Russian President Vladimir Putin [Xinhua]

In the game of war, albeit hot or cold, there are always rules of war. Those who fail to play according to the rules end up either defeated or eliminated. Russia seems to be catching up well with the rules of the game as it is accepting neither defeat nor elimination.

Vladimir Putin's Russia is quite conscious to avoid the trap of an arms race which led to the bankruptcy of the Soviet Union and the West's victory in the Cold War, and which the U.S. is now trying to duplicate in an attempt to contain Russia and cripple its enforcement of a fully-fledged multi-polar world order against a declining long-U.S. dominated unipolar system.   

Putin's U.S.-directed threat of an "immediate nuclear response" to any potential ballistic attack against Russia and its allies, made in his annual state-of-the nation address to the Federal Assembly on March 1, marks a significant leap into a zone that Russia hadn't dared to step into since the end of the Cold War and its surrender to the U.S.'s victory.

"We would consider any use of nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies, be it of small, medium or any force, as a nuclear attack on our country…Our response will be immediate. Nobody should have any doubts about that," Putin warned in his speech, which came 17 days before his easily won 4th term presidential re-election on March 18.

The Trump administration has set an "unparalleled military might" through a nuclear arsenal buildup doctrine as the rules for playing the next round of the game, regarding countering an increasingly "competitive" powerful Russia as a top national security priority. 

Meanwhile, Putin, who has presided over the Russian political landscape for 18 years, seems to have learned the historical lesson of the USSR's demise, stayed tuned and got his country well-prepared to play by the rules, posing a doctrine-to-doctrine confrontation.

Putin's display of power is based on maneuvers, stealth and high-tech breakthroughs in building an unprecedented new generation of quite cheap, but highly effective sophisticated strategic weapons that do not use the ballistic flight path, and thus can outsmart the U.S. anti-missile defense systems and render them useless.

Putin backed his threats with a giant-screened "show off" video presentation of the newly developed "invincible" weapons that, if they are proved to be truly operational as Putin asserted some are, would have a "change of power balance" effect.

These include a one-of-its-kind nuclear-powered cruise missile of unlimited range, a "Sarmat" intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach anywhere and evade interception, a hypersonic air-launched missile 10 times the speed of sound, nuclear-armed high-speed underwater drones that can hit targets with conventional and nuclear warheads across intercontinental distances, an invulnerable missile-launched gliding weapon that "head for a target like a meteorite" as well as truck-carried laser weapons.

A clear message Putin wanted to drive home through his power projection is that Russia is no longer accepting the "provocative" actions of the U.S. and its European allies ranging between the U.S. unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and its continued missile defense system buildup and deployment on its territory and outside its borders, the U.S. and NATO's continued military encroachment on Russia's western borders and planned elements in South Korea and Japan, the continuously renewed economic sanctions against Moscow, and the U.S. reduction of the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons to respond to non-nuclear threats.

The last but not least of provocations are the collective expulsion of Russian diplomats from 21 countries, largely from the U.S. and NATO members, over the alleged Russian involvement in the poisoning of former Russian-British double agent Sergei Skripal in Britain.

After Russia's repeated proposals to the U.S. to work on building a joint missile shield have been rejected, and "everything is done unilaterally, without taking into account our concerns," and Putin's persistent use of the term "Western partners" has evidently been mistakenly taken as a sign of weakness, he is now putting his "new points of strength" on screen for those partners to see.

Moscow sends a signal to those who still refrain from acknowledging Russia as an equal partner that their efforts to neutralize Russia's nuclear potential have failed, and that if they are deluded into following an inclination of launching a pre-emptive war against Russia, they should think twice. 

Putin wanted to make Russia's voice clearly heard when he said "Nobody wanted to listen to us. So listen now." Disrupting the strategic balance of power in the world is not acceptable for Russia, whose strategic potential is now a formidable force to be reckoned with, so the Western partners are urged to descend down to earth from their tower and seriously engage in talks for maintaining international security.

Haifa Said is chief editor of the English Department at the Syrian Arab News Agency.

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.

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