The far-right assertion that it is acceptable for “patriotic” Americans to side with Russia in its war with Ukraine, and the simultaneous criticism that President Biden is being too “soft” on the nation that patriotic Americans are being asked to side with, is no more schizophrenic than usual, but it does point out the understandable difficulties of navigating the modern geopolitical world.
Political parties do change their stripes as evidenced by the current right-wing tendency to give Vladimir Putin, an unrepentant Soviet, the benefit of the doubt.
If ghosts are capable of having heart attacks, pity the specter of Joe McCarthy, a Republican for whom no depth was too low to sink in the pursuit of the Red Menace. That his party would now be treating the descendants of Stalin with, at worst, bland indifference, would be too much for his tortured soul to bear.
Commentators who are too young (or too old) to remember what the Cold War was like, are wont to suggest that we are in danger of returning to one. It obviously depends on your definition of “cold,” but as bad as things seem today, it seems unlikely that we risk a rehash of fallout shelters and duck-and-cover drills.
More likely, we may be on the brink of the first world e-war.
He’d never show it, but Vladimir Putin has to be stone-cold stunned by the frequency and accuracy of the West’s intelligence. Every step of the way, we’ve known what Putin was going to do almost before he did.
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Talking heads like to get on cable news and fret that we no longer have any moles in the Kremlin. Well we must have something. Because we’ve known about Russia’s false flag operations, its military moves, its timelines, its kill lists and its strategy from the start. Everything has played out exactly the way the Biden administration said it would.
This has thrown Putin off his game. He had everything perfectly choreographed before we spoiled the ending. It might not have changed his course of action, but as the world looked on he had to act with his pants down.
Putin’s subsequent dog and pony shows to justify the invasion have been flat or, worse, obvious in their intent. What that’s meant is that in the all-important war of public opinion, it’s the West that has established early credibility.
You can bet your bottom ruble that, as preoccupied as he is with war at the moment, Putin is just as consumed with worry over these breaches in Russia’s legendary secrecy. What intelligence gathering resources can the Americans have?
Meanwhile, Europeans seem to know just as much about the habits, proclivities and weaknesses of Putin’s inner circle. One almost gleeful tweet (since deleted) chided Russian oligarchs that they will no longer be able to raise a glass of their favorite wine in Paris or run their fingers through piles of diamonds in Antwerp.
The Kremlin blundered into an angry response that it would, in retaliation, step up hacking of Western interests — this being the same Kremlin that has always maintained that there is no state-sponsored hacking.
On that front, how much hacking will Russia be willing to do now that it has a pretty clear idea that the West can hack back? Just because we haven’t so far doesn’t mean that we don’t have the capability. It would surprise not a bit if our computer wizards turned out to be a lot stronger than theirs. We have not retaliated to date against Russian hacking. But Russia, to date, had not started a war. How confident can they be that the rules of the game haven’t structurally changed?
Even the Olympics broke bad for Putin, shining a spotlight on Russia’s bottomless well of cheats and liars. As one Russian skater looked comatose, one broke down in tears and one seemed to be experiencing a classic case of ’roid rage, Russia stood alone, the world given a good, clear picture of who the bad guys are.
Just 10 days earlier, a gloating Putin had met with Xi Jinping, shoving in the face of the world a budding Sino-Soviet, er, Russo romance. Xi’s reward? Russia couldn’t behave for two weeks before ruining Xi’s Olympics like a drunken relative at a country club wedding.
After that, Xi’s language toward Russian aggression changed ever so slightly. In Chinese affairs, “ever-so” matters a great deal.
Putin can certainly shake up his little corner of the world quite a bit. But in the rest of the world, for now, he has been seriously outplayed. He may not want to unfurl the Mission Accomplished banner just yet.
Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Putin shakes up Ukraine, but he has been outplayed in rest of world
