Ralph Peters: “Putin Wins Again”
This is what columnist and former US Army intelligence officer Ralph Peters has to say about Vladimir Putin in the New York Post:
“Geez, this guy is good.
A few years back, I wrote that Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was the most impressive major leader on today's world stage. Since then, he's gotten better.
Back then, he was eating President George W. Bush for breakfast. Now he's snacking on President Obama as sushi -- eating him raw, in happy little bites.
Putin's ruthless, unforgiving and murderous. He also has a clear vision of what he wants, the strength of will to get it -- and a stunning ability to spot the weaknesses in his foreign counterparts.
Putin's the Evil Empire's belated answer to President Ronald Reagan. Where the Gipper focused uncompromisingly on bringing down the Soviet imperium, Putin focuses uncompromisingly on restoring imperial Russia.
And he's making progress, as US leaders and their advisers bumble and stumble along with neither a clear strategic vision nor a rational sense of foreign-policy priorities.”
“The crash of an aircraft carrying Poland's fiercely anti-Russian president and his key advisers may have been just amazingly good luck on Putin's part, but it's the kind of luck to which we should pay attention. Russia's neighbors certainly have.”
“Putin's certainly not a good man. But he is a great man -- perhaps the most capable national leader of our time. He's also a very dangerous man.”
As Peters correctly notes, a large part of Putin’s success is due to American incompetence, specifically that of the strategically clueless (“I don’t believe in things like victory”) Obama administration.
“He cunningly let Obama bamboozle himself into a gotta-have-it-now Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that damages US conventional capabilities while Russia gives up only old junk it needed to dump anyway.”
“Last week, Putin supported the overthrow of the US-backed government of Kyrgyzstan, tightening his chokehold on our northern supply route into Afghanistan. The Obama administration was utterly blindsided ("Where's Kyrgyzstan?").”
“On Iran, Putin's a savvy old tomcat toying with the Obama mouse. While Moscow's overt, covert and clandestine trade with Tehran continues, Putin does his good-cop/bad-cop routine with President Dmitry Medvedev, keeping hope alive in the White House that, this time, Russia will finally back meaningful sanctions. Sarah Palin will sign on with Code Pink first.
Meanwhile, our president continues to play into Putin's hands. At this week's Nuclear Vanity Summit (which accomplished nothing), Obama snubbed Georgia's president, Mikhail Saakashvili. Putin will read that as license to renew his aggression against the struggling democracy in Tbilisi (first Kyrgyzstan, then Georgia?). Obama had time for Putin's Ukrainian puppet, President Viktor Yanukovych, though.”
“A major test for Obama comes this Sunday, when our president will pay our respects at the Krakow funeral of Poland's freedom-loving president. If Obama allows himself to be photographed smoking and joking with Putin or Medvedev at a Polish grave, it'll send a horrible signal throughout a region that only escaped Moscow's terror two decades ago.”
Nevertheless, I strongly believe that Putin should not be overestimated either. As I have argued before (here , here and here), while Putin is a good fighter, his weakness is that he is not a builder. Until now, he has ridden the wave of high oil prices, which made his reign more impressive than it really is. The problem, that lower oil prices have revealed, is that he did not reinvest any of those windfall profits into rebuilding Russia’s dilapidated infrastructure, even – as incredible as it sounds, considering how dependent Russia is on oil and gas revenue – on its petroleum extracting capabilities. I predict this will be his ultimate undoing.
