We don’t have to give Russians anything on MD. We WILL deploy it in Poland and Czech Republic, and Russia doesn’t HAVE TO do anything about it, and Putin and everybody else knows it. He’s puffing and bluffing to make himself a Big Man On Campus purely for domestic consumption, but it’s all a show to justify more power grabs like Yukos (ostensibly, to better defend against “Imperialist USA”), and consolidating other oil, gas and steel companies under government control.
Natural resources and UN veto is all they have left now, and Putin is trying to play it for all it’s worth. He is disappointed that he is not treated a big player as he thought he might be, just like Kim. If prices of energy commodities collapse, so does his “empire”. He is blackmailing Europe and Russia’s former republics with energy supply, but he is not gaining any friends. He’ll enjoy it while he can.
“We don’t have to give Russians anything on MD. We WILL deploy it in Poland and Czech Republic, and Russia doesn’t HAVE TO do anything about it, and Putin and everybody else knows it. He’s puffing and bluffing to make himself a Big Man On Campus purely for domestic consumption, but it’s all a show to justify more power grabs like Yukos (ostensibly, to better defend against “Imperialist USA”), and consolidating other oil, gas and steel companies under government control.
Natural resources and UN veto is all they have left now, and Putin is trying to play it for all it’s worth. He is disappointed that he is not treated a big player as he thought he might be, just like Kim. If prices of energy commodities collapse, so does his “empire”. He is blackmailing Europe and Russia’s former republics with energy supply, but he is not gaining any friends. He’ll enjoy it while he can.”
Agreed, although inferiority complexes don’t seem to work out well for those of us involved with these kinds of people, especially one that has a red button attached to the end of modern civilization at his fingertips.