A Restless Bear in Winter

Daina decided to stay home today and sort through all our papers, getting our home ownership and other important documents in order, should we need to move at a moment's notice.  There is a lot of anxiety over Russian troop movements, not just in their proximity of Ukraine, but the Baltic countries as well.  Some Lithuanian political scientists think Ukraine may simply be a ruse and that Putin may strike the Baltics.  This has been a constant worry ever since he became Russian president.

My older cousin called me out of the blue on messenger to express his concerns, having recently watched a segment of Fareed Zakaria's CNN program, in which the Baltics were mentioned.  Anne Applebaum noted that Putin's ambitions are much broader than Ukraine and that he very much wants to reconstitute the USSR.  Putin called the dissolution of the Soviet Union the "greatest geopolitical tragedy" of the 20th century, and has long expressed his disdain for NATO.  He like other Russophiles felt NATO should have been disbanded along with the Warsaw Pact in 1991, but NATO has persisted and Eastern European countries feel fully justified in joining it since 1999, the year Putin became president. 

Lithuania requested additional NATO troops, but all they have received are assurances that NATO eFP would be ready within a couple of hours.  Hardly very reassuring when it would only take Russia about that long to overrun the country, putting NATO very much on the defensive.  The biggest fear is that the West won't be there for Lithuania again, having allowed the Baltics along with most of Eastern Europe to fall into the hands of the Soviets during WWII.

Meanwhile, Lithuania has to continue to deal with its border crisis, as so-called refugees continue to try to force themselves into the country through the makeshift barriers erected along the Belarussian border.  Here again, Lithuania has gotten the cold shoulder from the EU, which believes Lithuania should process these dubious asylum seekers, who were ferried to the border by Belarussian forces.  Granted it's cold, but we all thought Merkel had worked out a deal that Belarus would process these illegal immigrants themselves. given Lukashenko went to the trouble to bring them here from Iraq and Greece.  He was even trying to make himself look like a benevolent saint by granting asylum to a handful of Afghanis.

These are the kinds of situations that make you feel all alone despite being in constant communication with others.  What's worse is that some persons in the West think this is nothing more than an irrational fear due to Russia being portrayed as a malevolent force in the mainstream media, when it is only worried about its "security."  The Russian propaganda machine is quite broad these days. I don't put much stock in Tucker Carlson, but he seems to have a surprisingly strong influence on the conservative electorate in the US.  

Fortunately, my conservative cousin, a retired Air Force colonel, doesn't subscribe to Little Tucker's viewpoint and is surprised at the way his political party has turned toward Russia ever since 7 GOP Congressmen decided to spend July 4, 2018, in Moscow.   It was not only horribly bad optics, but these guys seemed all too sympathetic to Russia while an investigation into election influence was going on in Congress.  I didn't get into this with my cousin.  I appreciated his concern and said we are doing fine.

But, I often ask myself what gives?  How has Russia come to exercise so much influence globally when it has such a hard time holding its own country together.  The Russian diaspora since the break up of the Soviet Union is believed to be between 20 and 30 million persons!  That is hardly a vote of confidence for the government, either under Yeltsin or Putin.  This is largely due to a poor standard of living that has failed to keep up to its Eastern European neighbors, forcing many Russians to seek better economic opportunities abroad.  

It got so bad, Russia was losing its figure skating coaches to the US, and subsequently gold medals in events they had long dominated.  As a result, Putin has spent huge amounts of money to lure Olympic coaches back to Russia with the hope of re-establishing the country's dominance in international sports.  He spent an unprecedented 55 billion dollars on the Sochi Winter Olympics.  A sum far greater than is normally spent on the Summer Olympics, which are much bigger in scale.  He got his desired results, thanks to a massive doping scheme which was later revealed.

To be fair, many Eastern Europeans have similarly sought greener pastures, but there is no denying that the average citizen is much better off in Lithuania than he or she would be in Russia, which is why there are an estimated 60,000 Russians living in Vilnius alone, approximately 140,000 in Lithuania, or roughly 5 percent of the total population of the small country.  You particularly see this in the construction sector, where Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian workers have replaced Lithuanian workers, who have sought better opportunities in richer EU countries.  It's a weird dynamic to say the least.

If you scroll down this article to The Putin Era, you will see that Putin uses much the same language Hitler used before WWII, believing he is protecting "the rights of Russian citizens and compatriots living abroad" by mobilizing forces on the border of Ukraine, and sending a military force to Kazakhstan to help the autocratic government beat down protesters in Almaty.  He has certainly shown more confidence ever since forcibly annexing Crimea in 2014, using the Sochi Olympic Games as an effective cover.

Whether or not Putin strikes Ukraine, Lithuania or some other Eastern European country formerly under the influence of the Soviet Union, the damage is done.  There is no way to look at Putin the same way again.  NATO will go back to its original purpose, which is to gird Europe against a Russian assault.  Putin is the principal enemy right now.  He always has been, it's just that American and European leaders believed they could negotiate with him, going out of their way to do so, only to find much of what he has to offer is non-negotiable.  

He has only one intent in mind and that is to re-establish the pre-1991 borders of the Soviet Union and before that Tsarist Russia.  This is what drives him, whether it is nibbling off chunks here and there as he has done in Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014), or taking full control of a country and eventually absorbing it, as appears to now be the case with Ukraine.  Mother Russia is a hungry bear, and will take back what she believes to be rightfully hers, regardless of what other politicians have to say about it.