Ho, hum.

Viktor Leonov first appeared off Delaware and, at this writing, is loitering south of the US submarine base at Groton, Connecticut. The ship is undoubtedly vacuuming up electronic signals emanating from the base, monitoring the US Navy's comings and goings and gleaning anything it can about the construction of new US submarines.

In other words, two can play America's game.

It's worth remembering what a common maritime game this was during the Cold War. Ever since the US Navy sank the Imperial Japanese Navy in World War II, it has seen itself as the guardian of freedom of the seas and as the sharp edge of US foreign policy. At the height of the Cold War, US mariners mounted a standing presence in potentially embattled waters. Ships voyaged around the Eurasian periphery constantly, close to the Eastern Bloc shores.

Rather than submit meekly to American dominance of the world's oceans and seas, the Soviet Union built an oceangoing fleet larger, albeit more technologically backward, than the US Navy fleet. By the 1970s, in fact, the Soviet Navy was active not just in the vicinity of Soviet coastlines but throughout the Seven Seas. This included American-dominated "lakes" like the Mediterranean Sea. During the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, for instance, the Soviet contingent in the Eastern Mediterranean outnumbered the Italy-based US Sixth Fleet -- and shocked US commanders in the process.

But such interactions became routine during the end of the Cold War. Each navy shadowed the other's ships and aircraft. Fleet commanders departing from, say, Pearl Harbor, knew a Soviet "AGI" -- a fishing trawler packed with electronic snooping gear, and a forerunner to Viktor Leonov -- would be lurking offshore and would follow along to collect signals intelligence and information about American tactics and practices. Prudent US commanders took to assigning the AGI a station in the formation, lest it get in the way or cause a collision when the task force changed course or speed.

Soviet ships became de facto members of US fleets!

Mostly, though, Washington and Moscow managed their maritime interactions in the interest of preventing war. They concluded an Incidents at Sea Agreement designed to forestall escalation when US and Soviet ships encountered each other at sea. In short, each navy sought to deter the other while grudgingly tolerating its presence in nearby seas.

And Viktor Leonov appears to be in compliance with this law.

Competition against rival navies is once again a fact. Americans and their elected officials had better get used to it.

See the article here:

The Cold War returns to the high seas (opinion) - CNN.com - CNN