The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming (back to Cuba)!
Russia has quietly reached an agreement with Cuba to reopen a Soviet-era spy base on America’s doorstep, amid souring relations between Moscow and Washington.
The deal to reopen the signals intelligence facility in Lourdes, south of Havana, was agreed in principle during President Vladimir Putin’s visit to the island as part of a Latin American tour last week, according to the newspaper Kommersant.
(London Guardian, July 16, 2014)
There’s nothing quiet about media reports on this agreement, of course. My opening line alludes to the 1966 comedy film, which depicts the Cold-War hysteria that ensues after a Soviet submarine beaches on the New England coast. The reason it’s so apt here is that media reaction to this agreement is emulating the hysteria that film depicts.
Mind you, Putin has taken pains to deny these reports:
Russian President Vladimir Putin denied media reports that Russia was planning to reopen the Soviet-age SIGINT facility in Lourdes, Cuba, once was largest foreign listening post of its kind, but shut down under U.S. pressure.
(RT, July 17, 2014)
Except that this is the same Putin who took Crimea more out of resentment and fear than imperial ambition. He denied reports about Russia’s intent to annex Crimea, only to do just that without any hint of contradiction or hypocrisy mere weeks later.
In this relatively advanced age of technology, when the NSA can spy and eavesdrop on every movement and sound on the planet, Putin seems determined to continue using Hitler’s “Big Lie” tactic. Far from fooling anybody, it just makes him look like a delusional fool.
More to the point, reopening military bases (in Cuba and the Arctic), re-annexing territories (in Ukraine and Georgia), and reestablishing military alliances and financial institutions (to counter NATO and the IMF/WB) are all part of Putin’s master plan to revive the Soviet Union. And the elixir of life in this respect is oxygenating propaganda that would make even Joseph Stalin blush or make North Korea’s Kim Jong-un green with envy. It is beyond Orwellian.
The problem is that Putin is repeating the same foolhardy, spendthrift mistakes that led to the demise of the Soviet Union in the first place. Nothing demonstrates this quite like the way he made such a public show, during a state visit to Cuba on Friday, of forgiving $32 billion of its Soviet-era debt.
This would’ve made sense if Putin did it in exchange for sweetheart business deals. But China’s far more sensible and shrewd president, Xi Jinping, had already struck most of those deals, which he intended to seal during his own state visit to Cuba the following week.
More to the point, Xi did it pursuant to China’s master plan to wield, with hard cash, the kind of superpower influence the Soviet Union wielded with military might.
As I noted when Obama was lecturing Xi on cyberspying, while the United States accuses China of gaining superpower-economic status by cyberspying, China is gaining superpower-political/military status by brazenly buying up alliances all over the world.
Frankly, Putin is just wasting billions trying to make Cuba as strategic to Russia today as it was to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. The strategic folly of this is surpassed only by the billions he wasted showcasing this year’s Sochi Winter Olympics at a cost of $51 billion, especially when juxtaposed with the $6 billion Canada spent putting on the Vancouver Winter Olympics just four years ago.
All that’s left now is for Putin to deploy weapons there and trigger another Cuban Missile Crisis. Never mind that I’m on record affirming Russia’s right to establish a full-scale military base in Cuba or anywhere else, especially given that it’s currently projecting power abroad with a mere 15 military bases, while the United States is doing so with nearly 1000. I decried prevailing American hypocrisy in this respect regarding D-Day commemorations.
In fact, I don’t mind admitting that I appreciate Putin’s motivation. After all, he’s only trying desperately to project Russian strength and pride after decades of the United States not only dancing on the Soviet Union’s grave, but also jamming its prerogatives as “the world’s sole superpower” down Russia’s throat.
Most notable in this respect was establishing military alliances (in Russia’s backyard) with republics of the former Soviet Union, after assuring Russia it would not do so.
But only this sense of pathological resentment explains why Putin would risk bankrupting and isolating Russia. He’s forgiving billions here, throwing away billions there, and engaging in tit-for-tat (or as Putin says, “boomerang”) economic sanctions with the United States and European Union.
Except that growing existential resentment among Russians will, in due course, surpass Putin’s superpower resentment. Because he’s not only misappropriating their money (while they are wallowing in Dickensian poverty), but also sending their sons, disguised as Ukrainian separatists, to die in his vain attempt to control even more Ukrainian territory.
The annexation of Crimea, the media offensive against Kiev and the threat of military force against Ukraine are President Vladimir V. Putin’s ultimate response to Russia’s own failures. His latest actions are a veiled recognition that all of his other efforts to prove that Russia is regaining the Soviet Union’s status as a global superpower have come to nothing.
(New York Times, April 17, 2014)
Meanwhile, just as President Ronald Reagan was prepared to play tit-for-tat for as long as it took for the Soviet Union to spend itself into complete disintegration, President Barack Obama seems prepared to do the same for as long as it takes for Russia to spend itself into further degeneration.
Obama telegraphed this intent at the White House when he delivered a statement on the unprecedented conflagration of challenges the United States was facing as the world’s sole superpower:
We live in a complex world and at a challenging time…
None of these challenges [namely, Ukraine’s fight for sovereignty from Russia, Iran’s attempt to develop nuclear weapons, rampaging jihadists calling themselves ISIS/ISIL terrorizing Iraq, and the ongoing conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians] lend themselves to quick or easy solutions, but all of them require American leadership…
I’m confident if we stay patient and determined that we will, in fact, meet these challenges.’
(The Associated Press, July 17, 2014)
Again, Putin is engaged in a foolhardy, costly, deadly, and ultimately unwinnable geopolitical-chess game. But iPINIONS fears it’s game on between him and anyone who stands in the way of his neo-Soviet ambitions. As evidenced by the current Groundhog-day flare up between Israelis and Palestinians, the world remains a powder keg of competing interests and wounded pride.
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