Informed Speculation

I note from time to time with dismay the growing belligerence of Russia to our interests under the dictatorial Vladimir Putin. Charles Krauthammer looks at his recent anti-U.S. statements and does some tea-leaf reading:

Vladimir Putin — Russia’s president, although the more accurate title would be godfather — made headlines last week with a speech in Munich that set a new standard in anti-Americanism. He not only charged the United States with the “hyper-use of force,” “disdain for the basic principles of international law” and having “overstepped its national borders in . . . the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations.” He even blamed the spread of weapons of mass destruction, which the United States has been combating with few allies and against constant Russian resistance, on American “dominance” that “inevitably encourages” other countries to acquire them.

There is something amusing about criticism of the use of force by the man who turned Chechnya into a smoldering ruin; about the invocation of international law by the man who will not allow Scotland Yard to interrogate the polonium-soaked thugs it suspects of murdering Alexander Litvinenko, yet another Putin opponent who met an untimely and unprosecuted death; about the bullying of other countries decried by a man who cuts off energy supplies to Ukraine, Georgia and Belarus in brazen acts of political and economic extortion.

Less amusing is the greater meaning of Putin’s Munich speech. It marks Russia’s coming out. Flush with oil and gas revenue, the consolidation of dictatorial authority at home and the capitulation of both domestic and Western companies to his seizure of their assets, Putin issued his boldest declaration yet that post-Soviet Russia is preparing to reassert itself on the world stage.

Perhaps the most important line in his speech was the least noted because it seemed so innocuous. “I very often hear appeals by our partners, including our European partners, to the effect that Russia should play an increasingly active role in world affairs,” he said. “It is hardly necessary to incite us to do so.”

Krauthammer’s conclusion:

Putin’s aggressiveness does not signal a return to the Cold War. He is too clever to be burdened by the absurdity of socialist economics or Marxist politics. He is blissfully free of ideology, political philosophy and economic theory. There is no existential dispute with the United States.

He is a more modest man: a mere mafia don, seizing the economic resources and political power of a country for himself and his (mostly KGB) cronies. And promoting his vision of the Russian national interest — assertive and expansionist — by engaging in diplomacy that challenges the dominant power in order to boost his own.

He wants Gromyko’s influence — or at least some international acknowledgment that Moscow must be reckoned with — without the ideological baggage. He does not want to bury us; he only wants to diminish us. It is 19th-century power politics at its most crude and elemental. Putin does not want us as an enemy. But at Munich he told the world that, vis-à-vis America, his Russia has gone from partner to adversary.

Unquestionably, that is so…and it’s the main reason why the UN can no longer be any good for multilaterally pursuing U.S. interests. Anything substantial will certainly be shot down by Russia, as we’ve seen with Iran.

I’ve been arguing for some time that we need a new multilateral body that is more in tune with the cause of freedom and democracy, and with a strong focus on nuclear terror. And I’m still not hearing nearly enough from the perspective presidential candidates of either party about these crucial issues…