On the contrary, the two countries have been constantly scaling back their strategic dialogue, dismantling the European security system, and flexing muscles in close proximity to each other’s armed forces. Unlike before, including the Caribbean Crisis, modern military-political collisions do not motivate the Kremlin and the White House to begin negotiations and work out a mechanism for reducing military threats. Long-term negative trends are piling up, pushing both sides towards an armed confrontation. And yet, I believe that the risk of a military conflict between Russia and the United States in the next ten to fifteen years will be much higher than it was during their bipolar standoff.

I argued during the discussion that relations between the two countries had entered a period which is much more dangerous than the Cold War, including the Caribbean Crisis in 1962, and received critical responses (“We were on the brink of a nuclear war back then, but there is nothing like that now,” my opponents retorted).

The idea of writing this article came to me after a roundtable discussion of the prospects of U.S.-Russia relations hosted by the Rossiya Segodnya news agency in November 2015.

Why was the cold war called so