Russian president Dmitri Medvedev last week said that he does not want a Second Cold War, but is prepared for one if necessary. Clearly, before waging its campaign to annex South Ossetia from Georgia, the Kremlin audited its relations with the West and concluded it has little to lose if they deteriorate.
That calculation is based on the view that Russia was cheated in the post-communist settlement. Moscow surrendered its military and economic empire in Europe, but whenever it subsequently raised objections to US policy there - over Nato enlargement; independence for Kosovo; the establishment of a missile defence shield - it was sternly rebuffed. So it is better, in the Kremlin's analysis, to be feared as a rival power than sidelined as a subordinate one.
That calculation says as much about the relative weakness of the West as it does about new Russian strength.
Nato, bogged down in Afghanistan, lacks a clear strategic purpose. The Washington doctrine of using force to spread democracy has been tested to destruction in Iraq. The credit crunch and high oil prices have drained the US and Western Europe of cash. That gives an advantage to countries with hoards of capital to invest, such as China, or with energy to export, such as Russia. For the first time since the collapse of communism, the financial muscle of authoritarian states has as much bearing on the direction of the world economy as the wealth of liberal democracies.
That is a shift in global balance of power. It is also a rebuttal of the post-Cold War idea that the world was converging towards Western-style capitalism. It was assumed that economic prosperity and political freedom were indivisible. As societies become richer, the theory went, a middle class would emerge to demand representation from its rulers.
That view failed to account for the return of nationalism as a rival ideology to democracy. In both Russia and China, authoritarian regimes have persuaded their new wealthy elites to trade freedom for economic stability and global prestige. This is a new social contract: the state allows you to get rich, as long as you do not use the money for political ends.
For the last decade, the West has seen militant Islam as the main ideological opponent to liberal capitalism. Before the South Ossetian war, when diplomats discussed a 'new Cold War', it was as likely to envisage Iran as Russia on the opposing side. That preoccupation has resulted in a failure to understand the challenge of nationalist capitalism.
America and Britain talk about human rights and democracy as if their benefits are self-evident and universal. But when it suits their strategic aims, in Latin America, Central Asia or the Middle East, they collaborate with brutal dictatorships. So it is hard, in many parts of the world, to distinguish between the promotion of Western 'values' and the crude enforcement of Western interests.
That confusion dogs the argument over Nato expansion. Membership is open, in theory, to countries that meet stringent criteria of political reform. But when David Miliband made a solidarity visit to Ukraine in the wake of the Georgia-Russia war, his emphasis was not on the measures Kiev can take to make itself an attractive partner for alliance. Instead, he berated Russia for failing to accept the reality of the post-Soviet world.
Unfortunately, the Kremlin has demonstrated it has the power to change that reality, unilaterally, by force. It also claims to be following the example of Western interventions in Kosovo and Iraq when doing so.
American and European interests will not be served by military grandstanding and asserting the moral superiority of their political systems. The West has never successfully exported its values by force, but it has made them an attractive commodity for countries to import. After the Cold War, communist societies were persuaded to change not by Western rhetoric, but by the economic reality that they could not compete with capitalism. But China and Russia have since concluded that authoritarian nationalism can compete with political liberalism.
That might suit the interests of regimes in Beijing and Moscow, but it would ultimately be a tragedy for the people they rule. Far better they be persuaded that political pluralism, individual liberties and human rights are values to be embraced, not because the West says they are, but because their rigorous application in Western societies yields manifest global success. Westernisation must be an aspiration, not a threat.
This new Cold War will be won not by preaching democracy, but by practising it.