He's Back And He's BAAAD!

Vladimir Putin, every Russian's "Good Czar" was at his self-promoting, uber-nationalist best speaking to the Duma yesterday.  The assembled parliamentarians--most of whom are card carrying members of Putin's United Russia Party--interrupted the Czar's speech with applause a number of times.  It was almost like the good old days when the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union spoke to his adoring sycophants.

The Putin speech gave one the impression that it is a tryout for next year's presidential campaign.  If so one wants to know one fact above all else:  Have Vladimir and his one time protegee, Dimitri Medvedev, reached an agreement on executing another swap of offices or will Vlad of the Bare Chest be squaring off against Dimitri the Techno-Nerd?

In either event the smart money will be on Putin.  Many of the reasons for this contention are to be found in the substance and tone of yesterday's speech.  At the very core of Putin's remarks as of his worldview is nationalism, pure and quite unapologetic nationalism.

This puts Czar Vladimir at a sharp contrast with Dimitri the Sophisticated.  Medvedev is quite cosmopolitan in comparison with Putin.  He is familiar with the West and is happy with his familiarity.  Dimitri sees much in Western economics, technology, society, and politics worthy of translation into Russian.  He does not see the West, either the EU or the US, as a threat--now or into the far future.  If Russia faces a threat in Medvendev's view, it comes from within, from corruption, from inefficiency, from outdated technology, from lack of venture capital, from disease, from alcohol, from despair.

Putin incarnates all the ancient and defining characteristics of Russian nationalism, the free floating fear of outside threats, the sense of inferiority in comparison with the West, the belief that either a state must expand or it will collapse, the sullen withdrawal into plotting a future caper when challenged or defeated in a current ploy.  Like the Russian people generally over the long sweep of the centuries, Putin can swing almost instantly between grandiose euphoria of triumphs in the making to profound, Arctic nights of bleak and cold feelings of failure.  As has been the case so often with so many of his predecessors--both czars and commissars--Vladimir is eager to be suspicious, alert to the faintest hint of potential threat, trembling on the ragged edge of paranoia, and quite sure that no matter how well affairs are going at the moment, the knife in the back and the kick in the groin are soon to happen.

Putin's speech reflected all of these characteristics.  It was ripe, over ripe, with hosannas onto Vladimir the Brilliant, Vladimir the Resolute, Vladimir the Unbelievably Successful.  It was also stuffed with dire warnings of unspecified foreign threats looming over Russia's present and future.  Putin demanded that Russia be stronger, much stronger, in order to counter these threats.  He declaimed more than once that not only did Russia need more, newer, and better weapons of all categories, it needed more births, more children, more sturdy Russian citizens to carry the burden of defending against the array of unspecified but potentially lethal threats confronting nation and state.

Putin took credit and warned of the need to do more, much more, to improve the economy.  Because Putin was so prescient as to have practiced a form of economic autarchy, Russia had come out of the global recession faster and in better shape than all other states.  He warned that only by following the Putin Paradigm and avoiding "sharp moves and ill-conceived experiments" could Russian prosperity be continued and expanded.  This was a less than well-concealed blow directed against Dimitri who is open to both "moves" and "experiments" imported from the Big Boys of the G-whatever.  Even more pointed was his follow-on comment, "those who are weak will get advice from foreign visitors on which way to go and what policy course to pursue."

Ouch!

However, the observation might have been directed as well at the US which has a sorry record extending from Bill Clinton through George W. Bush to Joe Biden of offering gratuitous and semi-insulting advice to various Russian leaders, including both Putin and Medvedev.  The lesson for future American politicians is simple: Never stoke a Russian's inherent bent toward holding on to his inferiority complex.

The Russian prime minister, the once and (perhaps) future president, rejected any notion that Russia might be swept by a people power movement such as those which have so visibly perturbed the Arab states.  Putin assured any nervous auditors that as long as his firm and steady hand is on the helm and as long as his wise and farsighted mind is on the job, the policies of his government will keep the Russian people happy and fully in support of the government.

In line with his keep-the-peasants-happy philosophy of governance, Vladimir the Most Generous and Compassionate took pride in his past and projected increases in state pensions, welfare programs, and the birth incentive scheme.  In addition, the workers and peasants could take joy in the proposed weapons acquisition program, the best part of a trillion dollars over the next five or so years.  The same constituency would receive benefits beyond counting from the Putin Economic Diversification Plan which would reduce Russia's dependency on resource exploitation.  (This served to steal some of Medvedev's thunder as he has been plumping this approach for years now.)

While Good Czar Vladimir did not name any specific "foreign threat," the repeated references to such plays well to the natural and historically deeply rooted Russian fear of invasion.  There are several candidates for the title of "main enemy."

One, of course, is the old standby, the US.  The technological asymmetries between the US and Russian military forces do not operate to Russia's advantage.  The aging and decrepit nature of so much of the old Soviet military machine particularly in the strategic and force projection categories must be worrisome to a crew given to paranoia.  The difficulties experienced to date in bringing a new ICBM online have done nothing to reduce the apprehensions of American superiority rampant in the highest levels of Russian political and military life.  While the Boys in the Kremlin know perfectly well they have nothing to fear from the current American administration, they cannot be sure that We the People will not toss another George W. Bush, or, worse, Ronald Reagan, into the Oval.

A credible alternative is China.  Putin along with the entire military high command is very well aware that the vast majority of China's nuclear delivery systems have Russian zip codes in their reentry vehicles.  They also fret over the basing of the large and increasingly competent Peoples Liberation Army.  It is clear from the locations of the bases that China is not poised to go to war with Vietnam--or India.  So, much as the US is getting Xanax moments from China's adventures in naval construction, the Russians are having an even larger need for Valium from the positioning of the ground combat forces.

There is a prevalent, vague anxiety over the intents of NATO and the EU with respect to the "near abroad," those constituents of the former Soviet Union which have gone their own independent ways since the early Nineties.  The Kremlin will not be ready to sleep with any degree of soundness unless and until it has reestablished operational dominance over places such as Georgia and the Ukraine.  Strategists in Putin's service undoubtedly see these former glacis states as potential points of conflict between Russia and an expansionist oriented NATO/EU combine.  (Hey! Paranoia does not require realism simply rationality.)

Then there are the Muslims.  The ongoing operations against purveyors of violent political Islam in the North Caucasus represent but one part of the emerging challenge presented by militant Islam.  The difficulties currently experienced by several of the now independent Central Asian Republics have already spilled over into Russia and show strong signs of doing more of the same in the near future.  Coupled with ideological appeal and backed by Iran, the advocates of violent political Islam are poised to be a "foreign threat" without equal.  They are a "main enemy" in the process of being created.

Vladimir Putin is a vastly skilled and able Russian politician.  He understands nationalism of the Russian sort and uses it to advance his claim on the throne.  As a Russian nationalist he is guided in foreign affairs by one guiding principle--the national interests of Russia.  Given the high probability of his being elected president once again next year, there is a strong likelihood the US will be dealing with him for some years to come.  In a way he is the best possible interlocutor for the US to have in the Kremlin.  He is a prime example of what you see is what you get.  This means he will continue to be a very difficult person with whom to make a diplomatic deal, but his motives and goals will never be obscure or hazy--and once he has made a deal he will stick with it, provided such is in Russia's national interest.

The Deep Thinkers of the Obama administration would be well advised to parse Putin's speech very closely and carefully.  To do so is to understand the man and his policy context.  To blow off his speech as mere politics, or to deprecate Putin as an imitation Western politician is to do him and us a great disservice.  Vladimir is not just another politician or one more Russian dictator.  No, he is the Good Czar, and a Good Czar with a totally Russian soul.

Hey! Vladimir! Better Call Off The Ski Resorts

Irony without equal exists in the world news section of the London Daily Telegraph today.  The lead article is, of course, the suicide bombing at the main Moscow airport.  But, sharing the page is a story from the other day which relates of the plans announced by Vladimir Putin and Dimitri Medvedev for a series of five star ski resorts to be built on the hillsides of the North Caucasus.

The irony resides in the fact that the bombing comes courtesy of the the jihadists of the North Caucasus--the insurgency which has spread from Chechnya to the other segments of the North Caucasus in large measure because the Russian efforts at counterinsurgency have been sufficiently robust to inflame but not to suppress.  The Kremlin may have taken false comfort in the slow motion pace of insurgent activities in the North Caucasus while failing to recall that the the jihadists of the North Caucasus have preferred mediagenic attacks far from home, usually in Moscow.

The suicide bombing meets the test of being a politically shocking media spectacular.  It will grab the full and undivided attention of both Putin and Medvedev.  For Putin in particular the bombing has a very real urgency given that he most probably will seek to return to the presidential post in elections next year.

Putin, it should be remembered, won his political bones in 1999 with his successful ending of the Chenchen war.  Each and every outrage since then has reminded the Russian people and particularly the elites that the insurgency continues.  Each and every outrage is a challenge to Putin's reputation and a threat to his future.

The attack on the international arrivals area of Domodedovo airport has thrown down the gauntlet at a time and in a place which will no doubt convince many in the political elite that Putin has lost his magic, that only a well polished surface remains of a man once thought to be tough and innovative enough to provide a secure and prosperous future for the rebuilding Russia.  Medvedev may be the man issuing enhanced security orders today, but no one in the Russian "know" believes that anyone other than Putin is actually responsible for the situation in the North Caucasus.

If Putin is really serious about returning to the president's office--or even remaining as prime minister--he will have to take a much more hands-on approach to the challenge represented by the advocates of violent political Islam in Chechnya and elsewhere in the North Caucasus.  Gone are the easy going days of appointing a local strongman as capo, or delegating some former KGB general to "clarify the situation and put it to order."  Putin may have to go personally to direct a massive operation aimed not so much at counterinsurgency as at (using the old Russian/Soviet practice) creating a desert and calling it peace.

Next year, 2012, is election time in Russia, and then two years later it is the time of the Winter Olympic Games scheduled to be hosted by Russia in a venue uncomfortably proximate to the heartland of violent political Islam.  This means that for the Kremlin, time is of the essence as attorneys like to put it.  Putin's less than competent, not to say, half-baked, notions of counterinsurgency have frittered away the past several years without either suppressing the leadership or demobilizing support within the population for the goals, if not the total agenda, of the pro-violent political Islam cadre.

From the shortness of time and the probable ill effects upon the elites' perception of Putin's competence, it is not risky to infer that Vladimir of the Bare Chest has few options other than a massive military campaign aimed at the rapid destruction of the jihadists capacity to stage attacks on any but the smallest of small scales. Approaches of greater finesse simply take too much time.

Of course, the use of large military formations, even battalion sized units of special duty troops, carries with it some very real risks.  One risk, of course, is failure.  The local terrain both physical and human favors the insurgents.  The Russian army, even its special duty units, have not demonstrated a high degree of capability so far either in the North Caucasus or Tajikistan.  During the earlier Chechen wars, the Russian military showed the same deficiencies as it had in Afghanistan, including a willingness to kill far more people than genuinely needed to be killed.

Another, larger risk, is that military operations carry with them the strong potential of a negative portrayal in the media of the world.  Media and human rights organizations which feed the media have exhibited both a strong aversion to the reality that people are killed and things broken during wars, including counterinsurgcies. The same crew have demonstrated repeatedly that they have a very tender concern for the fate not only of non-combatants caught in the theater of operations but also insurgents.  Time after time, both media and human rights groups have declared in effect that insurgents are all pure and good but the status quo forces are all evil and malignant.

Russia and Putin need a bad international press like they need another insurgency.  The costs which may be imposed by the US, the EU, and other "concerned" parties may be high.  If that proves to be the case there is a strong probability that the Russian leadership will respond by invoking some of the bad behavior internationally which was once the patented product of the Soviet Union.  This sort of reaction would complicate the diplomatic life of the US and others.

Even with these risks, doing nothing, or nothing more than more of the same, constitutes a greater risk for Mr Putin.  Both he and Mr Medvedev have termed the ongoing insurgency in the North Caucasus the single greatest security threat facing Russia.  The blast at the airport may convince both, or at least Vladimir (the Strong Horse) Putin that the time has come to treat the insurgents appropriately.

If that proves to be the case, it will take more than Allah's will to save the insurgents.

Vladimir Takes On Another Job

Vladimir Putin, who rose to prominence and power as a result of his bare chested, not to say bare knuckled, approach to peace imposition during the Second Chechen War, has appointed himself jefe grande of the Russian government's special commission on the economic and social development of the North Caucasus Region--which includes in its remit Chechnya as well as the several other provinces currently experiencing insurgency with combined nationalist and political Islamist goals.  Putin's announcement on 1 December indicates that he is now personally going to undertake the mission of "clarifying and putting to order the situation in the North Caucasus" which he previously assigned to others.

The assorted former KGB personnel Putin tabbed for the duty have not demonstrated any convincing degree of success.  The lack of their ability to "clarify and put to order" is shown in the recent statement by the Russian Deputy Prosecutor-General, Ivan Sydoruk, that insurgent violence has doubled this year over last in the North Caucasus Federal District.  On the same day (8 December), President Dimitry Medvedev echoed the theme, improving on it by averring that any local officials who said the situation had improved were lying.

While any downtown street in Juarez is much more deadly than the totality of the North Caucasus, the Russian authorities have allowed that some two hundred local cops and Federal Security Bureau personnel have been killed by insurgents this year.  Another five hundred or so have been wounded.

Not that the violence has run one way.  The Deputy Prosecutor-General stated that more than three hundred insurgents have been "neutralized," which number included sixteen "leaders" officially pronounced as "killed."  By official figures, an impressive number of weapons and explosive materials fell into government hands this year so far.

The fighting has not diminished since the words outpouring from Official Russia twelve days ago.  Even though the weather conditions have been somewhere between foul and rotten, the insurgents have gone along planting IED's and conducting ambushes and hit-and-run raids on police facilities.  The FSB and interior ministry forces have not taken the time off having conducted a number of nocturnal raids on the homes of suspected "militants."

And, so the war lurches along.  Neither side seems capable of hitting a knock out blow.  Given the size of the several distinct districts comprising the North Caucasus, there seems little probability that the Russian government can do so--unless it is willing to undertake a massive escalation and accept the consequences both domestic and international of doing so.  Given the internal divisions which characterize the several separate insurgent groups, the probability of these developing sufficient organizational coherence to go beyond the very low level of combat and terror operations seen the past two years can be assessed as low to non-existent.

Even though the war is as low level in its intensity as can be imagined, the continuation of the several insurgencies in the North Caucasus does represent a real threat to the political and social cohesion of Russia.  The insurgencies directly attack a systemic weak point of the Russian polity and society.

That weak point is nationalism.  Today no less than during the long years of the Communist regime and before it that of the Czars, Russia is bedeviled by what Lenin termed "the Nationalities Question."  In truth, Russia has never even made a pretense of being a "melting pot."  It has been and remains a stew of different nationalities, different ethnic groups, different languages, different confessions of faith.

In this stewpot the Slavs have dominated.  Have ruled.  Have conquered.  And reconquered.  But the Slavs have never hit on a way of creating a Russian society and polity in which national identities merge into a single, greater whole.  The results of conquest have never been consolidated, never assimilated, never unified.

The power of nationalism--both Russian, which is to say, Slav, and non-Russian, which is to say everyone else--was brought into high relief earlier this month in the "football" riots in Moscow.  These outbreaks had much less to do with soccer hooligans than with offended nationalism.  As Medvedev and Putin both made clear in their post-riot press encounters, the government fears these were the harbingers of more and worse to come. As is expectable in Russia, the immediate, default, response was a demand for more robust police action.

The Soviet Union was able to keep the nationalities question from being raised violently by constant, effective repression.  Subsequently, the Russian government has been unwilling or unable to do the same.  So far.  And, by now, the resort to Soviet style methods might be both too late and unacceptable in the no longer bi-polar world.

By taking over the de facto top slot in the North Caucasus affair, Putin apparently is acknowledging that the Soviet methods cannot or should not be used.  Rather, by focusing on economic matters, he is going to attempt to bribe his way to success.  It will be interesting to see if money can succeed where force has not as this approach to counterinsurgency has never been made in a systematic and long-term way.

One rather suspects it will fail.  Nationalism is too potent a force in the lives of people to be countered by mere money.  Worse, when the nationalism has inflamed not only minorities but the dominant Slavs, the use of bribery in the North Caucasus region is likely to outrage those who are not in on the cash cow's flow.  This means the Slavs.

So far, the appeal of outsiders who are proponents of violent political Islam have not had a major influence on the course of the nationalists in the North Caucasus.  This does not mean the situation will continue.  An increasing number of foreign fighters has been reported in the region.  Even though these seem to be trigger pullers and not leadership cadre, the increased pressure on jihadi in Afghanistan, the FATA, and the Central Asian Republics, particularly Tajikistan, hints at a greater influx of more determined global insurgents over the next few months and years.

Putin has undertaken a Labor of Hercules with his self-assigned new post.  He must funnel money in a way which undercuts the nationalists while not infuriating his Slavic Russian base.  At the same time his security forces must keep effective pressure on the insurgent hard core so as to gain the initiative and erode insurgent political will and combat efficiency.  While that is in progress, Putin's government and military must interdict the movement of outsiders into the North Caucasus theater of operations.

As if that is not enough to overload the Putin plate, he must nip incipient insurgent movements within other minorities who resent on an increasing basis the privileges presumably enjoyed by the Slavs.  Then, he has to deal with the increasing ethnic and regional divisions which exist in the Russian armed forces fueled by the regionally based system of conscription.

Well, Vlad of the Bare Chest reportedly enjoyed being characterized as an "Alpha male" in one of the WikiLeaks leaked dispatches.  The challenges he faces in the North Caucasus are such that only the most alpha of alpha males would think of tackling them.

It couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.

Resetting The "Reset" Button?

Life is getting tougher for the Guy In The Oval in the old foreign relations corral.  You know matters are heading down the tubes when Afghan president Hamid Karzai demands--in the WaPo no less--that the US, in a term beloved by noted pundit Sarah Palin, "cease and desist" in executing the highly successful nighttime raids on suspected Taliban and Haqqani sites.

Admittedly this latest twist in the Saga of Hamid puts one in a position of accepting the diagnosis of manic-depressive psychosis once offered by Ambassador Eikenberry.  In the real world the probability of the hours of darkness operations taken always in conjunction with Afghan National Force members being halted is somewhat less than Ron Paul voting to expand the powers of the Federal Reserve System.  Hitting the heavyweights, the hard core of an insurgent group with a rapid tempo is a highly effective means of degrading both the combat efficiency and political will of the target groups.

The fact that some Afghans are bothered by the notion of women and children being rousted by Americans whose combat kit makes them look about as sympathetically human as the Imperial Stormtroops of Star Wars fame is a case of TS.  A few hurt Islamic sensibilities is a small cost to pay for the prospect of genuine lowering of the violence, the blood and death which falls disproportionately on the same civilian population.  Even Karzai must be aware of this governing reality and its necessary corollary: You can't be president of anything if the purveyors of violent political Islam take over or even remain as a viable, nascent threat to the Kabul regime.

The takeaway from the latest gust from the mouth of Hamid is simple:  This too will pass.  Swiftly.

The same realistic optimism cannot be applied to the growing frictions between the Obama administration and the Dynamic Duo in the Kremlin.  The festering issue of American ratification of the pending new START is developing with the rapidity of a case of gas gangrene.

Senator Jon Kyl, (R) Arizona, who is the point man for the GOP on the START ratification, has cut Mr Obama off at the knees.  Obama was so ill-advised (or so unrealistically certain of his own political juice) that he assured Russian president Medvedev that the treaty would be brought to a successful conclusion during the lame duck session.  Kyl has demurred.  This means the treaty in all its contentious whole will linger on until the next Congress with the increased Republican presence in the Senate.

The administration has attempted to sweeten the deal--or, more accurately--has genuflected to Republican fears that the new version of START will limit the capacity of the US to upgrade and modernize its rather elderly nuclear arsenal.  The difficulty comes in that the money pledges are scheduled over a ten year period with no enforceable means of assuring that future administrations and congresses will honor the promises.  Kyl and other Republicans want more money upfront so that work can be started and a dynamic created to make future funding more probable.  On this the current administration has dragged its collective feet.

Overall, the new START is a decent treaty.  It does, as usually has been the case in this sort of matter, give advantages to the Russians.  However none of these seriously alter the balance of terror which has worked so well so long to keep the peace between Russia and the US.  Ratification would provide a reasonably firm basis for other agreements on "tactical" nuclear systems, for example, or a new and more comprehensive test ban understanding.  It might even serve to increase mutual confidence such as to allow the Kremlin to work with the US in the anti-ballistic missile arena.  A creative and mutual understanding in this area would serve both countries' interests in a measurable way.

When the proposed treaty is finally brought to the Senate, the debate may be quite contentious.  There are more than a few Republicans there who are unreconstructed Cold Warriors who seem to believe that the collapse of the Soviet Union was some sort of shrewd commie plot.  There is a bit of truth here, but not in the way presumed.

Vladimir Putin shows both his age and background in his fundamental distrust of the US.  The current prime minister and past (as well as possible future) Russian president is rather much of the Cold Warrior himself albeit in more nationalistic ways than his predecessors of the pre-1991 sort.  That is why he has so obviously left the America brief in the hands of Medvedev.  Putin anticipates failure and is not going to have the tar of catastrophe sticking to his hands.  The Bare Chested Man On Horseback sees the US as the Main Enemy to this day and his attitude is not going to change for the better.

This is another good reason to ratify START.  A quick and relatively low contention ratification process will weaken Putin's hold on the internal levers of power in the Kremlin coterie.  The relative reduction of the power of Putin's anti-American view will enhance the possibilities of enhanced cooperation in the myriad of matters of coinciding national interest which rest on the table currently.

Putin's suspicions about and distrust of the US received a shot of steroids with the sudden, unannounced rendition of Viktor Bout by the government of Thailand.  Bout, a long time international dealer in weapons whose favored customers were rogue states and insurgent or terrorist groups, was indicted for violation of US law following a Drug Enforcement Administration sting operation.  Arrested in Thailand the legal wrangle was finally settled in favor of the American demand that the man be extradited for trial in the US.

When the rendition went down the Russians screamed bloody murder.  It was an unusual event.  Even the Russian foreign minister got into the act.  Rarely, if ever, has an international criminal received such massive and vocal support from the government of a major state.

To the Russians--who had used any amount of pressure and inducement to free Bout from the clutches of the Thais--the extradition as well as the process leading to it were redolent of American arrogance, of the sort of unilateralism regularly decried by Vladimir Putin back in the days of George W.  His foreign ministry and other organs of official opinion singled out the unwillingness of the American side to put its case on the table for mutual examination and joint determination.  This perspective is not uniquely Russian but the passion with which it is stated is as Russian as Ivan the Terrible.

There is, of course, more than insulted Russian national ego involved in the Bout Affair.  Faced with a horrific number of years as a guest of the Bureau of Prisons, there is a chance that Viktor will have an attack of the Talking Disease.  Certainly there are a lot of questions the US would like to place before the one time Russian air force interpreter.  We would like to know just how he got his hands on the more major weapons he peddled.  And, it would be interesting to determine who authorized the use of Russian Air Force transports to carry his "private enterprise" cargo.  The list goes on at some length but you get the point, eh, bucko?

Bout knows where the bodies are buried.  He knows just how ranking the buried bodies are.  He has a set of very good reasons to dime out anybody and everybody.  This gives Viktor a great capacity to produce fear in major sections of the Russian elite both in and out of the government and military services.

Coming hard on the heels of the revelations regarding the defection of a very high ranking spook in the successor agency of Vladimir's alma mater KGB, the prospects of the damage which a fast talking Bout might do is and will cause sleepness nights in the Kremlin and its ancillaries.  Both the Bout Affair and its spook community predecessor have heightened the Putin fear and loathing of the US.  Any delay or modification of the proposed START ratification process will do the same only more so.

President Obama will be meeting the "good cop" of the Dynamic Duo in the context of the upcoming NATO conference at which the top topics will be Afghanistan and the (not officially of course due to Turkish sensibilities) anti-Iran missile defense system.  Both subjects would be benefited greatly by Russian cooperation.  At this juncture, due to the ability of Mr Obama to promise what he cannot deliver and the bonfire of the Bout Affair, this cooperation is less rather than more likely.

In terms of US national interest Medvedev is greatly to be preferred as an interlocutor over his higher profile and nominally junior prime minister, Putin.  It is important, therefore, that both Mr Obama and the Republicans understand this as well as the ground truth that Russia is not going to go away.  It is not and never has been--pace the unfortunate and misguided remarks and policies of George W. Bush and, later, Joe Biden--one with Nineveh and Tyre.

The Russians and the Russian leadership are both insecure and possessed of a prickly sense of national pride. In all diplomatic doings including presidential promises this foundation reality must be kept in mind.  Russia is, at least in the minds of Russians high and low, a Great Power, and it is an absolute imperative that the US treat it as such in all matters, great and small.  Only by doing so with the utmost of sedulousness can the US hope to accomplish critical matters of central national interest.

Way To Go, Center!

Looks like the Kremlin forgot to push its "reset" button. Not that Vladimir Putin or Dimitri Medvevdev can be held personally responsible. These guys have been too busy since coming to power five years ago to review the file covering espionage operations started back in the days when Bill Clinton was making amorous with White House interns.

The ten Russians arrested in the US along with an eleventh reportedly picked up in Cyprus were popped as the FBI finally wrapped up an investigation which started even as the Republicans in the House of Representatives were protecting American morality by impeaching the president. The timing of the Feebs' move is open to question.

Not even the most pessimistic assessment of the long and winding road of Russian plotting gives any hint that the Moscow Moles were anywhere near any key to any executive lavatory. The snippets of documents filed by the Department of Justice (at least as quoted in the several media accounts) make for fun reading by devotees of the spy versus spy genre but show no real evidence of any honest-to-gosh, bottled in bond, US government secrets.

On the US side the nearly twenty year caper complete with codes and cyphers, false identities, dead drops and brush passes to say nothing of wiretaps, surveillance teams, black bag jobs, and all the other features of a trade craft based spy yarn is portrayed as a major success against a crafty, dedicated, and omnipresent adversary. A reminder, according to at least one old time Soviet secret agent, of the worse days of Cold War excess.

The Russian response has been restrained--at least by Kremlin standards of the past. The Lads in the (New) Kremlin allow as how the people arrested may have been Russian nationals but will not go so far as to concede that their purposes in traveling under false names may have been nefarious in the slightest. Vladimir (The Good Czar) Putin did go a bit ballistic, averring that the "US police had gone out of control" in comments to visiting Bill Clinton.

Vlad Of The Bare Chest did seem more concerned over the timing of the Department of Justice action and its possible aftershocks than he did the slight problem of Russians being caught in rather flagrant disregard of normal protocol. At first the Russian Foreign Ministry took much the same line, noting that the episode should be viewed in the context of the improving relations between Russia and the US.

However, the Foreign Ministry did harden its position a few hours later. The new, improved narrative took the view that the arrests must be seen as an attempt by unnamed but certainly sinister forces to erode the new harmony between the Men in the Kremlin and the Guy in the Oval. There were dark ruminations about similar incidents in the past which always, in the Foreign Ministry's eyes, took place during times of improving relations. The parallel was obvious; by the timing of the arrests and the relative lack of harm done the US, someone in the US government was doing his evil best to toss a spanner in the works.

The timing was a bit odd, considering that only a few days earlier, President Obama had been making ever-so-nice with Dimitri Medvedev. Both men had toasted the successful pushing of assorted "reset" buttons. The Nice Young Man Of The People From Chicago took his counterpart out to a nearby and apparently renowned throughout the world hamburger joint for a quick bite of an appropriately populist food. Smiles all around.

The Russians have been playing the espionage game against the US without pause during and after the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Despite changes in name, alterations in the form of government, reduction in geographic extent, erosion of military, economic, and diplomatic power, the game went on. Changes in Russia of a more positive nature since the emergence of Putin and his protegee, Medvedev, would or have served to change the nature and character of the game.

The Russians have a long history of using espionage as a preferred tool of state. Quite often, regardless of the nature or the regime, czar, commissar, or president, the Russians have used espionage to their advantage. The directors of FBI, CIA, and the Office of National Intelligence have all stated on the public record that Russian espionage had continued year after year at or above the level achieved during the Cold War. No one familiar with the spy-versus-spy scene has found a need to dissent from this appreciation.

It has been fashionable for some years within the ever-so-progressive circles of the American hoi olligoi to poo-poo the assessments offered by the US intelligence community regarding the unchanging nature of the Russian love of espionage or its targeting of the US as the "main enemy" as so much Cold War alarmist rhetoric spewed in support of ever greater budgets. It never crossed the closed minds of the "progressives" that maybe, just maybe, the professionals in the wild and wacky world of espionage might possibly know what they were talking about.

The arrests and their high profile juxtaposition with the heady, dare one write, "giddy," meeting of Obama with Medvedev may serve as a healthy corrective for all those in government as well as outside that the Russians play a very hardball game in pursuing national interest. The mere fact that the Russian clandestine service was willing to invest quite a few years in establishing the bona fides of their agents, quite a few patient years of moving their pawns into potential positions of access to critical information found in venues outside of the official agencies, shows a deep commitment to the art and craft of espionage. The fact that the controllers back at Center were content to wait more years before having any real chance of a payoff underscores both the commitment to and high appreciation for the results of spying.

Regardless of what any member of the American elite might wish, Russia is not and will never be an American "friend." This is true not because the Russian government is necessarily and automatically hostile to the US. Rather it is the result of the realistic and realpolitck nature of the Russian pursuit of national interest. The Russians understand that friendship exists only between people, individuals. It does not exist, cannot exist, between states.

It was an English Foreign Secretary who once observed that states have neither lasting friends nor lasting enemies, only lasting interests. The Russians are in tandem with this concept.

Look at it this way. Just because the Russians spy on us doesn't mean they don't like us. Heck, it's only business, nothing personal.

How To Shoot Oneself In The Mouth

Noted Statesman and Progressive Political leader of the most Faithful people of Iran must be letting the pressure get to him. In an outburst which far transcended even his own well known and oft demonstrated capacity to go over the rhetorical edge, the Iranian "president," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has not only done the usual--excoriate the US and President Obama--he has done the same to Russian president Dimitri Medvedev.

Ahmadinejad is a very practiced player of brinksmanship, but he may have pushed the Russian button too hard for the good of his cause--gaining Iran nuclear weapons. The Iranian's "stern warning" that the American president was in the process of blowing his last best chance to gain Tehran's compliance with the much modified proposal to put some low enriched uranium in Turkish custody pending the delivery of twenty percent enriched fuel rods for its American supplied research and medical isotope producing reactor is more of the same old, "yadda-yadda and dabba-dabba-do," but his insulting "advice" to President Medvedev that the Russian needs to think longer and harder before joining the Western jihad against a "great nation" is a zebra of a completely different stripe.

The Russian response to Ahmadinejad's friendly counsel was not long coming. Nor was it particularly warm. Actually, "hot" would be a better characterization--as in white-hot with anger.

The Russian government is well aware that it has much more at stake in its relations with Iran than does the US. Russia has a wide variety of long-standing interests in play with Tehran, all of which are placed at real risk if Russia joins with the US, the UK, France, and Germany in rejecting the deal brokered by Turkey and Brazil last weekend.

If the Iranian government and Mr Ahmadinejad really were as slicky-boy as they believe themselves to be, they would have had some slight chance of retaining some of the valuable support long given by Moscow at the UN and elsewhere. However, the "deal" put together by the Good Friends of Tehran did not begin to address the most fundamental and most troubling threats presented by the Iranian nuclear effort.

Since October, when Tehran first seemed to accept and then reject the initial proposal crafted by the US and its associates, the centrifuges have continued to spin. As a direct consequence, the temporary removal of twelve hundred kilograms of 3.5 percent low enriched uranium would not leave the Iranians with too little of the stuff to process to higher degrees of purity. The Russians can count as well as anyone else.

Secondly, the Grand Bargain left the Iranians committed to continuing to enrich their fissionables to a level of twenty percent even with the fuel rods en route. The only reason for this twist in Iranian policy was the desire to have a breakout capacity for weapons grade uranium, as it is vastly simpler and faster to go from twenty percent to ninety plus than it is to go from zero to 3.5 or from 3.5 to twenty percent. Having made more than a tad of highly enriched uranium themselves, the Russians know how the game is played.

Finally the Great Deal did not address the new and improved--and greatly enlarged--enrichment facilities which Tehran has under construction or planned. The new capacities are far in excess of whatever legitimate need for low enriched reactor fuel might be needed in the near term, or the much longer term for that matter. This discrepancy did not pass by the Russian eyes unnoticed.

Taken together with the insulting "friendly words" from Ahmadinejad, the Russians could be expected to go fast boost exoatmospheric. And, they did. The "advice" was categorically rejected by the top foreign policy advisor at the Kremlin, Sergei Prikhodko, as "political demagoguery." He added,

Any unpredictability, any political extremism, lack of transparency or inconsistency in taking decisions that affect and concern the entire world community is unacceptable for us.

A better and more accurate description of Iranian behavior is hard to make.

A second Sergei, this time Sergei Karaganov, the head of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, which is quite influential and reflects the thinking and views of those in the Kremlin, observed that the Iranians "were digging their own grave."

Of course, actions count for much more than mere words in foreign relations--a fact of life which has not penetrated the thinking of President Obama yet. For the Russians, as for many seasoned players of the game of nations, words are the necessary precursor of action--and point in the direction the actions will most likely take.

Currently, the Russian built reactor is scheduled to go online in August. It is, of course, possible now that "technical" problems might retard the event. Or, another dispute between Tehran and Moscow over the financial end of the transaction may emerge. Or, some other unforeseen difficulty will manifest itself. You get the point--Russia has the initiative and can use it when and how doing such best serves Russian national interests.

Then there is the matter of the S-300 air defense system. The Obama administration went the extra set of miles to exempt this deal from any upcoming sanctions much to the delight of the Kremlin. Now it is quite possible that the Ahmadinejad "friendly words" will serve to cause the Russians to reconsider delivery. They have, after all, been paid for the hardware in major part. It would be a no risk, no lose means of retaliation for the insults and intended pressure.

As any number of past American presidents could have informed Ahmadinejad, nothing fails faster in desired results with the Russians than pressure openly and ineptly applied. The Kremlin will and has responded favorably to demonstrations of political will resolutely applied over time, but never to open threats--most importantly those delivered with an outrageous effrontery.

It is possible that the Ahmadinejad fusillade was intended not for the Kremlin but rather for the folks back home in Buncomb County. The spewing of threats couched as concerned warnings might have simply been meant to cover Ahmadinejad's hind end from any sniping on the part of the ultras in Tehran or Qom. Or, the Iranian semi-maximum leader might simply have been his own, old, usual out-to-lunch self.

In any event, Ahmadinejad has provided a very real service for all of those who want to see Iran never obtaining nuclear weapons. Thank Allah for such large mercies as Ahmadinejad and his ever ready mouth.

Ten Pirates In A Leaky Tub

You will recall that last week the Russians taught a bunch of skiff-riding, gun-toting unemployed Somali "fishermen" the error of their ways. Having seized the Russian owned and crewed tanker, MV Moscow University, the pirates then sought to shoot it out with Russian naval infantry undertaking a heliborne rescue and recovery mission. In the process only one Somali buccaneer died.

The Russians later sent the others packing in either (take your pick as news accounts differed after the incident) in their skiff or "an inflatable boat." An hour later the Russians acknowledge that they lost either radio or radar contact with the pirates as they set sail for home some three hundred statute miles away. Fellow Raiders of the Briney Deep safely ashore in Somalia confirm that there has been no contact with their colleagues in crime since the Russians cut them loose without navigation equipment or weapons.

Reportedly the Russians considered (at least briefly) the idea of hauling the pirates back to Moscow for trial but decided not to given the uncertainties in international law and consequent problems in obtaining a conviction. Subsequently, President Medvedev averred that unless and until an adequate international system for bringing pirates to justice, "we will have to act as our forefathers did when they met pirates."

While NPR caustically questioned the correctness of setting the poor dear fishermen from the ungoverned geographic expression of Somalia off without any navigational instruments, it does strike this observer as a useful, cost effective way of giving the Daring Desperadoes of the Deep a better chance of staying alive than either a short drop from a (metaphorical) yardarm or a stint in the Siberian Gulag. If nothing else the Russian action does give a certain impetus to the creation of a special international tribunal to handle the pirates of Somalia and elsewhere.

Not surprisingly the Maritime Marauders have shown their typically overinflated sense of self-importance. An alleged "pirate commander" vowed to hold the Russians responsible for any harm which may have befallen their missing comrades in banditry. This pretense of being akin to a sovereign state is risible to say the least. In reply someone should remind the jacked-up thug just how fast his associates beat feet as the Islamists moved in on their particular pirates' cove.

The problem of securing the sealanes in the western Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden remains. So also does the kindred problem of the spread of piracy to the coast of Nigeria and the growing threat of both piracy and marine terrorism in the Straits of Malacca. The three challenges are linked by a common thread of religiously predicated political ideology. The pirates (and terrorists) of all three regions are directly or indirectly connected with Islamism and its armed twin, jihadism.

While individual shipowners may see the ransoms as an acceptable cost of doing business, the net effect of seizures made and ransoms paid has been the imposition of ever growing collective costs on the global economy. In addition, the seeming impotence of the assembled international flotilla to deter, let alone successfully either defend or recover stolen ships, lowers the credibility of the civilized states generally in their confrontation with global Islamism and jihadism.

At the very minimum the US should throw its diplomatic weight (if any is left) behind the Russian proposal for a UN created "Piracy Court." This approach is long overdue and is equally well provided for by precedent. If the International Criminal Court is any guide, the processes of the proposed court would be so lengthy that any pirates hailed before it would rot a suitably long time in durance more-or-less-vile so that they will be too old to keep on with living on the Somalian version of the Bounding Main even if acquitted.

Better yet, the US (and other countries as well) should go ahead and emulate the Russians in the rescue and recovery of the MV Moscow University and its crew. Most, if not all, the navies currently represented in the anti-piracy patrols have a special operations capability at least equivalent to that of the Russians. Certainly the US does. So, why not use it?

Sure there will be casualties. Pirates will die. (Hopefully.) Perhaps some captive crewmen will as well although that possibility can be lowered significantly if every ship has a secure room such as that aboard the MV Moscow University to which they can retreat after cutting off the main engines. Keeping in contact with the rescue forces would also be possible as shown by the MV Moscow University incident.

Historically, piracy has been suppressed only when the costs of doing piratical business are elevated to an unacceptable level. This has occurred when sufficient numbers of pirates have ended dead: violently dead or incapacitated through long, long incarceration.

Since the current "system" for bringing pirates to justice is not even good enough to aspire to the term "laughable," there is an immediate need to admit that President Medvedev is right: we have to deal with the saltwater brigands as did our ancestors. Perhaps not with a modern replica of Execution Dock, but certainly with a robust willingness to use force. (Adopting the Russian model of setting pirates loose in a leaky boat is strictly optional.)

Meanwhile, Back In The Caucasus--

It has been awhile since the last consideration of Vladimir Putin's favorite war--the one in the Caucasus. The Geek, ever motivated by an earnest belief in the fellowship of nations, did offer a recipe for success against the jihadists of Chechnya (and environs) but Vlad Of The Bare Chest did not deign to take the hint.

Instead he chose to send yet one more retired general to the region with orders "to clarify the situation and put it to order." Well, bucko, that just hasn't happened. Nor is it likely to.

The local defensive insurgent agenda which originally powered the jihadists has now been supplemented, if not totally replaced, by the all inclusive, ever expansive one of global jihad. This spells even more trouble for the Guys In The Kremlin and their subordinates in the KGB, oops! the Geek meant to write FSB, to say nothing of the army.

The leadership of the self-organizing Islamist insurgents is now comprised of genuine True Believers in political Islam. Men such as Doku Umarov may be local boys by birth and ancestry but they are globalists in their Islamism guided by clerics such as the Jordanian Sheikh Abu Mohammad al-Maqdidi. Other key figures such as the East Siberian born Alexander Tikomirov now renamed Said Buryatski have spent years studying Islam, Arabic, and the fine art or craft of waging jihad abroad. Buryatski, for example, lived in Egypt for years.

A couple of weeks back FSB special operations personnel killed a genuine al-Qaeda operational level commander, Makhmoud Mokhammad Shaaban, in Dagestan. Shaaban was both an Egyptian national and, according to FSB, the man behind several shootings and suicide bombings. This development pleased FSB as it gave credence to its long held position that the "rebels" in the Caucasus were al-Qaeda inspired and directed.

There have been other signs showing the increased importance of global jihad. An excellent example is the proliferation of "martyrdom" videos on the assorted Islamist websites. This was unheard of only a short time back. In some of the videos all of which feature flags of the North Caucasus "Emirate," the martyrs-to-be are heard chanting in Arabic. And, upon translation, some of what is being said tracks back to the words of al-Maqdidi, the Man Of The Faith who lives in the Kingdom of Jordan.

The prolific Jordanian cleric has been a person of interest to US and other Western intelligence agencies for quite a while now given his relations with and influence upon Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahri. The man is an intellectual heavyweight in the global Islamist movement and must not be underrated in his effect upon the initially rather localized defensive insurgency.

Putin, Medvedev, and Company have tried to continue the failed policy of pretending that somehow Chechnya and the rest of the North Caucasus are not part of Russia. This pretense has been driven by a desire to assure the conflict is contained to the region.

Russia has at least twenty million Muslims in its population. Only half of these live in the North Caucasus. This means the insurgents have a very real potential to horizontally escalate their war with the Kremlin. And, the Kremlin knows this.

As the hold of global Islamist jihad grows tighter and stronger within the North Caucasus insurgent groups, the drive to carry jihad deeper and stronger into the heartland of Mother Russia will grow apace. At the same time as the technical proficiency of the insurgents increases--as it must given that combat experience in Afghanistan is being transmitted by returning Caucasians--the walls of the Kremlin and the pavement of the square in front will be covered by Russian blood.

Vladimir The Robust has already missed his last, best chance at suppressing the insurgency. The Russian government and "organs of state security" failed to separate the local grievance motivated sheep. Now the power and appeal of the Islamist message assures that the goats are proliferating as the sheep die out.

Iran exists as a complicating factor for Putin, et al. The mullahs can, should they so decide, provide assistance to the jihadi of the North Caucasus. The border with Iran is even more porous than that between the US and Mexico--and we all know how permeable The Great Fence of the Southwest is. Improved munitions such as explosively formed penetrators would constitute a major enhancement of jihadi capabilities.

At the same time the Kremlin must be aware of just how easily weapons and munitions up to and including those of a mass destruction nature can be acquired within Russia itself provided the buyer has the money. Money need not be an issue given the growth in drug usage in Russia and the role Russia plays as a point of transit between the poppy fields of Afghanistan and the markets of Europe.

This reality implies a motive for Russian understanding and cooperation with the US and its allies in the Afghan war. Russia would benefit greatly from a military success on the part of the US in that venue.

In any event the initiative rests firmly with the Islamist jihadists of the North Caucasus as of this moment. Unless the Kremlin acts as though the region is part of Russia and that the conflict can spread rapidly and in an undesirably bloody fashion whenever and wherever the jihadists choose, the war can only favor the insurgents.

Putin, Medvedev, and the rest have a choice to make. It is not a nice choice. They can continue to putter about waiting for the Islamists to strike. Or, they can reprise many episodes in Russian history and create a desert named "peace."

It is nice to see that the US is not alone in making very tough choices.

For Russia, It's A Case Of Deja Vue All Over Again

The Russians fought two less than spectacularly successful counterinsurgency campaigns in Chechnya. True, the noise level in Chechnya is down a great deal from its high point(s) but, to make up for the quiet affairs, the noise in next door Ingushetia has grown much louder.

In both places the cause of the noise is Islamism combined with the effects of systematically suppressed nationalism. Either Islamist jihadism or nationalism by itself would not have been sufficient to raise the festering political alienation of the ethnic majorities to the level of insurgency, but together these factors did the job. And, did it well.

The Republic of Ingushetia is another of the many "self-governing" Russian republics. Like its neighbor, Chechnya, Ingushetia is predominantly Muslim as well as being profoundly different both ethnically and linguistically from the Russian minority. The Ingushians are genetically different from their close linguistic and cultural relatives in the Caucasus including the Chechens.

Russia occupied Ingushetia in the early Nineteenth Century. The official Russian version of this holds that the locals voluntarily accepted the rule and law of the Czar. However, a close look at Russian military records for the first half of the century shows a pattern of repeated violent repression followed by yet another outbreak of anti-Russian attacks.

Stalin attempted to liquidate the "nationalities problem" in both Chechnya and Ingushetia by liquidating the population. Many were killed either directly or in the Gulag for their alleged "pro-Nazi" activities. Far more were simply loaded on cattle cars and deported to the various Central Asian Republics. Stalin's approach to ethnic cleansing was robust but ultimately a failure.

Ingushians and Chechens were allowed to return to their homelands following Stalin's death. Upon their return the Ingushtians found that much of the country had been resettled by people from North Ossetia. The resulting friction was substantial.

The repression of the Ingushtians by both Russians and Ossetian transplants culminated in a peaceful demonstration in Grozny in January 1973. The Red Army and KGB Border Troops crushed it with blood in the snow.

Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, Ingushtia stayed with the new Russian Federation in the expectation that the Kremlin would be favorably inclined to honor the Ingushian demand that lands and homes assigned to the transplants from Ossetia be returned. The Ingushtians were disappointed, to put it mildly.

In late 1992 war broke out between Ossetia and Ingushtia. When the shooting stopped the Ingushtians had lost one more time. In the fall out of defeat more than fifty thousand Ingushtians were given the heave-ho from North Ossetia. This bit of ethnic purification went by unnoticed in the West where the events in dissolving Yugoslavia got the marquee billing.

The First Russian-Chechen War spilled over into Ingushtia. In part this was the result of Chechens comprising a fifth of the population. In larger part it was the result of the Russian's very ham handed style of counterinsurgency.

The Russian way of war generated vast numbers of refugees. This was the case in both the First and Second Chechen Wars. It was also the case in Russian counterinsurgency operations in Ossetia. By 2000 there was nearly one refugee for every native Ingushtian. The sketchy infrastructure, poorly developed economy, governmental inefficiency, and terrain combined to assure a maximum of wretchedness for locals and refugees alike.

The situation was made even worse (even though that barely seems possible) in 2001 when the incumbent president was ousted by the Kremlin and replaced by a former KGB general named Murat Zyazikov. Zyazikov presided over a fair approximation of a reign of terror. Russian and Ossetian death squads roamed the countryside. Young Ingushtians were declared fair game in an always open season.

The result was (stand by for shock and surprise) the emergence of an Ingushtian insurgency. It was powered in equal measure by an Islamist strain of Islam and a deep loathing of the Russians.

The Russians responded in the tried, true, and counterproductive fashion of sending more troops with more bullets and greater latitude to use the latter against anyone who might be Ingushtian. The Russians, particularly those of the Federal Security Service, went to work with a whoop and wild abandon.

The result?

(Stand by for yet one more shock.) The insurgency went more or less underground. For the next few years the insurgents recruited, organised, received arms and training. At the same time the Islamist motivations were stoked as recruits were indoctrinated in the nuances of martyrdom and similar prerequisites for jihad.

Last October the results of recruitment, travel to such Islamist jihadist training and operational areas as Iran, Iraq,Afghanistan, and the FATA as well as the improvements in arms, tactics, and willingness for martyrdom became obvious. On 18 October the insurgents showed one time KGB heavy Zyazikov to have been way too top spin in his reports to the Kremlin.

Approximately fifty Russian troops were killed when a very well coordinated ambush was pulled on their convoy. The Kremlin and the locals took an old page from the Soviet playbook. They lied, alleging that only two men died as a result of a minor skirmish with disaffected Muslims.

Only the last two words approached accuracy. Vladimir Putin punted General Zyazikov out the door and sent in yet more troops. This proves that even Vladimir The Bare Chested can make mistakes--no, blunders.

How big a blunder has become increasingly evident during 2009. The insurgents have been (almost literally) decimating the official government of the Republic.

True, Vladimir working through his front guy, Dimitri Medvedev, appointed a new president. The new man, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, was speedily approved of by the local parliament and the major political parties of Ingushtia.

The former paratroop general (what's the matter, can't the Kremlin find anyone other than retreaded brasshats to make president of Ingushtia?) was not given a thumbs-up by the insurgents. They showed their disapproval of the new guy at the top on 22 June with a suicide type attack on Yevkurov which narrowly failed to kill the man. The severely injured president was in a coma for weeks but survived. Well, paratroops are noted for being tough even if not particularly brilliant nor subtle.

A few days back Yevkorov recovered sufficiently to say he was staying on the job and was quite committed to ending the unrest and corruption. The still rather unwell appearing man stated that he did not want "revenge" but he would continue the policies of repression albeit perhaps a little "tougher."

While the Kremlin designated Maximum Leader was getting the best of medical care in a Moscow hospital, the insurgents had not been resting on their laurels. The number and skill of attacks increased much to the dismay and displeasure of the Kremlin. At the center, Russian senior level leaders were casting around for the causes of the "spike" in violence--or, lacking that, at least a scapegoat.

The designated fall guy was the Kremlin's own man. Specifically the Regional President responsible for the North Caucasus region, Ramzan Kadyrov. This worthy is a thug. As long as the lid was on in Chechnya, Ingushtia and other regional republics, old Ramzan was a good thug. But, with the lid popping off in Ingushtia, he had become a bad thug.

The hatchetman appointed for the job of offing the bad thug was General Gennady Zaitsev, the commander of the hot shot, mucho elite counter-terrorist group, the Alpha unit, started by KGB chief Yuri Andropov a generation back. Zaitsev as much as said it was time to give Kadyrov a bullet in the back of the neck.

Finding the right man to sacrifice and the correct dude to do the job may be satisfying to Putin, Medvedev and Co., but it means squat in the game of Beat The Islamist Insurgent. Ritual victims are exercises in myth; insurgencies are real world.

The Islamist jihadists grew ever more active. Ever more willing to kill without particular discrimination. They were matched by the "security forces," which seemed bent on matching the insurgents in bloodlust.

The Islamist jihadists were willing to die as well. Provided only that the "martyrdom seeker" could bring enough victims with him. Suicide bombings of police stations have their place. So also does the ongoing campaign of selective assassination of government officials.

In total the efforts of the insurgents demonstrate a high level of competence as well as the type of dedication one has grown to expect from true Islamist jihadists. In total the efforts of both the Russian and Ingushtian government to end the insurgency have shown both a strikingly low level of proficiency and a willingness to operate on a business-as-usual basis tolerating corruption, inefficiency, and contempt for the locals.

The Kremlin, specifically, President Medvedev has taken action in the wake of the suicide bombing. In keeping with all past Russian behavior, he has appointed a "battle hardened" general to take charge of the situation. To, in Medvedev's pithy phrase, "clarify what happened."

It is going to take more than one general, no matter how "battle hardened" to "clarify" and "put in order" the situations in Ingushtia, Chechnya, and other Islamist jihadist anterooms to Paradise in the North Caucasus. Even if President Medvedev is unacquainted with the results of blending Islamist jihadism with nationalism as was the case in Afghanistan, the man behind the throne, Vladimir (Bare Chested Man On Horseback) Putin must be aware. After all he was in the KGB.

Since the Russian memory is apparently short as the Bear got its hairy rear end kicked hard in Afghanistan only twenty years ago, the men of the Russian Army, Federal Security Service (KGB under a nicer name) and the Kremlin must have to relearn the lesson that Islamist jihadism plus nationalism makes for a very hard opponent to defeat. Given that the Russians place even more faith in coercion as the sovereign remedy for all political ills than do the Israelis (or before they got the message in Iraq, the Americans) it is unlikely in the extreme that the new jihad in the Caucasus will be over quickly or, from the Russian perspective, succesfully.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of guys.

Joe Biden: A Putz Does Diplomacy

The fact that the Obama administration and the current occupants of the Kremlin have a vastly different view of the world, of the nature of national interest, and the way in which the game of nations is played is not news. It is as commonplace today as it was back in the days of the Soviet Union.

Even if, in President Obama's estimate, the Russian version of international politics is "Nineteenth Century," this in no way obviates the reality that the US needs Russia's active cooperation on critical matters such as the Iranian nuclear program. Thus, it does American national and strategic interests no good whatsoever to copy the egregiously blundering approach to Russia that was a hallmark of the Bush/Cheney years.

During the long years of the neocon ninny ascendancy, the American tone toward Russia was alternately hectoring and condescending. The administration acted as if Russia was a defeated power, reduced to the status of second or even third rate. As a result Russia was not cooperative in areas of (supposedly) mutual concern and heaved up roadblocks whenever and wherever it could.

Now the Obama administration, or at least Vice President Biden seem hellbent on repeating the profoundly wrong approach of Bush/Cheney. While the WaPo clearly agrees with Biden's reaming out of the Putin/Medvedev understanding of relations with the US, the Geek does not.

Everything which Biden states in his interview with the WSJ about the Russian birth rate, economic failures, banking system on the verge of collapse, and so on may be absolutely true, but that is irrelevant. What is relevant is the impact of a high visibility figure saying so in blunt, utterly diplomacy-free words in a major American publication.

The NYT, like the Russian government, finds the Biden Diatribe "perplexing." The Geek would use the term "idiotic" to describe Joe (I-Can-Say-Whatever-Without-Thinking) Biden's assessment of what is necessary and proper for US-Russian relations.

As every student of Russian and Soviet history (including Robert Gates who holds a doctorate in Soviet Studies) well knows, Russia has a very long history of hyper-sensitivity based on an equally long standing feeling (and fear) of inferiority to the nations of the West. This sensitivity and fear has tinged every Russian regime from Peter the Great to Vladimir the Bare Chested. It is a key factor in understanding how and why Russian regimes act the way that they have and do.

By bashing the Russians in the mudhole of their own social, political, and economic failures (failures from Biden's point of view, that is), our Vice President has been, in the words of the renowned Sovietologist George Kennan, "primitive and unconstructive." Russian nationalism is easily irritated and aroused. Indeed, central to Putin's great successes since going from the bowels of KGB to the corridors of the Kremlin has been the stoking and stroking of Russian national pride.

By offending this national pride Joe Biden has made the task of gaining agreement from the Russians much more difficult than it needs to be. He has, in a very real sense, out-Bushed Bush, with results which will not make the accomplishment of assorted tasks ranging from the Iranian bomb to peace in the Mideast and ending the war in Afghanistan at all easier.

We may well oppose the Russian notion of having a special "sphere of interest" in the states of the former Soviet Union, but the bashing of Russian internal problems and the issuing of a virtual we-will-give-you-nothing decree will not grease the path of negotiation aimed at urging the Russians to lighten up on the subject. It may be, as the WaPo asserts, praiseworthy to confront the Russians squarely on its ambitions, but that does not mean it is useful.

And, lest anyone forget, the purpose of foreign policy, of diplomacy in all its myriad aspects, is to achieve useful goals. To protect and advance national and strategic interests. That's it. All else is mere cant.

Every utterance by a senior foreign policy or administrative personality--and Joe Biden is both--must be carefully calibrated to achieve national and strategic interests. Truth, emotional satisfaction, bad hair day are all either irrelevant or harmful to the task.

At one time, not that many months back, Joe Biden went to Russia to "push the reset button." That effort was followed recently by the Obama trip to Moscow. The Russians responded with a badly needed permission for US troops to be flown across Russian territory en route to Afghanistan. The Russians also speedily agreed to another round of strategic arms reduction in pursuit of a "finite deterrent" based force package.

Not bad after the Bush/Cheney years, which saw Russian bombers again probing our air space and overflying our task forces at sea. Not bad after the Bush/Cheney years, which saw the Russians bring back their favorite Cold War word nyet to the Security Council.

Now, all on his very lonesome, Joe Biden has threatened to put US-Russian relations back in the deepest of deep freezes. It is one thing to support Georgia and the Ukraine as Biden correctly did during his recent fast jaunt to the region. It is another matter all together to dismiss the Russians as a decaying society and economy stuck in the past days of lost empire who can serve their own interests best by subscribing to whatever American policy interest we present them.

It is even more gripless to suggest as Biden does that the "emerging nuclear threats" in Iran and North Korea will "force" Russia to comply with American requirements. Come on, Joe, get a grip. The Russians have shown an unsurpassed ability to act unilaterally and with overwhelming force when they are faced by a genuine threat. Given the continuing competence of the Russian armed forces which have not decayed as much as some might like to think, abating any potential Iranian or Korean menace is well within Russian capabilities. It is necessary to keep in mind that the Russians have no particular love or need for the fig leaf of collective action or UN sanction to protect national interests.

Got to hand it to Joe Biden. Secretary of State Clinton managed to outrage only Pakistan and Israel by her lack of diplomatic finesse. Biden has managed to hack off Russia which remains, no matter of what Biden may think, a Great Power. More, a Great Power whose support we must have to achieve many of our most critical foreign policy agenda items.

Way to go, Joe!

Now the matter is up to President Obama. He has to either back up the Veep or disown the remarks. Given that the Nice Young Man From Chicago is both naive regarding the game of nations and post-modern, it is hard to predict what he will do. Perhaps, given his own recent lesson in shooting off his mouth, the President will order underlings to issue clarifications by the truck load, drowning the matter in obfuscation.

Perhaps, Mr Obama will be inclined to call up Vladimir and Dimitri and invite them over for a beer along with Joe. The boys can sit on the Truman Balcony or out at Camp David and hoist a few, swap lies, and slap each other's knees over the inadvertent humor provided by Joe's ever expanding mouth.

Well, it is an idea.

September--The Latest Drop Dead Date

The G-8 (augmented) labored mightily in the mountains of Italy and the mountain brought forth a mouse. Specifically the assembled statesmen(?) declared that if negotiations with Iran regarding its nuclear weapons program are not successful by the time the G-20 meets in (of all places) Pittsburgh next September, well, by golly, we might just have to do something.

France's reasonably robust and undeniably given to realism president, Nicholas Sarkozy, had wanted the amphyctony of financial and industrial might to take genuine action sooner, as in right now, but was outflanked by the Obama administration which is fearful of any "tough" action "backfiring" and, presumably, allowing extremists to put their hands on the levers of power in Tehran. The Nice Young Man From Chicago was joined in the effort to block meaningful economic sanctions by Russia which is pursuing its own interests in Iran.

Germany apparently did what Germany does so well--waffle and equivocate. Sure, the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran does bother some in the Berlin government, but the prospect of losing billions of dollars worth of business in Iran shakes the Krauts a lot more.

The Chinese president probably made his regime's typical noises about the incorrectness of meddling in the "internal affairs" of Iran before departing with undue haste to deal with the latest outbreak of Islamic unrest in the far west of China. On the up side, the fleeing of the Grand Mandarin from the Center Kingdom made the job of the spin doctors much easier.

And spin they did. The Americans whirred and whirled faster than the Iranian centrifuges. The usual posse of unnamed "senior officials" reportedly gave credit to President Obama for having convinced Dimitri Medvedev that the Iranian efforts in nuclear R&D represented a real threat to Russia.

Pleeeze! Give it a rest. And, give us a break!

The Russian government nominally headed by Medvedev but actually honchoed by the "very tough, very smart, and very unsentimental" (to use President Obama's words) Vladimir Putin is perfectly well aware of the potential threat represented by Iran--with or without nuclear arms. Russians tend to be realists in foreign policy matters. As a result the Kremlin has more faith in its own ability to counter the Iranian menace than it does in the ability of different nations with different national interests to collaborate effectively on stopping Iranian ambitions.

Should the day come when the lads in the Kremlin determine to their own satisfaction that the mullahocracy represents a genuine threat, steps will be taken immediately to abate the nuisance. There will be no gnashing of teeth over the "morality" of taking whatever actions are being considered, no consultations with other governments, no seeking UN approval, no hoping that Washington will flash a "green light." None of that sort of thing. Simply a decision leading to action.

One can be sure that the Kremlin will (and probably already has) conveyed the unpleasant possibilities which will befall Tehran should its acts be perceived in Russia as representing an unacceptable level of challenge. While the mullahs may well ignore any Russian warnings, they do so at their peril.

The factors which work to Tehran's advantage when dealing with the US or the West generally do not apply with the Russians. US and Western actions whether genuine sanctions or use of the "military option" are inhibited by a wide range of fears. Governments, whether French, German, British, Italian, or US hate to see their businesses lose contracts and money. More, all of these governments are loath to threaten let alone use force for fear of the Iranian responses and the chaos which might be unleashed on the oil market.

Russia is immune or nearly so to these considerations. Indeed, invocation of the "military option" by the US or Israel is welcomed by the Kremlin--they help Russia's sales of high price, high tech weapons to the Islamic Republic. The potential of Iran turning its Islamist jihadist proxies loose would be scarcely noticed by the Kremlin against the background noise of assorted Islamist jihadist insurgencies already in progress. The "unleashing" of Iranian proxies would assist the Russians in achieving a final solution for the Islamists by muzzling foreign critics of the muscular measures the Russians usually employ in countering insurgents.

And, lest anyone forget, speculation driven spikes in global oil prices can only benefit Russia.

With all of that as context, it is easy to dismiss the "senior American official's" characterization of Obama's come-to-Jesus meeting with Medvedev as flat-out tergiversation. The real deal is simply that Russia is playing the game of nations vis-a-vis Iran far better than is the Obama administration.

In any event the G-8 and the Obama administration have given the mullahocracy and its re-elected frontman, Ahemdinejad, another two months or so to dither, drivel, obfuscate, and bluster. As they do, the foregoing the centrifuges will continue to spin bringing Iran's stock of low enrichment uranium to the level necessary for a rapid breakout in the production of weapon's grade stuff.

The delay taken together with the G-8's apparent acceptance of the electoral facts on the ground after an initial outburst of huffing, puffing, and general hyperventilation make the mullahs and their designated mouthpiece feel more and more secure in their belief that the US and the West generally will never actually do anything which runs the slightest risk.

There is no impetus for any change in either policy or tactics in the latest round of delay. No matter how often one "senior White House official" or another declares that American and Western patience is running thin, there is no reason for the mullahs to believe this to be the case. Dark hints of something bad is going to happen simply haul no freight with the turban-tops of the Islamic Republic.

The record of American and Western actions over the thirty years since the fall of the Shah show that the US and other countries are very, very long on words and very, very short on action. There is simply no basis for the Iranians to conclude that it will be any different when the G-20 convenes in Pittsburgh.

All the Iranians have to do is continue what they have been doing so well and for so long. Hang tough. Talk tough. Make counter accusations. Stonewall. Stonewall some more. And, when all else fails--stonewall some more.

Absent a backroom putsch within the clerical circles of Iran, the Obama administration has only three choices. Accept Iran as a nuclear power along with all that implies. Go for genuine sanctions including restrictions on food sales in the hope this will work. Be ready to say, "You realise, this means war."

The Obama crew might remember a lesson of history: The longer a country waits to make the hard choices, the harder the choices are to make.