Yeh Putey is already racheting down the rhetoric. I think he’s starting to get that feeling when you wake up naked in a crowd of stangers. :-)
Thanks for your comment GG2. I’m not sure it’s possible to put the Evil Empire back together again. The key to Stalin’s enormous success was Stalinist Terror, and the Gulag System - (slave labor and cannon fodder) Ignorance of the outside world helped to preserve the illusion of the Worker’s Paradise... which is why returning POW’s who had seen Europe’s affluence (Operation Keelhaul) were usually killed or sent straight to the gulags. FDR’s VP Wallace visited one in the 40’s and declared them wonderful cultural and athletic centers, we were so blissfully and pathetically ignorant. Now we know different. Internet has changed a lot of things.
Putin may be the dog that caught the car. If gas prices fall because of the fracking boom (Go Keystone Pipeline!), and Russians resist reimposition of the Gulag system, his imperialist dreams may not be shared by the bulk of the Russian people, if in fact they are now. There were a lot of discipline problems in the Czech invasion of ‘66, and some of the stiffest resistance the Russian army met in Budaest in fall of ‘54 was from defecting Russian soldiers that joined the Csepel factory workers when they realized what they were fighting for.
If Putin sends tank columns into Ukraine there’s going to be one heck of a refugee problem, and I can guarantee some Tianamin Square moments. Ukrainians are crazy passionate about their freedom; they should be in our thoughts and prayers.