I went to Pravda’s (Russian newspaper “Truth”) on-line edition today and found that all the leading stories for the past week were about how the US was terrified by the fact that Russian Tupolev bombers (TU-160s and older TU-95MS) might be stationed in Cuba. However, the odd thing was that none of the US papers seemed to be carrying the story. I finally found an article from a somewhat obscure source ( http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jRv4SGzd1zc9dJleuli9-iVrox9w ) that explained that the nominee for US Air Force Chief of Staff, General Norton Schwartz, had testified that a signal should be sent to Russia not to pursue this policy. However, I did not see the story in the US new services that I normally read.

I did see a very brief story in the New York Times about Hugo Chavez’s willingness to have Venezuela play host to Russian military bases. Chavez cited as a motive the kindred spirits between Venezuela and Russia (It’s interesting that he would claim to be birds-of-a-feather considering that Russia is not socialist state but rather a kind of corrupt authoritarian pseudo-democracy, hmmm?) At any rate, the Venezuela story may be Chavez’s attempt to ramp up the story. Perhaps he reads the US papers and realizes that no one was paying much attention to this.

Russia cannot seem to get the respect it expects. This is all, of course, a response to the basing of radar systems and missile interceptors in the Czech Republic and Poland, as well as the continuing expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) eastward. It follows on the heels of threats to abrogatethe Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, the Moscow Treaty (a.k.a. the Strategic Offensive weapon Reduction Treaty [SORT]), and to do other things that I probably missed myself.

The question is: Should we be concerned? My view is that Russia still holds enormous potential to create global havoc (as likely accidentally as on purpose, granted.) However, it seems that the US public, and political leaders for that matter, only have the energy for one nemesis at a time, and that archenemy is now the global Islamic Extremist Movement. It took quite a number of years past the end of the Cold War for America to adjust away from a Cold War paradigm (some would argue it is alive and well in our military force structure and hardware acquisition, our intelligence community’s mode of operations, and much of the US Federal bureaucracy involved in foreign affairs in general). However, having mostly made a change in mind-set, we cannot make ourselves contemplate the threats posed by Russia on top of everything else that confronts us. I suggest we learn to keep an eye on Russia, and to be actively engaged. It is still has a massive nuclear arsenal, huge energy resources, and, furthermore, a gigantic inferiority complex.