It was always wicked for servicemen of a certain age – my age – to miss the Cold War. Sure, we had a certain clarity of vision, and yeah, deep inside we knew that “the Russians loved their children too.” And on top of it all, we recognized that Communism – whatever its manifest shortcomings in practical application – at least had a scientific underpinning in theory. Dialectical materialism and all that. Yes, yes.
Mutually Assured Destruction was a hideously immoral proposition, but it did have certain pragmatic advantages. So long as the cost of any geo-strategic misadventure was kept ambiguously high, the ICBMs continued to wait coolly in the silos and launch tubes, while the bombers circled on the safe side of their failsafe points. It all seemed such a jolly game.
Of course, by the time I’d sworn the oath, the boots had for so long been pressed down in foreign throats that we all presumed that the Hungarians, Poles and Czechs had become accustomed to them, not to mention the Balts. The East Germans seemed to have transitioned so quickly from National Socialism to the other kind that little sympathy could be spared for them. And as for the Russians themselves, well: They seemed to bear with stoicism the tragic burden of importunate history. Perhaps it went with the weather.
But we expected just a little better. The silly fabrication of the itinerant American English teacher and his passport – ostensibly found in Georgia – is only one example. Given the resources of the state, the old KGB would have manufactured something more believable for mass distribution.
Milton Bearden, a highly decorated former CIA operative, dismissed the notion that an intelligence agent with any intelligence would carry his passport with him in the field, much less lose it. He characterized the Russian claims as “slapstick,” saying that if a passport is going to be held up as evidence of U.S. meddling, “it shouldn’t belong to some guy teaching English in China.”
Alexei Kondaurov, a KGB veteran and critic of the Kremlin, said that “using a ‘found’ passport to expose the Americans seems really small-time,” adding that “the Soviet Union’s secret services never stooped that low.”
Comes USS Mount Whitney, the Sixth Fleet command ship – an amphib – to deliver aid to Georgia. Seventeen tons of humitarian assistance. Food. Medical supplies. Toilet paper. That sort of thing. All under the watchful eye of the Soviet Russian fleet. Whose leadership objected:
The Kremlin has watched U.S. warships carrying aid with suspicion and said could be a cover for weapons deliveries, a claim dismissed by U.S. officials. President Dmitry Medvedev repeated the suggestions Saturday. “It’s interesting how they would feel if we were now to send humanitarian aid using our Navy to the countries of the Caribbean Sea, which recently suffered from a destructive hurricane,” Medvedev told a Security Council meeting in Moscow.
From the president’s lips to the fleet’s ear:
Russia’s plan to deploy ships and warplanes to the Caribbean for joint military exercises with Venezuela is allowing President Hugo Chavez to capitalize on tensions between Moscow and the U.S. and showcase a growing military alliance.
Russia announced on Monday that it will send a naval squadron and long-range patrol planes for the exercises later this year — a move that appeared retaliatory after the U.S. sent warships to deliver aid to Georgia following its conflict with Russia.
The deployment is expected to be the largest Russian naval maneuvers in the Caribbean — and perhaps the Western Hemisphere — since the Cold War.
Petulantly snuggling up to a puffed up Latin American caudillo, the better to stick a thumb in Uncle Sam’s eye.
How do we feel, Mr. President Medvedev?
Sorry. Sorry for you, and for your people.
Just silly? Perhaps. But the stakes are hardly “silly”. They are …..Armageddon!
I spent my childhood “ducking and covering” often, by order of the Sisters of Mercy at St. Patrick’s Grade School in a Midwest farming community, as a preparation for a likely Soviet nuclear attack and annihilation. (And as we have subsequently learned, there were some close calls.)
Although the Soviet Union collapsed, and Russia is indeed today a mere shadow of its former self, they still maintain thermonuclear ICBMs far more in number, and in far greater capability than the ones I ducked-and-covered for in the ’50s.
Recently, Russia has been humiliated, cornered, and agitated. Their recent bravado is pure cause and effect. Those (Darwinians) who want to poke and taunt the weakened, angry, and caged Bear in the zoo are the ones who sometimes regret their actions when the weakened, embittered, and taunted Bear eventually escapes and explodes upon his teasers!
On both sides – Russia and the US – there are many who want – no crave – a resurgence of the Cold War.
The Russians want it because they have been humiliated. We want it because it justifies the continuance of the major defense contractors’ massive projects that are now rendered irrelevant in asymmetric warfare. It returns our defense posture to one more known and (incomprehensibly) desirable, but also to one much more profitable, by serving “the clients”.
As MOH awardee Smedley said, “War is good for business.”
Arms races and saber rattling without counterbalance, as I have long observed, are – or at least should be – beyond the pale when nuclear annihilation is an eventual, possible result.
Fortunately, we fought only proxy wars in the post WW-II world. That is why we “chose to lose” Vietnam. But we did come close to WW-III a few times, and our personal vaporization.
Russia no longer has the capability to wage proxy wars. Therefore, overreaction to Russia’s understandable faux belligerent actions is extremely dangerous – because they can still tomorrow, kill most every US citizen in our country. Like a terrorist with his finger on the bomb trigger, you may hate and despise him.
But it is wise not to overly antagonize him. Honey in this case works better than bitter vinegar…. And could save our world.
So just chill. Send supply ships rather than war ships. Use some diplomacy. Be tough, and strong. But be smart too. Otherwise, we all may be diving under desks…impotent wooden desks that a thousand nukes will quickly vaporize.
As Yogi said, it’s déjà vu all over again. But this time it’s my children/grandchildren who may have to fruitlessly desk-dive.
“Faux belligerent actions?” Try telling that to the Georgians…
So yeah, to summarize your thoughts: Roll over and placate the Russians ‘cuz they might still nuke us.
Good plan. (not)
I take it fliterman is ignorant of exactly which class of ship the Mount Whitney actually belongs?
The sky isn’t always falling, no matter how much some believe the opposite to be true….
Lex,
I first read a biography of Peter the Great many years ago. Just as reading “Exodus” at a tender age left a mark on me, so too did the biography of Peter the Great and “Fire in the Steppe.” Reading Forty Days of Musa Dahg in college was very interesting.
So I feel great sympathy with the Russians who have fallen under the control of another Stalin and also feel the same for all the poor Venezuelans in thrall to their Lenin.
Any but a pure idiot can look at the lights going out in South America as each country succumbs to a terrible ideology that led to nothing more than the deaths of millions and abyss of utter ruination. Medveded and Putin will take Russia back to what it was in 1921. The hateful ideology they profess will lead to more Pol Pots and Shining Paths in Latin America.
There is NO doubt that the oligarchs and kleptocrats in S. America have brought this on themselves but it is the Kulaks that pay the price with their lives and their children’s lives when these sorts of battles are fought to extinction. That 1% ruling class always seems to make it out alive.
The paranoia of the Russians reaches far further back than the Cold War.
As one who didn’t miss the Cold War days, the book to read was “The Russians” by Alexander. It seems the poor Slavs have been violated again and again throughout history and they building of the USSR was but a modern response to construct a buffer zone for the Motherland.
With the disintegration of that political entity, they see naked borders, avenues of approach for their enemies (think really paranoid), with no “no man’s land” (read other people’s soil) to fight on and prevent further defeats.
So, when the “opposition” sees everything through those filters, are they psychotic, or merely being proactive in caring for their “sovereign borders?”
The Russians need to grow up and join the world community and quit playing the (historical) victim.
Lex,
In the old days, Soviet school children were indoctrinated with the fact that EVERY invader of Mother Russia had been punished, and that severely, except for one: The United States.
Virtually no Americans know of the expeditionary force we sent to Russia to support the White Russians, and of the American servicemen who still lie buried in Russian soil. See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Bear_Expedition
So for all those years, that distrust of America and the unmetered punishment for our actions has been festering in Russian memories.
Lex,
Great post. The great epic story of the Russians continues.
My recommendation would be for our government to captalize on this great strat comm opportunity…call the Russians on their bluff. You know, since they are coming all this way to participate in “exercises” with VZ, maybe they could, umm, bring some much needed humanitarian supplies for the Carribean nations recently ravaged by three hurricanes (we get tired of being the only ones to do this all the time). That would be a mature, welcome to the global stage sort of, act.
Flit, your post is so full of lies and half truths that I don’t know where to start. I will say this though…it’s not all a conspiracy, really. Believe me…
AW1, thanks for that small bit of history. I had never heard of that. Wow.
I just want to point out that while we go to do humanitarian aid, the Russians talk of doing humanitarian aid and go instead to play war games…
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the – Web Reconnaissance for 09/09/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
I was piped over the side off that ship for good when it was the C2F floating hotel for staff weenies ..
The Dutch roll off the Vacapes was brutal on that flat bottomed hog. Best stateroom I ever had in the Nav though! Excellent chow- our MS’s were trained at the culinary college in Norfolk!
Glad to see it’s still around. Doing stuff.
b2