A New Cold War?

A reader writes:

I have to ask, only half jokingly, if the Cold War historians are waiting for a pivotal event to declare Cold War II retroactively, like the financial gurus have declared Recession 2008. It seems to me there are quite a few elements of a perfect storm on the Russian front! My non-nuanced predictions, launched from my armchair vantage point:
Putin emboldened by the new term limits, will become President after Medvedev resigns in the near future.
Russia will indeed take advantage of new legislation to start an incremental tightening of foreign access to citizens. (will I lose my new Russian Facebook friends?)
The EU, without the OSCE to hide behind, will waffle and stall on a MAP for Georgia, keeping NATO membership in limbo.
The incoming US administration will have to do some fast stepping when it comes to the bilateral relations the Bush administration forged with Saakashvili's administration; with the EU waffling, our bilateral relationship will start to look a unilateral one if we step up our presence in Russia's "sphere of influence".
Russia will continue to fast-track citizenship in Abkhazia and S. Ossetia, while the quality of life in those regions continues to decline due to rampant crime and corruption. then leverage an eventual take-over with a claim of protecting the majority of Russian citizens living in those regions.

For what it's worth...

I, of course, have all the answers. "A" new cold war between Russia and the West is quite possible. One could even say that it's already a fact, at least at a low level of intensity. However, "the" Cold War was about the shape of the post-World War II world, about what would take the place of Nazism/Fascism, Japanese militarism, and (European) colonialism. The U.S. and the Soviet Union represented what turned out to be mutually exclusive visions for the future (indeed, of where history was headed), and each felt it could leave the other with no new gains, least of all perhaps in the de-colonizing "third world." Each also felt that long-term, it ought to work to undermine the influence of the other. It seems that today, Russia's ambitions are more limited. Partly because of that, the West isn't as united as in the 1940s and '50s, or as anxious about where for example developing countries will go in their politics. One could argue that on the issue of so-called "failed" and "outlaw" states, Russia and the West still have more in common than things that divide them. Both face potential terrorist violence, for example, and neither side wants to see nuclear capabilities fall into the hands of terrorists or unstable regimes. Russia's traditional sphere of influence seems to be the major bone of contention, in part because of the way the West has extended its influence there since 1990. That's an issue that is easier (not: easy) to manage than a deeply ideological conflict about the future of the world. Unfortunately, it will probably mean no tight, formal ties between the West (certainly not NATO) and Georgia or Ukraine; and it could also mean (because of the way Putin and his posse continue to tighten their hold on the place) losing a few Russian Facebook friends.