"The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!"

There was an incident during the endless wars that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia that was scary and comical at the same time. The US and its allies, who if memory serves had been bombing the snot out of Serbia for several weeks, managed to finagle a resolution through the UN Security Council, authorizing the deployment of a peacekeeping mission under UN auspices. The mission was, of course, supposed to consist of hastily rebadged NATO armour.  However, the Russians, who had watched aghast as their fellow Slavs were bombarded, quickly painted up a few vehicles of their own and deployed them to an airfield in Serbia.

The head of the NATO mission, a US general, demanded that the British army turf the Russians out. The leader of the British forces, General Sir Mike Jackson, refused an order for probably the only time in his career, saying "I'm not starting World War Three for you"!

Fast forward to the present, and we find the US military getting its BVDs in a knot all over again about Russian military deployments, this time in Syria. The fact is that the Russians have had military personnel in Syria for years: the country is the site of their only naval base on the Mediterranean. Their wish to maintain that slender foothold explains their willingness to support the vicious Assad regime with regular weapons supplies.

Now there are some signs that Russia may be sending ground troops to Syria to fight ISIS directly, something which the US and its allies (including the UK, Australia and Canada) have been highly reluctant to do. On the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, you might think the arrival of Russian boots on the ground would be a welcome development, but it evidently isn't.

Here's the thing. The US and its allies have all kinds of military assets in the Middle East and are merrily bombing away in Syria and Iraq, to little apparent effect but with mounting civilian casualties. But that's OK: those are our guys. But let the Russians turn up with a thousand or so soldiers -- that's the reported number -- and actually take on the ISIS bad guys hand-to-hand, and it's apparently cause for alarm.

Or look at the Ukraine conflict.  There are constant reports about the increased level of Russian aerial activity over the Baltic Sea, and naval manoeuvres in the Black Sea. Both of those bodies of water are on Russia's borders, and the Russia is stepping up its activities there mainly because of the hugely increased presence of NATO aircraft and ships in the region, thousands of kilometers from their home bases.

Vladimir Putin is not someone who's easy to trust, but the West's incessant fear-mongering and denigration of Russia since the collapse of the USSR has given him and his compatriots very little reason to trust us, either.  This doesn't yet feel like the Cold War that loomed over us when I was growing up, but it's an unpleasant and unstable kind of standoff that could surely be improved if the two sides could just start treating each other with a bit of respect.