Russian President Vladimir Putin is getting away with his aggressive military campaign in Ukraine because he's doing it in small steps that won't ruffle feathers as much, Forbes contributor Melik Kaylan says.
"We are actually in the middle of a Cold War and that the Cold War looked like it went away, but it's back fully," Kaylan said Tuesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV.
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"The way that our rivals … have managed to engineer it is that they've done it incrementally.
"[That's] so at no point do we actually step out and say to Putin, 'now, that's it, you've really outraged us now, now we're really going to come down on you!' He did it bit by bit."
Kaylan is co-author with Doug Schoen of the new book,
"The Russia-China Axis: The New Cold War and America's Crisis of Leadership," published by Encounter Books.
"I was there in 2008 when [Putin] invaded Georgia … and the way that all that was done was they peeled off one part of Georgia, then another part of Georgia," Kaylan said.
"Then they invaded by making it look like [then-Georgia President] Mikhail Saakashvili, who was very, very pro-American, was this crazy provocateur.
"They're doing something similar in Ukraine, just bit by bit by bit so that it doesn't trigger a massive response."
Washington and Brussels last week both unveiled tougher sanctions on Moscow for its role in Ukraine that effectively lock Russian companies out of Western capital markets and hamstring its crucial oil industry.
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