The Frightening World of Vladimir Putin
At the recent Valdai Discussion Club forum President Vladimir Putin conducted a three-hour tour of his own special world — the same world that German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned us he lives in. I must say that Putin’s world is more frightening and filled with hidden terrors than any horror movie.
I was most surprised by one of the Russian president’s main assertions — namely, that the collapse of the Soviet Union destroyed a certain system of “checks and balances” that existed during the Cold War.
As a result, according to Putin, the United States began behaving uncontrollably in the international arena. I wonder exactly what “system” the Russian leader had in mind. I would venture to assert that no such “system” ever existed.
The only system that existed was mutual nuclear deterrence, the understanding that the potential adversary could always cause unacceptable damage if the need arose. However, that system remains effectively unchanged to this day: The U.S. and Russian nuclear forces are relatively equal.
But as Putin showed in his speech, it is specifically the violently unpredictable nature of the Soviet Kremlin that he misses most.
It is no accident that, after making this point about checks and balances, Putin praised the most unpredictable former Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev. “True, the Soviet Union was referred to as ‘the Upper Volta with missiles,'” Putin said. “Maybe so, and there were loads of missiles.
And now Putin has pulled a similar stunt before the Valdai forum participants. He was obviously using demonstrative aggression to compensate for Moscow’s undeniably weak position. Russia clearly lacks all the essentials for a confrontation with the West — the money, the faithful allies and the industrial capacity.
Putin wants to regain that same “respect” that the West held for Khrushchev, and he sees no other way but to underscore his own unpredictability.
It is no wonder then that in his Valdai speech Putin said: “Today, we already see a sharp increase in the likelihood of a whole set of violent conflicts with either direct or indirect participation by the world’s major powers.”
Source: themoscowtimes – The Frightening World of Vladimir Putin
