Citat:
Putin’s Activation of ‘Iskander-M’ Ballistic Missile Is a Message to Obama
The KGB officer in the Kremlin seeks one last, grand strategic humiliation for our president before he leaves office
It’s long been obvious that Vladimir Putin and his inner circle view Barack Obama with utter contempt. To the hard men in Moscow, who got their schooling in the KGB, our diffident, wordy Ivy League lawyer president is a weakling—almost a caricature of everything they despise about the postmodern West.
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It’s therefore no surprise that Russians view Obama with contempt—and so does their leader. As our president winds up his second term and prepares to move out of the White House, the Kremlin simply isn’t bothering to hide that contempt any longer, even in high-level diplomacy, where a modicum of tact is expected.
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This has now descended into farce, with Russia’s foreign ministry tweeting mocking insults at America’s top diplomat. Like the infamous honey badger, the Kremlin simply doesn’t care one whit what we think. We can at least count our blessings that Secretary Kerry hasn’t dispatched James Taylor to Moscow.
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This has become deeply embarrassing as the Syrian nightmare has descended into war crimes and even genocide on a truly horrifying scale. For an administration that prided itself on its alleged humanitarianism, this is an appalling ending which the world will not soon forget. The Russians, of course, have acted like Russians, bombing and shelling haphazardly, adding impressively to the death toll among Syrian civilians. This, too, was easily foreseeable by anyone who witnessed what happened to Chechnya. Moscow does not believe in tears, as they say.
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Just in case anybody in the Pentagon missed that unsubtle move, Russia’s defense ministry this week bluntly stated that any effort by American airpower to change “facts on the ground” in Syria will be countered with live fire.(...)
This was all predictable. Ever an opportunist, Putin is simply running the table in the waning months of Obama’s presidency. The Kremlin may never see an American president this weak-willed again, so the Russians are making the most of this undeserved geostrategic gift while they still can. Signs of this aggressive opportunism are everywhere.
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Obama has gone to great lengths to deny that we’re in Cold War 2.0, as I explained after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, but Putin isn’t playing along with that script. (...)
Much of this is just for show, hardly more than chest-thumping by Moscow. (...)
That said, some of the Kremlin’s current military moves are deeply alarming and indicate a risk-taking mood in Russia’s leadership that ought to seriously worry NATO and the Pentagon.(...)
Overflights of Finland and Estonia (...) by Russian aircraft have become almost routine, an on-going demonstration of Kremlin honeybadgerness. But those aerial cat-and-mouse games are customarily done by slow, unarmed Russian planes, just to send a message to the Finns and Estonians to not get any ideas about disobeying Moscow.
This week, however, Putin upped the ante by sending armed fighter jets to intimidate Helsinki and Tallinn. Yesterday, two Su-27 fighters of the Russian air force, called Flankers by NATO, overflew Finland. Their incursions were brief but, significantly, the Flankers were armed for combat.
Then, early this morning, another Flanker violated Estonian airspace—fully armed and with its transponder turned off. (...)If the Russians keep sending armed jets over Estonia, the odds of a confrontation with NATO fighters rise dramatically.
Today’s biggest news, however, comes from Estonian reports that the Russian military is sending Iskander-M missiles to Kaliningrad on a civilian freighter. It’s expected to dock in Kaliningrad today with its alarming cargo.
(...)An Iskander-M based in Kaliningrad can strike targets deep in Poland and across the whole Baltic region. Make no mistake, this is primarily an offensive weapons system.
(...)For Warsaw and several other NATO capitals, this move resembles a Baltic version of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
This constitutes a direct challenge to Washington by Moscow—and by Vladimir Putin to Barack Obama, personally. The KGB officer in the Kremlin is seeking to get in one last, grand strategic humiliation for our president before he leaves office. And why not? Such reckless antics have worked well for the Russians so far, given Obama’s preference to avert eyes and hope for the best whenever Moscow misbehaves.
Not to mention that Putin is surely aware that his window of opportunity is closing soon. The campaign of the very Kremlin-friendly Donald Trump is in free-fall, so Moscow will likely have to contend with an angry Hillary Clinton in the White House in a little more than three months. She knows all too well that the Kremlin has pulled out all the stops to hurt her election chances—between spying, hacking, intimidation, and leaks of Democratic emails—and if the Clintons excel at anything it’s personal vendettas. The time for Putin to act, therefore, is now. Get ready, it’s going to be a bumpy autumn.
