tom Burt, predicted that the first shot in this new conflict would be digital, with the goal of preventing Ukrainian leaders from communicating with each other or their own people.
The latest Russian activity in cyberspace, "Whispergate," helped firm up Microsoft's suspicions. After eight years of incessant Russian cyberattacks, the Ukrainians mostly just sighed and brought their systems back online as soon as they could.
Microsoft's security engineers, Justin Warner and his colleagues, were working on defending against Russian attacks as geopolitical tensions increased. They were also trying to convince Ukraine to move its data into the cloud and off servers inside Ukraine that would be sitting ducks when the Russians attacked. In January, Microsoft suspected that the January incident was exploratory, a scouting expedition designed to test Russia's ability to paralyze Ukraine's government and military communications.
On February 23, 2022, Microsoft began to see evidence of another incident in Ukraine. The malware, which shared several key indicators, had been activated at scale, hitting government agencies, financial institutions, and the energy sector. The team brought in Ramin Nafisi, a malware expert and former defense contractor, to disassemble the malware and understand its destructive capability.
Burt composed an urgent warning to the White House, stating that several Ukrainian government ministries were under attack. By February 23, 150 or so Ukrainian digital systems had been hit across ten different organizations. Neuberger, President Biden's deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technologies, connected Burt to her counterparts abroad, including Serhii Demediuk, the deputy secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, and Mircea Geoană, the deputy NATO secretary general.
Neuberger brought Burt's report to Sullivan, the national security advisor, to assess the risk of imminent conflict. However, it was hard to pinpoint the actual day that the Russians might kick off hostilities due to numerous indicators of the coming violence.
The war in Ukraine began with concerns about the digital war spreading quickly, potentially turning the conflict into a war against NATO. However, the concern was misplaced, as the Russians had prepared neither a cyberattack nor a physical attack beyond Ukraine. The assumption that governments had access to perfect information had been reversed, with tech companies now having the ability to defend national networks independently from thousands of miles away. Companies were now the front line of support in the effort to keep the country running.
However, it wasn't clear that even the best cyber defenses would matter, as the Russians held every advantage. The acclaimed Russian military failed to take Kyiv, and Putin and American intelligence agencies had wildly overestimated the capabilities of Russian troops and the fighting spirit of the Ukrainian people. Within months, the Russians began a humiliating retreat, shelling cities mercilessly and dug into their positions.
The war seemed at once familiar and surprising, with the era it demarcated being part 1914, part 1941, and part 2022. General Milley saw thousands of Ukrainians and Russians digging in, seeking safety in long trenches meant to survive brutal artillery fire. The threat of Russia using a nuclear weapon against Ukraine resurfaced every few months, altering critical decisions in Washington over how to arm Ukraine and what restrictions to place on how those arms could be employed.
THE SHAPE OF THE NEW COLD WARS
The book discusses the global shock that took Washington by surprise: the revival of superpower conflict. For over thirty years, the United States and its Western allies had a sense of certainty that the greatest byproduct of America's victory in the Cold War would be a permanent era of peace among the world's nuclear superpowers. However, warning signs have accelerated over the past fifteen years, such as the invasion of Georgia and Crimea, cyberattacks from Moscow and Beijing, Putin's move into Syria, and Xi's determination to use the Belt and Road Initiative and Huawei to wire Europe, Africa, and Latin America with Chinese-made 5G networks. America was distracted by two misbegotten wars in the Middle East, a deadly pandemic, and the effort to overturn a legitimate election, making it hard to focus on America's role in the world. Key to this assumption was the assumption that Russia and China would integrate themselves into the West in their own ways, with economics trumping nationalism and territorial ambition.
The faith in the power of globalization in early-twentieth-century American foreign policy has come to be regarded as a fantasy era. It was a bipartisan assumption that the post-Cold War age would last indefinitely, and American power would remain fundamentally unchallenged. Each president believed that the strength of America's economy, technology, or the U.S. president's persuasive power could bend history in Washington's direction. Bill Clinton believed the internet would undercut the Communist Party, George W. Bush believed he could join forces with Putin in a common war against terrorism, Barack Obama distrusted Putin but was reluctant to call him out for cyberattacks, and Donald Trump wanted a deal with China. Each president claimed they had achieved meaningful progress toward integrating America's adversaries into a world order Washington had created and nurtured for seventy-five years. However, many of these assumptions were wrong, and much of the rest was oversold, part of the "Washington Consensus" that globalization was the pathway to economic growth and political stability.
In January 2021, President Biden faced a challenge in preparing the country for an emerging era of superpower confrontation. The phrase "New Cold War" was used to describe the race between America's relationship with China and Russia, but Biden argued that China was a broader potential strategic adversary than the Soviet Union. He argued that the world was facing an "inflection point" and that democracy works. He singled out Xi Jinping, a smart man who shared with Putin a belief that autocracy is the wave of the future and democracy can't function in the modern world.
The timing of this argument was awkward, as the world had just witnessed rioters stage a coup and the Chinese broadcast images of chaos, destruction, and death. Biden's words suggested a larger mission at stake, as he sought to affirm America's democracy in one of its darkest hours. The dichotomy rankled American allies with authoritarian tendencies, and by the third year of his presidency, Biden rarely repeated it. However, at home, the democracy vs. autocracy construct allowed him to capitalize on fears of Beijing and direct hundreds of billions of dollars to technology, research, and domestic infrastructure.
The US administration began with optimistic diplomatic efforts and a belief that the only way to stay competitive with China was to rebuild American capacity at home while starving Chinese industry of Western technologies. New export controls were implemented to buy time, depriving China of the specialized equipment it needed to make advanced computer chips, including high-end chips for artificial intelligence, stealth bombers, hypersonic missiles, and surveillance equipment. Biden made no apology for his devotion of federal funds to rebuild America's ability to produce chips, which resembled a classic industrial policy. In 2022, he pushed Congress to approve $52 billion for chipmakers to give them time to restore a lead America had once held. However, most Republicans agreed that it would take the better part of a decade to make it succeed. The technology race today runs far deeper than the one that defined the old Cold War, as American consumers now link them directly to Chinese leaders.
The invasion of Ukraine in late 2022 marked a turning point in the US-Russian conflict, as the West faced the challenge of defending an emerging democracy against Putin's efforts to restore Russia to its glory. The conflict also raised concerns about potential escalation between China and Russia, as war changes power relationships. President Biden faced an immediate choice: to help Ukraine and not get sucked into World War III.
Biden's strategy proved successful for the first year of the war, and American power was resurgent. Russia's military failures exposed a system that could not produce fresh ammunition or defeat a smaller, albeit innovative opponent. Biden's ability to rally allies revived NATO and reversed perceptions of who had the upper hand between Washington and Moscow.
China's prospects also seemed dimmer, with its population shrinking and Xi Jinping rejecting COVID-19 vaccines that worked. This reminded America's adversaries of their weaknesses, and the question was whether China and Russia had both peaked and were now facing years of decline or slow growth.
This era of new Cold Wars is more complex and dangerous than we have faced in nearly a century. The US's role as the indispensable nation has been abandoned, and the fight against terrorism is no longer a common cause. The "peace dividend" that dominated Washington rhetoric after the end of the Cold War is long gone, and the money spent on improving climate, education, and ending income inequality will be sucked into bolstering forces in Europe. Innovation may focus more on the military dimensions of space and cyberspace, with the risk of losing a lot of money.
PART ONE
DREAMING OF ONE WORLD
FLOATING PAST THE HERMITAGE
In late May 2002, Vladimir Putin's romance with the United States and the West was at its peak. George W. Bush had gone to Moscow to seek the help of Putin, who and his wife Lyudmila Verbitskaya were floating down the Neva River in St. Petersburg on a luxury yacht. They had guests, including Bush and his wife Laura, and Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security advisor and later his secretary of state. Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former convict turned restaurateur, would later become a central player in much that would go wrong between Moscow and Washington, from trying to manipulate the United States’ 2016 election to recruiting prison inmates to fight in Ukraine for the private army he had founded.
The presidential visit was as choreographed as The Nutcracker, with the storyline being that the Cold War was over, never to return. Putin seized on this perception to show he was the man to run the project—helping Bush fight terrorism and guiding Russia toward international markets. On this evening, Putin played the gracious host, chatting with Laura Bush and joking with the American president.
The two leaders signed an arms control treaty earlier in the day, suggesting that the two countries could still work together in limiting the fearsome weapons. The day was marked less by discussion of eliminating warheads than by their mutual agreement that terror was the biggest threat.
The sense of the evening was not simply that the Cold War was over but that with effort it could almost be erased from history. The visits, the performance, and their walk by the burial place of the tsars in Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral were part of an elaborate, consciously designed effort by both countries to convince each other and the rest of the world that Russia was coming into the West and being embraced in return.
In the early 2000s, President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin had found common ground following the September 11 attacks. Putin had been the first to call Bush, and they agreed to keep nuclear alert readiness levels to a minimum. This signaled that there was no superpower involvement in the attacks. Condoleezza Rice, a prominent young Russia expert, characterized Bush's approach as an effort to pull Putin and the battered Russian state closer to Washington by finding convergences in American and Russian interests and pursuing "strategic cooperation."
The concept of terrorism as a unifying cause seemed to work for a while, as relations between the United States and Russia had never been better. In the wake of 9/11, Russia shared logistical information that enabled U.S. forces to navigate Afghan mountain caves in their search for Osama Bin Laden. Soon, the two countries expanded their cooperation, working together to promote peacebuilding in the central Caucasus. The two countries developed "The Checklist," in which cabinet secretaries from the Bush administration would work with their equivalents at the Kremlin on joint projects.
