Will (Re)START Be Stopped Or Just Delayed?

There hasn't been a whole lot of cheering over the more-or-less joint announcement by the Kremlin and the White House concerning the successful negotiation of the new START which will result in a one third reduction in each country's nuclear warheads and associated long range delivery vehicles. While there is much left unaddressed by the new agreement including short range, tactical systems and nuclear charges withdrawn from inventory but not dismantled, it is a major step towards a stable system predicated on the concept of "finite deterrence."

So, why the lack of good cheer in political circles and mainstream media alike?

There is not yet any reason to celebrate given the great gulf between mere agreement and signing on the one side and necessary Senate ratification on the other. Previous nuclear agreements between the US and, back then, the Soviet Union have fallen into the gap never to emerge to the sunlight of ratification. There is no basis to believe at the moment that ReSTART will not join the pile of corpses at the bottom of the gap.

There is no way that the Obama administration despite Secretary Clinton's brave words regarding the bipartisan nature of national security can avoid the reality that the Democratic Party's take-no-prisoners approach to health care overhaul and other legislation has poisoned the well of bipartisanship. Mr Obama and his henchmen will discover that bullies stand alone when they call upon their victims for assistance.

Making Republican foot dragging if not flat out rejectionism more rather than less likely is the fact that there are excellent pegs upon which recalcitrant elephants can hang their oppositional hats. One such peg is provided by the perceived need to modernize the American nuclear warhead stockpile. Another is provided by the questions revolving around any understandings reached with Putin, Medvedev, and company regarding ballistic missile defense systems and their deployment.

Legislation mandating the administration to put forth a plan for the modernization of warheads has already passed. To date the administration has been unresponsive to the requirement. The American warheads are elderly to say the least. They present very real problems of reliability and security which need to be solved. The technical work to properly fix the problems has been underway for years at Los Alamos and Lawrence-Livermore. But, the administration has been unwilling to use the work done as a foundation for providing an overall scheme for modernization.

It is a safe bet that more than a few Republican Senators will be quite willing to let the START languish until an acceptable modernization plan is presented by the administration. This trade off is completely justifiable and serves the national interest.

A smaller deterrent is credible if it is both reliable and secure. The Russians know this and have publicly pledged to bring their long-in-the-tooth nuclear charges into the 21st century. We have to do this as well or cut our own deterrent throat along with the numbers.

The expressed concerns over Russian objections to the planned limited missile defense system proposed by the Obama administration are also well taken. The Kremlin has been irrational regarding forward based limited ABM systems since the W. Bush administration first mooted the idea over two years ago.

The Russian military and government know perfectly well that the proposed system in no way threatens the credibility and utility of their missiles or at least those aimed at the US. In principle the US ABM system could marginally attenuate a Russian strike using short ranged missiles aimed at Western or Central Europe. Even this very limited "threat" could be easily overcome by either decoys or simple overloading. The Russians have nothing to worry about even given the one third reduction in charges and long range delivery vehicles.

The Russians have expressed a large degree of paranoia regarding American missile defense capacities either actual or under development. This is a critical area of national security considerations in which they are always far behind the curve in comparison with the US. As a result the Kremlin has harbored a deep need to control, to limit or, best of all, to extinguish US efforts in this area.

Taking advantage of President Obama's all-too-obvious desire (need?) to move the globe to a nuclear-free status the Russians could have made limitations on or removal of American ABM capabilities--even those directed against rogue states of limited offensive capacity--an understood prerequisite for signing ReSTART. It is in American national and strategic interest to be absolutely certain that there are no limits, explicit or tacit, now or in the future placed by the Kremlin on our discretionary deployment of ABM systems.

A principled Republican unwillingness to vote to ratify could be based on the need to fully and satisfactorily ascertain the absence of any Russian imposed limits on the US in the ABM area. Anything less would constitute dereliction of duty.

Politics being what politics has become in recent months and years, there are any number of unprincipled bases for opposition by Republicans. Trade-offs, log rolling, linkages between a vote for ratification and any number of flatly irrelevant issues is not only possible but likely. Not even the skills of Senator Lugar, a full-bore supporter of ReSTART can assure that obstructionist efforts of this sort will not occur. Nor can Senator Lugar and other "Reds" of like mind be sure of rounding up the necessary Republican votes.

President Obama cannot be sure that he can corral his own base in support of ratification. The progressives of his party are well known for their seemingly Utopian pursuit of unilateral American nuclear disarmament.

It is almost as certain as the law of gravity that progressives will contend that ReSTART is insufficiently bold. They can and will argue that the quantum improvements in the quality of conventional munitions have rendered nukes evermore useless. This is not a position without real merit. As the power and accuracy of conventional weapons have improved, the justification for the necessity of nuclear munitions and associated delivery systems has lessened. It is a linear progression as well as a tandem one.

The result of both Republican and progressive considerations is that an agreement to reduce the strategic nuclear arsenals of the US and Russia which should have been a slam dunk for ratification is not. The person ultimately responsible for this transmogrification is Mr Obama.

Far from being the first "post-partisan" president since the Era of Good Feelings nearly two centuries ago, the Nice Young Man From Chicago has proven himself to be a polarizing figure of such potency as to make George W. Bush and even Dick Cheney appear as models of bipartisan harmony in comparison. Quite simply the ratification of ReSTART provides the perfect opportunity for the vultures to return to the manure wagon.

Well, Mr O, you win one only in order to lose another. The tragedy is that the one you are shaping up to lose also is a loss for the world as a whole. Think about it as you celebrate the victory of bringing poverty medicine to the American public.

Watch It, Comrade, Your Paranoia Is Showing

Vitaly Churkin, Russia's ambassador to the UN, has accused the Obama administration of "Cold War thinking" in discounting the Russian influence on the decision to cancel the land-based ABM system in Central Europe. It wasn't enough for the Kremlin to receive a present from the current US administration. No. They want the credit for the decision as well.

The position taken by Ambassador Churkin, if it represents the present state of play in the Kremlin, is indicative one more time of Russia's endemic sense of inferiority and concomitant paranoia which has so longed plagued its relations not only with the US but the West generally. It may be that the Obama administration did, in part, consider the potential impact of the ABM decision upon Russia. If that was true, it would ill-behoove the administration to admit it publicly given the controversy surrounding the move--particularly the unfounded charges of surrendering to the Russians coming from the Right.

Churkin has a strange understanding of the nature of international relations given his stance that "true partners do not apologize for taking their partner's position into account." Considering that Mr Churkin is not a newbie in the game of nations, he must know that the folks of the Obama administration, like any government, including his own, must give more weight to internal opinion than the ego-stroking desires of other governments.

When the US elicits the cooperation of Russia--or any other country--on a matter of importance to both, the assumption is that the countries have coinciding national interests. It is on the sole basis of coinciding national interest that mutual efforts, collective efforts, can be achieved. With respect to North Korea and Iran, the underlying assumption is that the Kremlin no more than the US sees the expansion of the Nuclear Club as being in the national interest.

So far Russia has been a significant non-participant in the campaign to halt the nuclear weapons development efforts in either the mullahocracy or the Hermit Kingdom of the North. There might have been some hopes among the members of the Obama foreign policy crew who are less inclined to a realpolitik view of life that cashiering the Bush/Cheney era ABM project would result in increased Russian cooperation on Iran and North Korea.

But, it is quite unlikely that this aspiration, pious in nature, governed the move. After all, by ditching the Central European system without proper diplomatic preparation of the local soil, the US has created credibility problems of a major and unpredictable sort in the capitals of the former Warsaw Pact states and ex-Soviet satrapies. To create this sort of unnecessary complication in a critical area of the world on the hope that Russia would fall in line with the US on the Iranian and North Korean nuclear questions is nearly inconceivable--even for the Obama-Clinton duo.

Churkin comments that no one in Russia speaks of "appeasing" the US while there is much talk in the US of having "appeased" Russia with the cancellation. Assuming that Mr Churkin understands English as well as he speaks it, he should understand perfectly well that the accusations of "appeasement" do not come from members of the Obama administration but rather from the opposition. He should understand as well that the target of the accusation is not Russia but President Obama and his people.

Overall, the proper appreciation of Ambassador Churkin's remarks, which run in parallel with some coming out of Moscow over the past few days, is that this public stance is a preliminary for yet another round of Russian diplomats using their favorite Cold War word, "Nyet!" It is a piece of preparation for the utterly predictable position of Russia following the failure of the upcoming conversations between Iran and the P5+1.

Russia is not going to collaborate in the sanctions against Iran. That is a given. The Kremlin does not (the Geek believes correctly) that the sanctions past, present, or proposed have been and will continue to be unproductive at the least. There is no reason from the Kremlin's perspective to attenuate its minimal influence in Tehran or its (quite pious) hopes that the road to peace in the North Caucasus runs through the Iranian capital by joining in the ineffectual sanction regime.

Churkin and the others who have been invoking the specter of the Cold War in the past few days are simply laying the foundation for not providing a "quo" for the American "quid." The irony here is that by laying on the irrelevant rhetoric as thick as a Moscow snowfall, the Russians are reinforcing the credibility of the stance taken by SecDef Gates and President Obama: That the Russians or considerations of Russian sensibilities do not dictate the American defense posture.

Reality, fortunately, remains unaltered by rhetoric--Cold War or otherwise. When the Russians perceive that a national interest of theirs coincides with one of the US, they will cooperate. Even during the most oratorically polluted days of the Cold War, the Russians have shown themselves to be both pragmatic and cautious and quite willing to acknowledge that from time to time their interests coincide with ours.

That day may not be far in the future regarding Iran. There are increasing hints coming out of the still far from transparent Country of the Bear that Iran is a growing threat and not simply a figment of American imagination. Parsing the fragments of contradictory public information leads one to the preliminary estimate that the Kremlin is finally having doubts concerning its capacity to influence, let alone limit, Iran's progress on both nuclear weapons and delivery system development.

This estimate is reinforced by public statements that the proposed American maritime ABM system is "not a threat" to Russia. Another straw in the winds from the Kremlin is found in the new talk of a joint US-Russian defense system directed against Iranian missiles.

As Churkin's revival of talk about "Cold War talk" indicates, there are no easy roads to collaboration between the US and Russia. That's nothing new. All that matters when the cows come home is that from time to time the Kremlin recognizes that it does have national interests which coincide with those of the US. And, acts on that recognition.

So it goes in the never ending Game of Nations.

Sometimes It All Kind Of Gets You Down

The "all" in this case is the sheer mass of hypocrisy, mendacity, naivety, and ideological blindness proliferating in the global politics arena. Admittedly, all of these less than desirable features of the human condition are and always have been rife in the human condition--including the relations between states and pretenders to statehood--but the quantity has reached totally astonishing proportions.

Leading the mendacity list today is the sermon on radio marking the end of Ramadan given by Iran's Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Khamenei. In his view the US knows perfectly well that it is lying when it alleges the mullahocracy is pursuing nuclear weapons. As is customary in such matters, the ayatollah hid behind the scrim of Islamic religious tenets, averring that possession of nukes would contravene the word of the Prophet. Of course, Khamenei conveniently ignored the Approved By Islam doctrine of lying to protect believers and the belief from infidel inflicted harm.

The ayatollah did hint at some possible slackening in the persecution of anti-Ahmedinejad demonstrators, but his support for the Master Of Mendacity did not relax in the slightest. The "re-elected" Orator-in-Chief holds a tie for Blatant Lie of the Week with his well-rehearsed denial of the Holocaust as a "myth" and a fiction created by the West in order to foist the "Zionist Entity" on the Arab Mideast. The Ahmedinejad version of history was so blatantly false that even the European Union--not noted for its unquestioning support of Israel--joined the US, the UK, and even the original home of the pogrom, Russia, in denouncing it. The Swedish president of the EU did the job even though his native country has had problems over anti-Semitic publications based on falsehoods recently.

Muslims--Islamist jihadists, to err on the side of accuracy--also head the list in the hypocrisy department albeit indirectly. The venue is the geographic expression dubbed "Somalia," but the hypocrites are not the al-Shabaab gun slingers and suicide bombers. Not this time. This time the Hypocrite of the Week Award goes to the UN and the African Union.

The reason for the award is simply the title given the personnel sent to Somalia under the rubric of African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM.) These unfortunate souls are termed "peacekeepers." Given that there is no peace to keep in the bloody sands of Somalia, the term is singularly inapposite. Calling the troops from Uganda and Burundi "targets" or "bomb catchers" would be accurate, but the name "peacekeeper" is as wrong as calling a T-bone steak a watermelon.

Of course it is equally hypocritical to call the the UN created Transitional Federal Government in Somalia a "government." A body appointed by foreigners which controls only a small section of the "capital" and a slice of two of nearby desert is scarcely a government. It may be a convenient fiction of the "international community" or even a government-in-waiting, but it is certainly not a functioning entity exercising sovereign control of a territory and a people.

The recent al-Shabaab suicide bombing of an AMISOM base using purloined UN vehicles should give the word to both the UN and the AU. The US and other parties which have played a role in Somalia had best heed the word as well.

The word is simple. Accept that al-Shabaab exercises de facto control and stop the fiction of the Transitional Federal Government or go for the alternative. The alternative is one that no state, let alone supra-national bodies, wish to consider. The alternative is to go into Somalia in force and destroy al-Shabaab. Go into Somalia in force and impose peace. Only then can the peace be kept.

The third option, the option currently being pursued by the outsiders is to hope that the TFG can be kept in some twilight existence long enough that foreign trainers and foreign supplies might pump life into a new Somalian national force capable of suppressing al-Shabaab and other Islamist jihadist groups. So far the third option has shown little probability of ultimate success, but at least it limits non-Somali casualties.

Naivety blooms in the Obama administration's proposed Security Council resolution on nuclear non-proliferation. It demonstrates a touching faith in the efficacy of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), related conventions, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to prevent states from joining the ever-expanding Nuclear Club. More, the draft resolution, which will be on the table when President Obama chairs the Security Council meeting during his star turn at the Tower of Babel By The Hudson, exhibits an overly great faith in the willingness of states to renounce their own economic and political interests by enforcing provisions of the new expansion of the NPT.

For example, should Iran either be found in violation of any of the provisions of the NPT, or should it withdraw from the NPT, Russia would be required to remove the nuclear reactor and other equipment sold to Iran prior to the declaration of violation or the country's withdrawal from the treaty. The same would be required of other countries whose businesses sold single or dual use equipment employed by Iran in any of its nuclear activities--even those arguably permitted by the NPT.

That will happen on the same day the Geek looks out and sees a whale majestically flying with the hawks over the canyon outside his windows. Can we say, "Naive?"

In principle the draft resolution is fine. It looks good on paper. It reads better than most UNSC gibberish. But...

It is as Bismarck famously quipped, "a piece of paper." A treaty to be observed as long as necessary and ignored whenever convenient--provided ignoring can be done without undue penalty.

Iran has shown a fine ability to ignore assorted Security Council and other pieces of paper without inordinate consequences. It will be able to do so as long as enforcement of agreements relies upon the collective action of nations each of which follows the dictates of its own self-defined national and strategic interests.

If Iran is run by a government which is rational no matter how radical its rhetoric and some of its actions might be, there is no great additional danger presented to either the region or the world by its joining the Nuclear Club. Pakistan has done so without any great perturbation of either regional or global political order.

Sure, the existence of weapons grade fissile materials in Pakistan gives rise to legitimate anxiety regarding its security from the grasping fingers of Islamist jihadist groups. The same would be true in the case of Iran. However, that threat is far more manageable than would be the aftermath of attacks on the Iranian nuclear complex and related targets.

In any event the draft resolution which President Obama will present is no particular threat--as long as no one actually believes it will have any real world impact. The problem comes in that diplomats tend to think that what they do in the shuffling, presenting, and voting on pieces of paper has a real world effect. They are so invested in the process of diplomacy, of achieving some sort of result on paper, that they overlook the actual outcome of the process and its effects on the behavior of states in the real world of power politics.

The otherworldliness of diplomats has its place. As long as your life does not depend on it.

Comes now the subject of ideological blindness. The cause of ideological astigmatism this time is the Obama administration's cancelling of the land-based ABM system in Central Europe. There has been an outpouring of opposition to this. Most of it is misplaced in its basis.

While the cancellation may be questioned as to its diplomatic import on US relations with the countries on Russia's western frontier, it is not, in and of itself, a capitulation to Russian demands. Nor have have the Russians seen it this way as is illustrated by their modest response to it--the decision not to deploy Iskander missiles on the Polish border.

The original decision by the Bush/Cheney administration to deploy the land-based system was itself faulty on several levels. The first was the length of time necessary to reach initial operational capability (IOC). The second was simply that the system was inherently inflexible. The third was the effect it had on Russian paranoia.

The proposed replacement is technologically superior, takes less time to reach IOC, and has built in flexibility. Being sea-based it takes advantage of American superiority in maritime technology and the inherent flexibility that using the sea confers. Tactically, the use of sea-based systems provides a capacity for defending the defense which is absent in fixed base systems. Politically, the use of the sea avoids the unpleasant necessity to rely upon and periodically stroke the governments of host countries.

Far from weakening the American capacity to credibly defend Europe, the Mideast, and, eventually, the CONUS itself, the dropping of the Central European option in favor of a maritime one strengthens it. At the same time, going back to sea eliminates the factor of political winds from disturbing defense systems--a not inconsiderable factor given the potential for radical political change which is resident in many of the Central European states.

Paradoxically, considering the charges of abject surrender to the Russians, the beefing up of naval ABM capacities has the extra effect of providing additional defensive capabilities against a Russian short- or mid-range missile attack on either Europe or the Mideast. As the maritime systems evolve in the next few years, it may even provide an additional complication for any Russian planner contemplating an attack on the US.

Reflexive accusations of "surrender," of "weakening" the US come easy to those who automatically oppose any initiative offered by the Obama administration. Considering all of the really, really bad ideas which have issued from the current administration in the foreign policy realm, it is easy to see how attractive automatic opposition may be. In this case it is not--except as regards the impact on the diplomatic center of gravity as seen from Central Europe.

There have been many other examples of hypocrisy, mendacity, naivety, and ideological blindness this past week or so. The above have been only the cream of the slime on the top of the pond.

More than that the Geek could not take. He is a sensitive soul.

Mr Obama--It May Not Be A Cold War, But--

The reality of US-Russian relations in recent years has been one of at least a "Chilly War." Much of the responsibility may be given to the Bush/Cheney administration with its alternating stances of hectoring and ignoring the Kremlin. But, even more belongs to the Russians, particularly Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir The Bare Chested has repeatedly played the nationalist card with both supreme skill and a very heavy hand. It was the nationalist card which brought him to prominence and has kept him there as the latest incarnation of the "Good Czar." Mr Putin well understands the fundamental nature of the Russian collective mind. Its feelings of chronic inferiority vis a vis the West. Its need to believe that Russia is great, powerful, and respected.

Putin knows the heart, mind, and soul of Russia as can be seen by the carefully staged and posed political photos taken a couple of months ago. His skill as a Russian politician can also be seen concretely in the strongly nationalistic posture taken over the past several years with respect to what the Russians have consistently referred to as the "near abroad."

It was this focus on Russia's privileges and special interests in the "near abroad" which resulted in the ongoing contretemps concerning the missile defense system proposed by the US for installation in Poland and the Czech Republic. While the Russians continually maintained that the limited ABM system constituted a clear threat to its security by eroding its strategic missile capacity and thus its deterrent effect, no one really, really believed this either in the Kremlin or in Washington. The ABM system was credibly directed against Iran, and the Kremlin darn well knew that.

To Putin and Company the value--and the threat--of the proposed system was its status as an emblem of US involvement in and protection of elements of the "near abroad." The implementation of the system meant to the Russians that their special position in relation to both the countries of the former Warsaw Pact and the new nations carved out of the carcass of the old Soviet Union such as the Ukraine and Georgia was being eroded, perhaps fatally.

The decision by the Obama administration to replace the land based missiles and fire control radars with ship borne and mobile systems may well be fully justifiable on sound technological grounds. The replacement of the Bush era concept by the new one may be the better military choice at least in the near- to mid-term. Certainly SecDef Gates, who is not noted for his capacity to play the role of political tool, thinks so.

Outside of purely military and technological considerations, it may be argued that the Obama administration's decision is not the best. It may, for example, be asserted that the seeming genuflection to the desires and fears of the Kremlin will result in the Russians becoming even more assertive regarding their presumed "rights" in the "near abroad." The apparent capitulation by the Obama administration may serve to erode the pro-Western orientation of the shaky governments of the Ukraine and Georgia. It might undercut the confidence in the US and the EU in the Baltic States, which are inconveniently close to the ambitious Bear.

On the other hand it might be asserted, as it has been by Obama supporters such as Nancy Pelosi, that this gesture will result in greater Russian cooperation as regards Iran. This is a comforting notion with a reality akin to whistling in the graveyard at midnight on Halloween.

Today, in the immediate wake of the Obama administration's abandonment of the ABM system, the Russian ForMin reversed the hint given yesterday by President Medvedev. The Foreign Minister stated categorically that any new, tougher sanctions would prevent a solution to the Iranian question evolving through diplomatic engagement. Once again the Russian leadership is giving the impression of a right and left hand disconnect. The dichotomous statements of president and foreign minister also implies a Putin-Medvedev split, the seriousness of which cannot be judged but might well be growing given Vladimir's hints at running for president again in 2012.

Russia wants and needs to be treated as a Great Power. From the perspective of the Kremlin--and most Russians on the street--their country has the prerequisites of Great Power status including rich reserves of oil, an army in the first steps of long overdue modernization, and, of course, a nuclear capacity of sizable nature. To a Great Power of a continental nature as Russia always has been, and particularly a continental power without natural borders, the control of adjacent territory as a glacis against invasion has always been paramount.

Russia's history demands a glacis. It is a continental power. It does not have natural feature defined borders. It has a long record of having been invaded. From the Russian perspective, these realities coupled with its Great Power status give full justification for its demands of special "rights" in the "near abroad."

The US is and always has been a maritime power. Our experience has been one of force projection by sea. Our borders have, in the main, been secured by the combination of sea and fleet. Thus we are rather bemused, uncomprehending even, when faced by the Russian demands and the fears behind them. It is a difference in historical experience which assures that now in the "Chilly War" as back in the Cold War the two governments have talked past each other most of the time.

What makes the effect of the Obama administration policy change on the Central European based ABM system on Russia difficult to assess at the moment is the instability within Russia itself. Russia's leadership is caught in a very real conundrum.

On the one hand it is very, very hard to represent Russia as a genuine Great Power when it is faced with a festering and rapidly recrudescent insurgency in the North Caucasus. On the other hand it is the existence of the insurgency and the Kremlin's fumbling attempts to counter it which demand an assertion of external power for purposes of regime maintenance.

The North Caucasus insurgency makes the Russian Bear both more temperamental and touchy in its external assertions. When coupled with the ongoing and severe economic conditions in Russia, which have been exacerbated by the fall in global oil consumption and thus prices, the temptation to the men in the Kremlin to become more extreme in their foreign affairs will be very hard to resist.

Given the way in which past American administrations have been unable to properly couple the internal and external affairs of the Russian government, it seems likely that the Obama administration's recent decision has likewise been blind to the dilemma facing Russia. To the Kremlin's need to show potency in the face of the insurgency one way or another and thus meet the Russian collective need to believe in their country as a great one, a world leader, feared and respected around the world.

Every decision made in the Kremlin is powerfully conditioned by the Russian history as a continental power without clear natural borders of long existence and with a record of having been invaded repeatedly. It is also conditioned by the long standing Russian feeling of general inferiority to the West. Similarly, decisions in the Kremlin of late have been influenced to a great extent by the insurgency in the North Caucasus and the potential for the expansion of this instability to other parts of Russia--a far from homogeneous nation.

Any decision made by the US which has an effect on its relations with Russia must take these intangible but very real factors into account. If not, the effects are likely to be both negative and non-linear.

It seems that the decision to strike the Bush plan of a land-based ABM system did not consider the implications of the Russian way of thinking, of the Kremlin's unique calculus. As a result the outcome is probably going to be far less positive than President Obama, SecDef Gates, and the others might wish.

As the Chinese toast runs: "May you live in interesting times." Once more we do.

Get Real, Putin!

Vladimir Putin and the Geek share one factor. We were both alive during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which peaked a couple days shy of forty-five years ago.

Mr Putin and the Geek differ in one important factor. The Geek is a historian. Putin distorts history--even worse than does our Commander Guy.

President Putin had the sheer unmitigated gall to compare the proposed basing of US anti-missiles in Poland with supporting target acquisition radars in the Czech Republic with the Soviet action of deploying offensive medium and intermediary missiles in Cuba.

It has been a long while since a supposedly responsible world figure has reversed the reality of an historical event that much. Compared to the brazen effrontery of Putin's wretched warping of the past, the Commander Guy's misinterpretations of the Vietnam War are minor errors.

Let's go to the videotape.

Back in 1962 the Soviet Union without any prior warnings, discussion, or threats attempted the secret basing of offensive, nuclear capable missiles in Cuba along with supporting defensive systems including a reinforced brigade of combat troops. Our intelligence wallahs caught them at it.

The crisis grew rapidly. The US went public early on with overhead imagery displayed at the UN. The Soviets blustered, noting that the US had based intermediate range missiles in Turkey right on the Soviet border.

As matters escalated, the Kennedy Administration finally fixed on a naval blockade (euphemistically called a "quarantine") around Cuba. As the first missile laden Soviet freighters approached the blockade, breaths were held on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Not to overstate the case, the world came within a hairbreadth of nuclear war. Never before and never since the last week of October 1962 has the unthinkable come so close to happening.

The crisis resolved quickly. The Soviets backed down. The missiles went back home. The US promised not to invade Cuba and went ahead with the already programmed removal of the Jupiter C missiles from Turkey and elsewhere in Europe. The Kremlin quietly kept its combat brigade in Cuba (where it was suddenly "rediscovered" in a blare of hype during the Reagan Administration.)

OK, keep that synopsis in mind as we look at the US ABM initiative in Central Europe.

Quite awhile back, the current administration announced its plan to base a small (ten fire units) anti-ballistic missile force in Poland with supporting radar in the Czech Republic. The purpose of the new installations was to defend Europe against any intermediate range missile threat coming from Northwest Asia, which meant Iran.

The announcement as well as the lengthy negotiations with Poland, the Czech Republic, and Russia have been in the open and very well publicised. The Russian love affair with the word nyet has been demonstrated all along.

The US has made numerous attempts to assuage Russian anxieties about the installation. In recent weeks the Americans have even taken the necessary step of treating Russia like the Great Power it believes it is regarding the proposed ABM basing. Most recently SecDef Gates has stated that the facilities will not be "activated" until the Iranians demonstrate a credible threat.

A uniformed stooge in the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces blew that offer off.

SecDef Gates has also suggested that, subject to Czech approval, Russian experts can be stationed at the radar site to assure that it is not directed against any Russian trajectories of attack. That was dubbed "interesting" by the Kremlin.

So, you tell the Geek something.

Where is the historical analogy Putin thinks exists between the now in Central Europe and the then in the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Or, is the Russian President pursuing some other objective?

That's quite likely. The Russians are unhappy with the Cold War vintage Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty. Only the US and Russia (and other successor states of the Soviet Union) are bound by it. Other countries, some of which might present a credible threat at some future date including Israel, India, Iran, Pakistan, Peoples Republic of China, Japan, South Korea are not.

Here's a question for you, Mr Putin.

If that is the real motive behind your preposterous line, why not just put it forward? Why not take the lead in demanding a multi-party negotiation on the subject including not just the US and European countries but all others within 1500 nautical miles range of Russian borders?

Or, Vladimir, were you taking lessons from Tehran's Orator-in-Chief during your recent trip there?