The Toothless Bear Growls Again

Russia continues its recent pattern of scare tactics:

Russia's military space commander vowed to retaliate with an arms race if any country started putting weapon systems into orbit, he said in remarks published on Wednesday.

"We need to have strong rules about space, to avoid its militarization and if any country will place a weapon in space, then our response will be the same," Space Forces Commander Colonel-General Vladimir Popovkin told the newspaper Trud.

I know that there is a strong sentiment out there against the militarization of space, but the realist in me says that it is unavoidable. Space wasn't militarized from the 60's to the 90's because: A) The USSR/Russia knew it couldn't compete with us and would lose any space militarization race B) We had little desire to militarize something that did not need military presence C) The technology and the sophistication wasn't their yet to do it at anything less than astronomical costs. All of that is changing now, though. Except for A. With China showing great interest in militarizing space, we leave our satellite dependent society very vulnerable if we are not prepared to do the same. Additionally, the next space race may be one with economic benefits, and as such there will inevitably be national conflict over space "turf". And the technology is there and space programs seem to be developing into more sophisticated programs that involve long term human presence in space and on other heavenly bodies, making a military presence more realistic than in the days of less than one week orbits and months spent confined to a space station.

Russia is rattling its sabers on this for the exact same reason it agreed to co-operate with us in space during the Cold War and for the same reason that it agreed to space being a demilitarized zone in the first place-because they know they cannot compete with us or the Chinese. If you can't do, then you can't lose much by trying to scare.

Vlad Putin, master of historical perspective

President Vladimir V. Putin seemed to obliquely compare the foreign policy of the United States to the Third Reich in a speech on Wednesday commemorating the 62nd anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.

The comments were the latest in a series of sharply worded Russian criticisms of the foreign policy of the United States — on Iraq, missile defense, NATO expansion and, more broadly, United States unilateralism in foreign affairs.

[...]

“We do not have the right to forget the causes of any war, which must be sought in the mistakes and errors of peacetime,” Mr. Putin said.

“Moreover, in our time, these threats are not diminishing,” he said. “They are only transforming, changing their appearance. In these new threats, as during the time of the Third Reich, are the same contempt for human life and the same claims of exceptionality and diktat in the world.”

The Kremlin press service declined to clarify the statement, saying Mr. Putin’s spokesman was unavailable because of the holiday.

Sergei A. Markov, director of the Institute of Political Studies, who works closely with the Kremlin, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Putin was referring to the United States and NATO. Mr. Markov said the comments should be interpreted in the context of a wider, philosophical discussion of the lessons of World War II. The speech also praised the role of the allies of the Soviet Union in defeating Germany.

If one day Vlad Putin finds U.S. tanks on the doorstep of Moscow, then he can take that line. Until then, he should probably store away his Nazi boogeymen.

So long, Boris

Boris Yeltsin has passed away in Russia. It is going to take a long time for Yeltsin's legacy to be written, and when it is I hope it is more for the good that he did in Russia than for the difficulties the country had during the transition from communism to whatever it is Russia is moving towards now.

Back in the USSR

They keep getting closer.

At their first meeting with journalists since taking over Russia’s largest independent radio news network, the managers had startling news of their own: from now on, they said, at least 50 percent of the reports about Russia must be “positive.”

In addition, opposition leaders could not be mentioned on the air and the United States was to be portrayed as an enemy, journalists employed by the network, Russian News Service, say they were told by the new managers, who are allies of the Kremlin.

How would they know what constituted positive news?

“When we talk of death, violence or poverty, for example, this is not positive,” said one editor at the station who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution. “If the stock market is up, that is positive. The weather can also be positive.”

In a darkening media landscape, radio news had been a rare bright spot. Now, the implementation of the “50 percent positive” rule at the Russian News Service leaves an increasingly small number of news outlets that are not managed by the Kremlin, directly or through the state national gas company, Gazprom, a major owner of media assets.

The three national television networks are already state controlled, though small-circulation newspapers generally remain independent.

Russia has always been a stubborn and slightly backwards nation, as compared to most of Europe, the United States, and Asia. To believe that it would easily slip into Western world after the fall of communism may have been a little naive. For Russia, there is probably a happy hybrid of Westernism and "Russianism," to coin a word. Unfortunately, things like this are a good indicator that Russia is swinging further away from even a hybrid and towards, if not communism, at least a hard authoritarianism again.

U.S. Putin critic shot in Maryland

This is enough to raise one's eyebrows, at least:

FBI agents say they are assisting police in suburban Washington who are investigating the shooting of a Russian expert — a man who spoke out on "Dateline NBC" last weekend and strongly suggested that remnants of the KGB were responsible for the bizarre poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko.

The Russian expert, Paul Joyal, was shot Thursday night as he got out of his car in front of his house in Adelphi, Md. Investigators in Prince Georges County say a witness claims to have seen two men running away after the shooting. Joyal remains hospitalized with a gunshot wound to the midsection. Authorities have not said whether they've been able to talk to him.

The fact that he lived indicates to me that this was just a coincidence. Additionally, Putin has to know that a killing of a U.S. citizen would create a diplomatic shitstorm. Just the same, anytime a critic of Putin's dies mysteriously or, in this case is randomly shot, it pays to look a little deeper into it, because very few people think Putin's Russia is above this sort of thing anymore.