So Russia ain't givin' up the ice

Wow. Talk about frostiness at the NATO/Russia Council meeting. I think Russia wants to return to the Cold War, when things were so much easier. Forget war on terror, global economics, child soldiers, genocide and all that trash; wasn't it nicer when you could just base your whole foreign policy on hating the US?

So we're working with Europe on installing a missile defense system. As nations around the globe are acquiring nuclear technology -- didn't both Russia and the US just participate in six-party talks to address the DPRK's nuclear technology? -- the US has recognized the value of a missile defense system. I still like Reagan's "Star Wars."

Here's Russia's response, according to the AP, via Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov: " We cannot be unconcerned by the fact that NATO military infrastructure is creeping up to our borders...They are still looking for an enemy..."

OK, lemme get this straight: they're worried about NATO military infrastructure creeping up to their borders, yet they're maintaning a Cold-War style buffer zone, refusing to remove their troops from Georgia and Moldova? How does that fly? I believe that psychologists term that "projection": projecting one's own faults onto another. Now my question is, does Russia not realize that it's placed not just its military infrastructure, but its military, beyond other sovereign nations' borders, or does it just prefer to exercise what we call (say it slowly with me, Dr. Evil style) "the double standard"?

Now Russia's basing this response, according to the AP, on the "belief that the installation of American interceptors in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic would post a threat to its nuclear arsenal."

A threat to its nuclear arsenal.

If Russia's concerned about its nuclear arsenal, should it not focus more on the Russian mafia within its own borders than a radar station in the Czech Republic?

Ahem. Logic 1, rhetoric 0.

So Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice takes the ball to the basket: "Let's be real about this and realistic about this...The idea that somehow 10 interceptors and a few radars in Eastern Europe are going to threaten the Soviet strategic deterrent is purely ludicrous and everybody knows it."

Smackdown! Condi owns Sergei. "Purely ludicrous"--my respect for this woman has just tripled.

I can definitely see the logic in the statement. So Russia's basing its strategic deterrent on its nuclear arsenal. Fine. But the USSR no longer exists, the Cold War is over, and the US and Russia have been on civil, if not friendly, terms for the past decade and then some. How is our missile defense system going to threaten Russia's strategic defense, since it really should not be worrying about an American offensive in the first place? It was a strategic defense against the US twenty years ago, not today. We have no reason to aim an offensive at Russia because it is a frail giant on the decline.

Yet I do disagree with one point of Secretary Rice's statement. No, Condi, not everybody knows it. Vladimir and Sergei are reliving the Cold War, and if they don't cease their childish and disruptive bravado, I'm going to start calling them Soviets.