Red Hammer Down

If things weren't bad enough already, apparently Vladimir Putin has found a ring of keys in the bottom drawer of his old desk at Moscow Center. Now, in his final months as elected president of Russia, he appears to be restarting the engines of the Cold War.

Yes. If you listen closely, there is the unmistakeable sound of T34-85s starting up and whirling their rusty guns on Estonia, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Moldova. At the same time, the silo doors are sliding noisily open exposing Russian ICBMs to the light of day for the first time since we learned the word 'glasnost' back in the 80s.

These days, when most people are focused on the problems of global warming and what I will call simply (in order to avoid a politcally charged term like 'civil war') the unholy, inhuman and grotesque 'mess' of Iraq, it is quite easy to miss the increasing number of Vladimir V. Putin's geopolitical signals.

Global warming, of course, is a central issue in America's coming presidential election and so together with Iraq, the world's attention is drawn westward, away from mundane matters like the nationalization of Russia's energy industry, the murder of a former KGB agent in a European capital, the recent futuristic cyberwar against Estonia and Putin's increasing nuclear threats against the NATO nations of Europe.

But, heck you say, the guy was a member of the KGB and a director of the FSB, its successor. You can't expect him to lose all those old habits overnight.

Hmmm. Putin's electoral mandate runs out next year in 2008. Russia's new constitution prevents him from running for a third term. Perhaps he really does intend to leave, because he is now clearly using all of his power to influence the future direction of Russian politics and policy and yes, he is also busily settling old scores.

But Putin is not a petty man. Over the years, his worst actions always seemed calculated to restore Russia to its former glory. It is as though Leonid Brezhnev's unrealized dream of a cold war victory is burned into Putin's soul. In 1972, Brezhnev told the Politburo they were in for bad times. Brezhnev didn't know exactly how bad or how long, but he got a lot right:

We communists have to string the capitalists along for a while. We need their credits, their agriculture, their technology. But we are going to continue massive military programs and by the mid-eighties we will be in a position to return to aggressive foreign policy designed to gain the upper hand with the west.

What Brezhnev couldn't know was that Ronald Regan would conduct a secret war against the Soviets with the sole purpose of murdering their economy and wresting away control of Siberia's oil and gas wealth. He also couldn't foresee that without the hard currency derived from European energy revenues, the USSR would fall completely apart and leave Russia in chaos until president Putin came to power as acting-President in 1999.

During Putin's presidency, Russia has grown to become a world power again. At the expense of a few civil liberties and some visibly 'engineered' trials about the ownership of energy rights, Russia has now regained control of its resources and is strengthening itself daily using a steady supply Russia's oil and gas converted into Euros. Russian energy has become a potent lever in international relations and Putin has not been shy about threatening to cut off European countries that do not see things his way. 'Travel my road in comfort,' president Putin now tells Europe confidently, 'or walk down it by yourself in the cold and the dark.'

If George Bush's presidency has been characterized by an economy in a tailspin and a gradual loss of both personal and international credibility and influence, Putin's presidency -- the dates of which corresponds generally to those of the lesser Bush -- have been characterized by economic improvement, increasing international influence and personal popularity among the Russian people.

He is at the point now when politicians think of legacies and when Putin threatens NATO and the European nations with his ICBMs, he is certainly thinking either of his legacy or of the shortness of his tenure.

It is significant too, that the Russian people -- who are sick of the disarray of their country -- are enjoying a wave of pro-Soviet nostalgia. They might just tolerate the loss of some civil liberties and even of democracy itself if this means Russia could be restored to prosperity, dignity and world power. They are a proud people with a deep cultural understanding of 'sacrifice.' They might easily support a small invasion to protect the Russian populations of Estonia and Moldova. In such an emergency, Russia would likely suspend its 14-year-old constitution temporarily to allow Putin to remain in power until normalcy returns.

Because America's leadership would then still be preoccupied by unpopular wars on two fronts, NATO might easily heed Putin's repeated warnings about ICBMs and choose not to interfere in a minor border dispute.

But all this, of course, might never happen.

Still, if it did, it might well transpire shortly before the Russian presidential elections in the spring of 2008 when America is preoccupied with one of the most important elections in its history and its current leadership has very little credibility left. By October, I would expect Komrad Putin to meet for talks with one or another of the American presidential candidates in order to resolve the situation peacefully.

They would both need to develop a good, trusting relationship since they might well be working together for years.