So my friends it begins again. May Putin, Medvedev and Sechin find a warm glass of Pulonium in their vodka. The masters of the dark arts return.

Back to the Cubans, would they actually want Russian bombers on their soil? At the moment the US has no EU support for sanctions on Cuba, so logically wouldn’t a Cuban/Russian love-in push the EU and those with better relations with Cuba, closer to the Americans? Fidel’s brother is already implenting reforms such as allowing mobile phones and leasing land to private farmers – ratcheting up the pressure could well be something the Cuban economy might not cope to well with.

There isn’t much evidence Washington wanted to threaten the USSR in the 1950s. Contain yes, threaten no. The Korean War and Berlin Airlift – the two most significant Cold War events in the 1950s – were unprovoked acts of aggression carried out at the behest of Stalin.

Thus far, there is no confirmation that Russia is indeed returning militarily to Cuba. It is, however, a signal of what could happen if the United Stated does not heed Russian demands for Washington to back off from Moscow’s turf. This would be, in Moscow’s eyes, an equal response to the United States’ signing ballistic missile defense system treaties with the Czech Republic and Poland — right on Russia’s doorstep — as well as discussing NATO membership with the former Soviet states of Ukraine and Georgia.

Russia did, in fact, respond to the West’s encroachment: cutting energy supplies to Europe and sending more military into Georgia’s secessionist regions. But the problem was that Moscow simply hadn’t gotten Washington’s attention.

Washington has been too wrapped up in other issues — such as the upcoming presidential election, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, negotiations with Iran and simply not believing Russia had any real tools with which to threaten it –- that it airily dismissed all of Moscow’s provocations. This has made Russia’s reprisals Europe’s problem at a time when Moscow wants to prove it once again is a global power and can stand up against its traditional foe: the United States. So Russia sent a signal of something that the United States simply cannot ignore — the moving of the Russian-U.S. tug-of-war from Russia’s doorstep to the U.S. doorstep. This is a serious threat and one with which Washington is quite familiar.

The Cuba option would be a powerful move against the United States — just as it was during the 1950s and 1960s — because it directly penetrates the United States’ immediate periphery. Combine the Cuba rumors with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s trip to Moscow this past week — which held its own flurry of rumored deals over Russian bases and defense deals — and Moscow is reminding the Americans of a prior miscalculation. In the 1950s, Washington assumed that it could threaten the Soviet Union along its borders in Europe, South Asia and East Asia. And the United States believed it could not be threatened in its homeland, in the Western Hemisphere — America assumed no foreign power would dare violate the Monroe Doctrine. Washington bet that Moscow did not have an equivalent threat, and it was wrong.

The Soviet Union’s move into Cuba back then changed the entire dynamic of the Cold War. The Soviet presence threatened the sea lanes out of the Gulf of Mexico, major facilities in Florida, all of the Caribbean airspace and some of the Eastern Seaboard. It forced the U.S. Navy and Air Force to shift resources and account for Soviet units there. It diverted the CIA into Latin America, forcing the conflicts in Central American and Grenada. Despite its inherent military vulnerability, Cuba was one of the most strategic Soviet assets. Nothing was the same after Cuba.

The Russians are reminding the Americans of their prior miscalculations on how Russians respond to perceived threats. The United States has shifted its focus from its periphery and once again moved to responding to threats that could never truly physically hit the homeland — such as an Iranian missile threat. In the nearly 20 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has returned to and enjoyed a world where any potential military threat is an ocean and half a world away.

For now, this is just a signal and no real movement on the ground has been made. Russia is serious, however, about its ability to follow through if the United States does not release the pressure elsewhere. The moves over Cuba are not an indicator of the Russians’ global intentions, but are meant to signal an increase in Moscow’s assertiveness. It is a gutsy and interesting move by the Russians. We have yet to see whether the Americans have really noticed (or want to admit that they noticed) and can divert attention from the Middle East and domestic politics to address the Russian threat — either by backing down or by escalating the situation, which would bring back a Cold War standoff.

Of course, if Washington and Moscow do get serious about things such as Cuba, then the U.S. escalation would go far beyond what Russia currently feels threatened over.

Toss the former KGB agent and current Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin into the mix and let him get back to his old drinking buddys from the “good ole’” days of smuggling arms in Latin America and heck who needs a Jihad to keep the military machine rolling were back to 1962, except now the Russians have a little bit of money to work with and the US is in Afganistan. Will Czar Vlady start banging his shoe on the podium?? I watch with curisoity

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Why don’t you ask that question of Guillory, Johnson, Straus and a number of others, who know considerably less than yours truly on a good number of FSU topics?”

Ah Mike – no. I was genuinely asking! You’d said ages ago that you were indeed learning, hence the question. For once I wasnt actually trying to piss you off.
Shit man, take it easy!

I’m managing a number of other things at the moment.

It includes projects like a very well received last bullshit free AC article of mine, which took Kiselyov, Lourie and Bovt to task.

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Why don’t you ask that question of Guillory, Johnson, Straus and a number of others, who know considerably less than yours truly on a good number of FSU topics?

I’ll once again remind all that it’s only within recent times that Peter Lavelle became fluent in the Russian language (so I’ve been told). I understand that his RTTV employer staffs people who aren’t fluent in the Russian language. Meantime, I get high marks from Russian born Russians (as well as others) for my spot on analysis. So, you can go **** yourself with your fellow trolls.

Meantime, how has your grasp of Russia’s history, foreign policy and sports improved (rhetorical question and one that I don’t care to know the answer)?

Andy, no need for me to take such repeated horsehit from a proven troll, who has incessantly lied about me at this and other threads.

I don’t think I’ll check back at this thread. I prefer subject related conversation, as opposed to the kind of trolling that others initiate.

They already have. A long time ago, actually.

yes, I am aware that its better to refer to the Nazis as, well, Nazis.

How’s your Russian coming along?:-)

I don’t accept that Nazism was a natural outgrowth of traditional German patriotism. Rather, it was an unfortunate aberration.

This is consistent with not making the Russia automatically equals Soviet claim.

Fact of the matter is that Nazi Germany had much help from many non-Germans. Ditto the USSR with many non-Russians. This leads to why I think Russians and Germans can bury the hatchet with each other.

During WW II, the Croat Ustasha, Galician Ukrainian nationalists and Austrians had elements every bit as brutal if not more so than many of the Germans stationed in the same area.

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Friend’s Hungarian Jewish mother experienced the same with the Red Army.

Plenty of other such experiences.

That is doubtless. And funny enough my workmate has moaned about Walesa – she reckons he wasnt all that bright and shouldnt have actually led the country. She’s from Krakow and has some hilarious stories about the Wisla and Legia Ultras.

The Soviets defeated the Nazis and put in its place a Polish nation that was subservient to the USSR. The faults of the post-WW II reality should be clear. It was still a better option than the Nazi period in Poland.

Some of these babushki are just hilarious. My wife was in a queue in Moscow a few years back during the summer for some other useless piece of red tape. The queue was full of dyevushki in their summer clothes, arses proudly being shown to the world, as is the norm in Moscow. Anyway all of sudden a babushka in the queue suddenly piped up ”look at the state of you! Showing off your tits and arses! Is this what we fought for in the War, so you can waltz around Moscow dressed like slappers”?!

I would think everyone had a go at the Germans at the end of the war. My father’s father fought in the British Army in WWII and was part of the force that cleaned up Belsen, or so the story goes. Whatever happened, when he came back he hardly said a word more for 45 years until he died. He’d go to work, come home, drink his one tot and sit in silence most of the time. Mad, brutal times.

In Poland, there now seems to be a bitter dispute on the legacies of Walesa and Jaruzelski.

Among the two extremes is the view that they both collaborated and should be punished. Another view sees a difference between the two, that includes a willingness to forgive Jaruzelski as someone with limited options.

Certainly there may well be a fair degree of revisionist history reflected in my workmate’s opinion. I must ask her again tommorow. In fairness until recent years the history taught in our own schools here was vehemently anti-Brit, and has now been softened totally. There probably was a major swing against the Russians/USSR after the Poles removed the Soviet yoke in the 1980s.