PUTIN IN A CLOWN SUIT

Amidst all the gloomy news of the week – Goss’ firing, Bush’s poll numbers falling to almost Nixonian levels as he continues to refuse to protect our borders, on and on – yesterday’s (5/11) headline provided welcome comic relief.

Putin Warns Arms Race Not Over Yet screamed the front page of papers like the Washington Times.  For folks on the White House National Security Council and in foreign policy think tanks around town, this was funnier than a Seinfeld rerun or Larry the Cable Guy.

Putin had delivered his state-of-the-nation address to the Russian Parliament, or Duma, and was desperate to appeal to Russian egos mortally wounded by America’s winning the Cold War.

Putin has learned nothing since I wrote in The Doom of Russia two years ago (March 2004):

In the Kremlin and in the totality of influential academic and journalistic thought in Russia today there is a complete absence of rational analysis of Soviet-Russia history and why the Soviet Union collapsed. There is never an accounting or realistic appraisal from anyone in government or academia. There is only nostalgia. There is nothing but nostalgia. As Lionel Barrymore would say at the end of a play: "That’s all there is – there isn’t any more."

As a companion piece to The Doom of Russia, I posted an analysis I had written for the Reagan White House in 1985 entitled A Short History of Russia.  If you want a concise insight into the Russian soul, I encourage you to read it.

We knew in 1985 the Soviet Union was going to collapse, so the article ended on a note of optimism, that "once liberated from Soviet tyranny, Russians will be free to create the Renaissance they never had."

But it turns out, Russians would rather wallow in nostalgia for the Cold War when they were feared and respected than be free.

The terrible irony is that such nostalgia is so masochistic.  The last thing Russia should spend its military budget on is nuclear missiles such as the Topol-M in order to deter what it thinks is "the main enemy" – America.

As my friend Ariel Cohen, the Heritage Foundation’s expert on Russia, says, "In all these 15 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian military has learned nothing and forgotten nothing.  They’re still in the Soviet mode of preparing for global war against the United States."

And all the while, the Russian armed forces are falling apart.  Russia has not produced a single new military plane or naval ship in the last five years.  It has a humongous conscript army of 1.2 million troops who are thoroughly demoralized and dehumanized, train with paltry supplies, live in squalor, and eat unmentionable food.

The best fighting forces Russia has can’t defeat a bunch of insurgents in Chechnya, which is the size of Connecticut.

What Putin should be focused on, as Ariel and I have discussed many times, is building a conventional military solidly trained and motivated to keep Russia in one piece.  The way things are going right now, the loss of eastern Siberia to China is inevitable.

But no.  Putin has to don his clown suit and threaten America.  All he succeeded in doing was making himself a laughingstock in Washington.

Last January, I asked, How Stupid Is Putin?  Evidently, stupid enough to think a Bozo the Bully act will be intimidating.  Thanks for sharing, Pootie-poot.