Don't Screw With The Russians

Plumbing the nuances of a black and white Audy Murphy film, some in the dark recesses of American glory are calling out the Russians. This is a mistake of nuclear proportions. While it makes for a helluva sound bite in the middle of an election cycle, promising a "toe to toe" spins differently over in Moscow (or wherever Vladimir Putin happens to be at the moment), depending on whether it comes from a lame duck administration or one proposing to succeed it. Those folks would do well to consider who they are dealing with and what their motivations might be, prior to racing a commercial to air.



Don’t screw with the Russians.


To the first bureaucrats and statesmen who staffed the front lines of the Cold War, this was a basic principle beyond rhetoric or question. They, after all, were the generation who had kept a wary eye on their World War partner while it absorbed, recovered from, and then beat to a bloody pulp the massive Wermacht invasions of 1943.


Left for dead as Hitler’s Panzers screamed towards Moscow, the mighty Russian bear under its single minded despot (the Georgian coincidentally, Josef Stalin), rallied the Russian heartland and built a grinding war machine from ashes – while simultaneously undergoing an epic invasion second to none in history, and an internal bloodletting of equal historic proportions. Russia had committed every sinew of its being – and veritable oceans of its blood and treasure – towards the single minded, zealously fanatical defense of Mother Russia.
Russia could take a punch, or two, or three, or thirty five, before it methodically beat down its enemies.


Despite the Western rewrite of history that was their due as victors, those who witnessed it eyeball to eyeball understood it was Russia who had won the war in Europe. They understood perfectly that the Russia that emerged from the smoking ruins of the Eastern Front was deeply traumatized by its unacknowledged razor fight, knowing that no nation in modern history had been brutalized on the scale which Russia had. Even with the sizable military, economic, and geopolitical advantage the West enjoyed over Russia in the two decades that followed the end of the War, no sane Western decision maker ever considered taking on the Russians - no matter how desperately they may have wanted to.


But that was then and this is now. Sadly, the folks whose fingers steadied over the buttons throughout the frostiest years of the cold war, and who were witness to the human tragedy that was World War, the hallowed members of that Greatest Generation, have passed into history. Behind them comes a new generation, and in America in particular, one whose own concept of history is known only through Spielberg, O’Reilly, and Halliburton. The button keepers of today bring to their task no understanding of the enemy, no empathy for its history, no insight into its soul - just no respect for their smoldering opponent.


What Americans like John McCain, John Bolton, and others of their geopolitical persuasion don’t consider when they rattle their sabers for a chest thumping with Russia, is the nature of the enemy they are calling out. They have to understand that you don’t measure a Russian by his politics, religion, or access to I Pods, but by the essential character of the Russian National soul. A soul that burns like the tractor factories of Stalingrad, kept hot by the memories of all those ancestors who were human kindling by the chord load in the darkest days of history.
McCain and his ilk have an apocalyptic danger to them unchecked, a danger that rises from imperial hubris and entitlement, from the ominous confluence of ignorance and influence. They are manifestly disrespectful of the Russian soul and, in short, have no fucking idea with whom they are dealing.


Russia will defend herself and her interests. She will not be influenced by or respond to threats or intimidation. Russia will react to any perceived provocation with enough measure to meet its goals – without limit. Russia is patient, and willing to pay any price over any term to ensure its safety. Financial cost, human suffering, body bags, or howling media will not figure in the equation. Russians have been there, done that.


These new Russians have money, resource based influence, and a massive geopolitical advantage. Russia owns Eurasia now and for a generation, with the clock starting when the Americans leave the Middle East. Gazprom is devouring the planets supply and distribution of natural gas, and many stalwart European "Allies" of the American way already depend on Russia for 75% of their supply. Russia sits atop the world’s eighth largest proven oil reserve - 4th if you include the member states of its Near Abroad – and are the worlds second largest oil exporters, behind Saudi Arabia. American military intervention into the laws of supply and demand for Oil has made Russia rich beyond measure, with every American soccer mom filling the van on Saturday morning making them richer still.


The great Caspian Sea oil bonanza – of no value without access to markets – was tapped by Russia in the Nineties, in a deal cut with the Clinton Administration to share the distribution via a communal pipeline that ran through Russia to Europe. In an effort to sever this mutual Eurasian dependence, the Bush Administration established a new Tulsa in Azerbaijan, attached to an exclusive pipeline skirting Iran, passing through Georgia, and dumping out into Turkey. To those who once would care to look, it means something that Russian tank commanders can tap their field glasses on the oil engorged Bush phallis at their will. Russia is parading its armor up and down the dusty roads of Georgia as casually as the evening paper boy in Nebraska, and is CNN friendly just to be more obvious. The mightiest military in history, with a budget greater than all the other nations on the earth combined – including Russia – lays prostrate and powerless before the new Russian determination. Former Soviet protectates and budding nations cower while their suddenly unavailable American cousins squabble over Brittney, Paris, and the evils of being popular.


The Russians will not allow their enemies to surround them, they will push until they have built their "Near Abroad" back into the defensive bulwark it once was and still needs to be. They believe this is their time, and their opportunity. They have absorbed 20 years of punches and are ready to punch back. It would be a foolish America that flippantly steps into the ring with Russia, without preparing to suffer on a scale only to well understood by Russians, but completely unknown to Americans.


As the old ring hands used to say – "Don’t screw with the Russians".