Putin’s Russia and the West

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, in a speech to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, declared that the breakup of the USSR was “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the twentieth century”, or words to that effect. You see, the speech was in Russian, so the quotation depends on the translation. It has also been translated as: “Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century.” Whether or not the superlative was in the original Russian, it is clear that Putin considered the disintegration of the Soviet Union as an event that was very, very bad for humanity, especially for the Russians.   

There are many, such as John Bolton, the former ambassador to the United Nations under George W. Bush, who believe this declaration was an opening proclamation of Putin’s intent to recover suzerainty over the former states of the Soviet empire. Given the Russian aggression against the Ukraine, and a prior invasion of the Republic of Georgia, it would be hard to dispute Bolton’s assertions. Certainly, Russian behavior in recent years has made the Baltic states (Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania), extremely nervous. Even our NATO allies in Western Europe have reason to be concerned (see here and here and here and here).

But direct assaults on us or our allies are not the only way in which Russia can harm us. There is also the de facto alliance between Russia and Iran (see here and here and here and here). By assisting Iran, an ideological enemy of all Western Civilization, Russia assists additional military pressure against the West to redirect Western attention from Russia to Iran.

All of these signs of Russian determination to reassemble their empire come at a time when the nations of NATO are unilaterally disarming (see here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). At the same time that this Russian threat confronts us, we are also faced with the threat from Islamic jihadists (see here and here and here and here). Beyond all this, we are increasingly being challenged militarily by China (see here and here and here).

So I ask you, kind reader, how can we meet this military challenge from the heirs of the Soviet Union, while simultaneously challenged by other possibly existential threats from jihadist Islam and China? Yet instead of stepping up to meet the various threats, we seem to be actively reducing our capability to protect ourselves.  Do we have a collective death wish?

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