Yep Golitsyn nailed it. Some of you are so trapped in your closed minds you failed to take note of one of the most important points in the article. Namely, Golitsyn's analysis lead him to the following conclusions:
Mr. Golitsyn, himself a former elite KGB operative amongst the Kremlin strategists, listed many important objectives, including:
• The Russian military bungling was intended to "demonstrate that it can be discounted as a serious military adversary for the foreseeable future."
• This message was "intended to influence US Congressional debate on the subject of Russia’s military potential and the size of US forces required to maintain a balance with it."
• The message could "also be used as a pretext for deepening the partnership between the US and Russian armed forces by seeking American advice and help in ‘reforming,’ reorganizing and retraining the Russian army in order to enable it to serve a ‘democratic’ system."
• The Chechnyan events also "enabled the Russians to play especially on European fears of destabilization in Russia" and "injected a further boost to the European desire for partnership with the ‘democratic forces’ in Russia."
• This partnership would lead to "entry into European institutions" and then "East European and eventually Russian involvement in NATO."
As usual, Mr. Golitsyn’s cogent analysis has proven prescient as well; all of the above objectives, and others he mentioned, have been advanced on the Russian chessboard — to a frightful degree. And, as usual, Golitsyn’s warnings and analyses have been ignored and supressed by the CFR insiders dominating U.S. policy-making positions, Establishment think tanks, and the press. (See the sidebar.)
Russia’s New Front Man
Mr. Golitsyn suggested that the Chechnyan "crisis" might be "a possible planned prelude to a change of government," replacing the spent Yeltsin team with a new set of rotating faces. "Since an outright military or nationalist government [in Russia] might prejudice the flow of Western aid and the continued ‘cooperation’ with the West which furthers the strategists’ interests," he said, it is likely that the Kremlin strategists wielding the real power behind the scenes would replace Yeltsin with a team comprised of a tough new president and a "reformist" prime minister. "The President would be presented as a guarantee of Russian stability while the Prime Minister’s task would be to ensure the continued flow of Western aid and the continuation of cooperative operations."
Enter Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the Russian "hero" of the Chechnyan pogrom. President Putin, the current player sitting in the Kremlin’s big chair, may seem in charge of moving the Russian pieces around the board, says Christopher Story, but he is merely the current front man for the covert Communist leadership collective that has continued to rule Russia since the Soviet Union’s supposed collapse. Mr. Story is perhaps the world’s leading proponent of Golitsyn’s thesis that the "Soviet collapse" was a controlled deception, planned many years in advance, for long-range strategic purposes.
Some of us aren't birchies, but don't trust ol' Pooty-poot. If you can't see Putin's power grab in response to Beslan, your blinders are huge. Some, if not most, conspiracy theories are paranoid bunk, but the avarice of Putin and his contemporaries is not one of them, IMHO. The books that GIJoel mentioned have been around for twenty years, and the plan outlined therein keeps getting validated.
Here's a thought to ponder: Who did Putin point to when responding to the tragedy of Beslan? The West. Given that Islam and its terror were borne of the Middle East, what is the logic of blaming the West? There is indeed a logic, albeit not a comfortable one.