Original Post – June 7, 2007
Recently in press, Russian President Vladimir Putin has made the following comments. ‘If the American nuclear potential grows in European territory, we have to give ourselves new targets in Europe,’ Putin said… ‘It is up to our military to define these targets, in addition to defining the choice between ballistic and cruise missiles.’
Reading a slashdot article and commentary on it, you would think people would use their brains more and apply logical thought to a situation like this. Rather than look at a macroscopic scope of what is occurring in RUSSIA and the US, they look at a single event and a single news item as if a thousand other events are not related.
Lets examine some facts:
Putin, in his ending days as President, is setting up the Russian nation to be aggressive and assertive where it can. Putin is a very intelligent man and understands that there are places that Russia just can’t go anymore with their limited economic and military resources. However, they can apply pressure in local regions where Western/US interests lie to gain advantage in areas that they otherwise cannot reach.
Putin, in his last state of the union address earlier this year, laid out a course for Russian resurgence as well as very clearly pointed at the US and the West as ‘the enemy’ again. Comparing us to the rise of the 3rd Reich, Putin is using very hot and old topics important to the Russian people to galvanize them. His target for angst is not REALLY the US.. but we are convenient.
Russia needs Ukraine and its natural resources. The Orange revolution is pretty much dead without Western support and Putin is very clearly drawing lines and boundaries to prevent further NATO expansion in Eastern Europe.
US Missile shields, for the next 20 years, will have 0 impact on Russian ability to decimate the world with its nuclear arsenal. So any arguement to the contrary is silly. Will the US eventually try to deploy a system that can more greatly ensure even a large missile attack can be stopped? Perhaps. Nuclear parity and MAD worked for a long time though and I am not sure strategic thinking has left too far from this.
Why the missile shield at all then? – Thats worthy of a whole blog. But I think the #1 reason is it reduces the number of strategic nuclear (and simply long-range missile capable) adversaries to a handful rather then a hundred. Iran, Pakistan, Indian, etc become a non-threat while capable of launching only 20-30 nukes at a time. China, Russia will remain an issue for a missile shield for a very long time.
