The New Cold War, which will be released on April 17, 2007 in Canada and Oct 4, 2007 in the United States, is the first book to show the recent wave of democratic revolutions (Serbia in 2000, Georgia in 2003, Ukraine in 2004 and Kyrgyzstan in 2005) for what they are – links in the same chain of American-orchestrated events and part of a renewed struggle for influence between Washington and Moscow.

When the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union crumbled, liberal democracy was supposed to rush in and fill the void left on the territory of the former “Evil Empire.” While all went according to plan in former Soviet satellites like Poland and the former Czechoslovakia, the citizens of the ex-USSR itself saw little of the freedom they were promised. Instead, they got variations on the same old systems, and often the same old despots.

In recent years, there’s been a second series of events almost as important as those of 1989 and 1991 – but until recently nearly unrecorded amidst the focus on the “war on terror.” The people of Eastern Europe, aided in no small way by money and advice from the West, are again rising up and demanding an end to autocracy. And once more, the Kremlin is battling the White House every step of the way.

The New Cold War shows that the same forces were at play in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine – Western-leaning democrats on one side, quasi-autocrats in the Kremlin on the other – and that the three revolutions were not just expressions of popular will, but flare-ups in a battle between Cold War foes over who will wield influence in the old Soviet bloc. At stake is the future course of more than a dozen countries, stretching across one-eighth of the world’s total landmass, inhabited by some 200 million people.

Combining colour from the streets of Belgrade, Tbilisi and Kiev with interviews with key actors – including Mikhail Saakashvili, Viktor Yushchenko, Yulia Tymoshenko, Mikhail Gorbachev and Eduard Shevardnadze – the book weaves together events from half a dozen countries over a four-year timespan to show that each “revolution” was part of a bigger story. It also looks ahead to the battles still to come – in Belarus, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

The story centres on Western efforts, spearheaded by billionaire financier George Soros and the government-funded National Endowment for Democracy, to create Western-friendly governments in the old Soviet Union. Standing in the way of Soros and the White House is Vladimir Putin’s resurgent Kremlin, and in particular a band of spin doctors who cynically tried to implement “managed democracy” across the former Soviet Union – a system where the people are given the right to vote, but in fact have nothing to choose from.

The drama so far has centred on smaller countries like Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine that have fought to escape the Kremlin’s orbit and try real democracy for the first time in their histories. The story, though, is really about Russia itself. While democracy has been breaking out just beyond the country’s borders, the Kremlin is squeezing all political life out of Russia, running elections without free media or debate, and no real candidates beyond Putin and his associates.

It remains to be seen whether the country will eventually grow into a democratic and trustworthy partner for the West, or whether it is destined to throw up a new Iron Curtain around the borders of the few countries it still can control.

Putin and George W. Bush once claimed to the world that they were close friends sharing the same principles. But in fact, they are locked in a behind-the-scenes struggle for influence that has become central to the second terms in office of both men. It’s a fight that threatens to once more polarize the world between a defensive, nuclear-armed East and an idealistic, expanding West.