From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 6/11/2007 12:38 AM
Published: 10-06-2007

Pouting Putin

JAN Grzebski slipped out of a 19-year coma a couple of months ago and last weekend began talking to the Polish media about his future-shock experience.

Mr. Grzebski has woken up to a post-communist world where the store shelves are stocked with a variety of products, not just the same old socialist staples.

The recovering former railway worker also described his morning routine in an interview: "I wake up at 7 a.m. and I watch TV."

Of course, if Mr. Grzebski has been watching the news lately, then perhaps he feels right at home in the post-Soviet era. Because it sounds an awful lot like the Soviet era, with a dark and menacing Russia breathing fire at the West.

On the eve of the G8 summit in Germany last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin rattled his sabre – and some cages – with his threat to target missiles at Western Europe once again. This is his latest response to American plans to deploy anti-missile defences, including 10 interceptor rockets in Poland and radar operations in the Czech Republic. (Both former vassal states of the Soviet Union are now under NATO’s aegis, which Russia finds irksome.)

Mr. Putin had previously manifested his displeasure by threatening to suspend participation in a 1990 arms treaty limiting conventional forces in Europe and by testing a new intercontinental ballistic missile, which can be armed with up to 10 warheads. Of late, Mr. Putin’s rhetoric about a new U.S.-triggered "arms race" and the expansionist "U.S. empire" has also become increasingly shrill. His once grudging acceptance of Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty in 2002 – so it would be free to pursue missile defence on a larger scale than permitted by the accord – is becoming more grudging and less accepting.

Mr. Putin is not overreacting; he is overacting. (On Thursday, Mr. Putin abruptly switched gears and said he would welcome the missile shield if it were relocated to Azerbaijan.) The U.S. missile defence plan is hardly an issue for Russia "to be hyperventilating about," as U.S. President George W. Bush puts it, and Mr. Putin knows it.

First, Russia has such a large and varied arsenal that it could overwhelm any niche defence. The system is clearly aimed at shooting down a rocket or two launched by "rogue states" like Iran or North Korea. Second, missile defence is more concept than reality at this stage. It can’t reliably shoot anything down.

Patriotism is truly the last refuge of the scoundrel, and Mr. Putin’s "stand up to America" populism – albeit on a bogus issue – plays well. Conveniently, it deflects attention towards Russia’s geopolitical concerns, and away from the West’s concerns about Russia.

What are those concerns? Well, there’s the Kremlin’s bullying of its neighbours, its suspected involvement in cyber-warfare against Estonia and in the assassination of a dissident by radiation poisoning, its economic strangulation of former Soviet republics like Ukraine, its jackboot in Chechnya and its sabotage of democracy at home.

http://www.herald.ns.ca/Editorial/840614.html
The really bad news is, most Russians are still not aware of how screwed up their Soviet era military was. There are two reasons for this. First, Russians take for granted how their armed forces operates. Russians complain about the brutality and incompetence in the military, but that's all they've ever known. Second, Russians remember fondly that their ramshackle armed forces defeated the Germans during World War II. What the Russians play down is how much the Germans lost World War II in Russia, rather than being beaten. The Germans made a lot of serious mistakes during the war, while the Russians got their act together. What Russians fail to realize is that the Soviet Union was an accidental, and largely imaginary, superpower. Russia has long employed large scale deception, and the Soviet Union continued this on a sustained basis. Military weaknesses (poor training and readiness) were hidden, and strengths (sheer number of weapons and troops) emphasized. But as was seen many times (from Budapest in 1956, to Chechnya in 1994), the Soviet military system produced little in the way of real military power. Soviet weapons, as impressive as they appeared to be, always came out a distant second when they were used against Western ones. The main thing that kept the Soviet military reputation going was the need of Western militaries to make the Soviet Union look strong, in order to justify high Western military budgets.

The one effective weapon the Soviets did have were their nuclear armed ballistic missiles. Better maintained than the rest of the military, enough of this missile fleet would work, if used, to devastate Western nations. Russia still has a large part of that nuclear arsenal. But that does not make Russians feel like a superpower. That's because Russia no longer has the huge fleet, air force and army. And that's because this huge force was all an expensive illusion, which was disbanded in the 1990s, once it was obvious what a waste it all was. But the big thing that's missing is the size of the Soviet Union. Over half the population of the Soviet Union were not Russian, and did not want to be part of the Soviet Union. Most of these people got their wish in 1991, when the Soviet Union came apart. Many Russians want to undo that, but they cannot. It took Russia over four centuries to build that empire, and the inept Soviet Bureaucrats a few weeks to lose it all.  An increasing number of Russians want it back, but are unwilling to confront how they lost it in the first place, or why rebuilding the empire is an uncertain and dangerous enterprise. This is all very dangerous stuff.

June 8, 2007:   Russian, American and European leaders met for the G8 economic meeting, and Russias attitudes towards the post-Cold War world became a major topic. Russia has been increasingly hostile towards its neighbors joining the European Union, or NATO. Russia sees all this differently than does Europe, the U.S., or even Russias neighbors. These nations, especially those like Ukraine, which were part of Russia for centuries, understand Russian resentment over the loss of empire. Europeans and Americans have a harder time appreciating Russian fear of potential enemies making economic and military pacts with Russians neighbors. To many Russians, the West is still out to destroy them. But the West has always seen Russia as the aggressive empire to be contained. This was the case even before the Soviet Union was established. Some things never change. Russia sees an American sponsored anti-missile system, being built in Poland and the Czech republic, to stop Iranian or North Korean missiles, as part of a plot to diminish Russian military power. But everyone agrees that this system could easily be overwhelmed by the large Russian missile force. However, what the West does not appreciate, is the Russian admiration of Western military technology, and suspicion that those clever Americans will be able to tweak this seemingly limited anti-missile system, so that it will stop any Russian missiles headed for Europe. Europeans see this as absurd. Europe is the major customer for Russian gas and oil (the largest, and fastest growing, component of the Russian economy.) Why would Russia fire nukes at their largest customer? By the end of the G8 conference, Russian leaders have been forced to concede the logic of this, and even offered to join in building the anti-missile system. But nothing has really changed. Russia still has centuries of prejudices and illusions to deal with, and a cure is not likely any time soon.

http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/russia/articles/20070611.aspx