Russia appears on a course that grows in
hostility towards the West, and leans to
greater and greater authoritarianism and
militarism at home. Many analyses seem
to suggest that Russia's boom in oil wealth
has brought about their willingness to
re-arm, as they announced two weeks ago
that they would resume production of
heavy weapons - tanks, planes, artillery
and helicopter gunships "without limits."
At the same time, they renounced the CFE
treaty limiting conventional forces, and,
presumably, plan a big buildup in this
direction also.

A couple of days ago, I heard a long piece
about a new youth group in Russia called
NASHA, which held a week long "camp
experience" somewhere north of Moscow
this last week. What was disturbing about
the camp was a number of things - heavy
propagandizing about Putin ("a cult of
personality," one participant called it),
strong sloganeering of a fiercely
anti-American nature, including a
comparison of George Bush to Saddam
Hussein, promotion of less democracy
and acceptance of that, and a great bit of
Russian nationalism to the point of a
strong flavor of anti-Westernism generally.
Supposedly, the Kremlin had nothing to do
with the camp, but it sure sounds quite
orchestrated by Moscow.

In recent months, Putin has been more and
more belligerent about the West, especially
the United States, which as given rise to a
great many speculations that the world may
be at the dawn of a "second Cold War."
There has also been the tussle with Great
Britain over the death of Alexander
Litvenenko, the refusal of Russia to extradite
his alleged assassin Luguvoy, Britian's refusal
to extradite Boris Berezhovsky to Russia for
charges of fraud, tax evasion and possibly
treason, and last week's tit-for-tat expellings
evoking the Cold War of four diplomats each
by both London and Moscow.

On Friday, there was a set of comments
published from Mikhail Gorbachev, despised
at home for the collapse of the USSR and then
"allowing" folks like Berezhovsky to get rich at
the expense of "the masses" (actually more
Yeltsin's responsibility than Gorbachev's) but
in recent months a promoter of both Putin's
"assertive foreign policy and resistance to
American power..." (according to an Alex
Nicholson AP story yesterday). Gorbachev
made a series of statements Nicholson called
"harsh," as follows," The Americans want so
much to be the winners. The fact is that they
are sick with this illness, this winner's complex,
is the main reason why everything in the world
is so confused and so complicated."

He said that the USSR's collapse led the US to
"an aggressive empire building mode." He
then expressed that in the end result, this stance
had led the US to commit a number of "major
strategic mistakes." He added that "Unilateral
actions and wars followed," wherein
Washington "ignored the Security Council,
international law and the will of their own
people."

According to the article, Gorbachev, now 76,
went on to echo Putin's relatively strong
condemnations of the Iraq war, and also
endorsed Putin's frequent (of late) calls for a
"multi-polar world" without US dominance or
attempted hegomony, perhaps as it was
before 1914, or for part of the inter-war period
1918-1939. From 1945-1991, it really was a
bipolar world, even if Putin and Gorbachev
choose to forget that period of history. In this
writer's estimation, the last "real" multi-polar
periods of history was roughly 1815-1914 and
from 1919-1935, albeit with several
"imperialistic" behaviors occurring from the
early 1930s onward.

As I pointed out this morning, while China and
India may well be the "800 pound gorillas in the
world's rooms" by 2020, one should not count
out a resurgent Russia. Humiliated by their fall
from world class power status when the USSR
collapsed sixteen years ago, and still with a
formidable nuclear arsenal (their army's status,
given the Chechnya debacle, still seems
dubious) is a nation that cannot be ignored.
Their burgeoning oil and gas business give
them a great deal of clout with eastern Europe,
the Baltics, Japan and China, and to a lesser
degree with states like France, Germany and
Britain. It would also appear that Russia is
*quite* willing to step their rhetoric and, to
some degree depending on who one believes,
actions against those they perceive as "a threat
to the motherland."

I would also commend in closing a 2005 book
about Russia by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser
called _Kremlin Rising, Vladimir Putin's Russia
and the End of Revolution. It is an exceptionally
clear-headed view of the Putin era, and the
actions of he, his cronies and the state in the
years since he came to power (late 1999). It
isn't a pretty picture. VMS


Note: Written Sun, 29 Jul 2007 16:56:09

NOTE: I discovered a few weeks ago that
I had misnumbered this second series with
two #28s, one in July 2005 about Gorbachev,
a second in November 2006 about Litveneko,
and now have the numbers straight.

Unedited as of 20 August, 2007