Nearly 17 years after the bankruptcy and downfall of the former Soviet Union, the sleeping bear we were warned about has awakened. To paraphrase Robert Kaplan, the days of Mother Russia as grand adversary are back.

 

Events of the past few weeks represent nothing more than a mouse stirring in the attic of our collective memories; there is something familiar about it all. The unprovoked Russian invasion of Georgia, which began scrupulously the moment the Beijing Olympics began, does not imply that the reconstitution of the old Soviet Union is imminent or likely, nor does it raise the specter of a new ideological struggle against world communism. This is not the Cold War incarnate. It is, however, the largest post-Cold War foreign policy challenge the United States has faced (with the obvious exception of 9/11 and its subsequent ripple effects throughout the Middle East). 

 

Vladimir Putin might not seek a resurrection of the Soviet empire, per se, inasmuch as he is not currently attempting to impose Marxist-Leninism across the planet (I think even he knows this pathology has been discredited, and the chances of such an occurrence are zilch). But this ex-apparatchik killer does, without any equivocation, garner dreams of restoring the old pre-Bolshevik czarist Russian empire. 

 

The manner with which he has consolidated power inside Russia – and bullied tiny republics which border Russia – is as equally remarkable as it is detestable. Critical journalists are jailed, successful businessmen are killed, dissidents and (sometimes) heads-of-state overseas are mysteriously poisoned, and his dictatorial Federation Council destroys any semblance of existing Russian democratic institutions. And he does it all with the quiet smirk and cold eyes of a murderous KGB assassin (his old profession from his pre-statesman days).

 

So, what is the world to do? There are several options:

 

First, the United States must let it be known to Moscow that we understand who we are dealing with. Putin is not a man who shares principles resultant from Western constitutional philosophy. He maintains that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the “greatest political catastrophe of the last century,” and today refers to the mass-murdering Joseph Stalin as a “so-called criminal” – not even the cantankerous Khrushchev spoke as admiringly about Soviet dictators than a visibly nostalgic Putin.

 

It is generally believed that President Bush scorns and warns Putin when in private. This is not enough; publicly the two seem almost like hearty frat brothers. The next administration cannot afford to bestow this kind of international public legitimacy to an executioner like this.

 

Putin’s recent “transition” from the Russian “presidency” to the Russian “premiership” was a total farce. At what was supposed to be the end of the Putin era, no-name Dmitry Medvedev was hand-picked by Putin and his cronies and installed as the dimple-cheeked, baby-faced Good Cop successor. 

 

But Putin is, and will remain, the Bad Cop for the foreseeable future. 

 

When Medvedev’s term in office is over, Putin will select another puppet, someone perhaps we have never even heard of, to be “elected” to the Kremlin – all the while, it will be Putin, the generalissimo, as head-honcho in charge. Our leaders and allies should state this reality in open forums whenever speaking publicly, so as to undermine Vlad the Impaler’s international credibility.

 

Second, the United States and its various European alliances – EU-3, EU, NATO, etc. – need to liberate themselves from their supposed dependency on Russian assistance vis-à-vis oil imports and thwarting the Iranian nuclear program.

 

Faint-hearts who fret and nail-bite over the possibility of angering Putin to such an extent that he will reverse Russian cooperation in these matters need to explain how blackmailing Europe with energy exports, and blocking any strong action against Iran within the UN – indeed, arming and financing the Iranian regime – is to be considered valued “cooperation.” By challenging the Iranians in other ways, and by opening up new oil markets, the West must send a clear message to Putin: We don’t need you.

 

Third, take whatever Charles Krauthammer says about the conflict seriously. He has already advocated a) announcing a boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics at Sochi right away, b) barring Russian entry into the WTO, c) suspending the NATO-Russian Council, and d) rather than kicking Russia out of the G-8, simply dissolving the G-8 to form a new G-7 (while not inviting Russia). Good ideas all.

 

Fourth, call Putin’s bluff. In the days following the Russian conquest of Georgia, former Soviet satellites – Baltic states like Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania – showed great solidarity with Tbilisi. Poland announced its intentions to deploy U.S. missile defense systems (which was met with Russian threats). Ukraine, which seems to be next on Putin’s hit-list, has begun to challenge Moscow, while speaking publicly about joining NATO. 

 

This pre-planned Russian invasion was not about South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Moscow wants to control the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, to continue its blackmailing ways, to make Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan wholly dependant on its masters in the Kremlin, and to become the rulers of the Caspian Sea export-market.

 

But with U.S. resolve, Putin’s attempts to bully these former captive states, bringing them into Russia’s sphere of influence, will backfire. These infant democracies – “New Europe,” if you will – will rally together, and they will rally towards the West. Rather than placate Putin by ignoring the possibility of new alliances with these countries, we should welcome their eagerness to forge closer bonds with us. (For years, there has been chatter over how the U.S. doesn’t have the same kind of relationships with its allies as it once did. Well, here is a perfect opportunity to reverse that supposed trend.)

 

Fifth, challenge long-term Russian self-sufficiency. In 1981, Col. Vladimir I. Vetrov defected to the West, and described to his new hosts a very secretive program whereby the KGB would steal technical and scientific knowledge created and innovated in the United States and Europe. This was known as the “Farewell Dossier.”

 

Within months, Reagan’s White House and Bill Casey’s CIA created a counter-intelligence program to supply some of these technologies, and to put them out on the market. But there was a fatal catch: the technologies would appear legitimate but had a shelf-life of efficiency, and would later prove defective and destructive. By using the Russian need to steal American technology, the West was able to sabotage the Russian program, forcing Moscow to waste billions in revenue to steal faulty technology.

 

Putin has a penchant for cyber-warfare and technological espionage. Let’s give him a taste of his own medicine with something similar to the Farewell Dossier. 

 

For all his braggadocio, Putin must worry privately about the future of his country. On the inside, Russia is weak. Its army is a generation-and-a-half behind ours. Its weaponry is near-obsolete. Its economy is not diversified; the moment the global price of oil drops, or the moment the rest of the world transitions to something other than oil, Russia’s economy will collapse much like it did during the fall of the USSR. 

 

And to top this all off, Russia is one of the only countries in the world that is actually depopulating.  Every year, the Russian census loses around 700,000 people. This is not natural throughout human history. By mid-century, Russia – without petrodollars and with fewer than 100 million citizens – will be nothing more than a third-rate power. Think of modern-day Indonesia, but with neater hats and colder weather.

 

In the interim, though, Russia’s power-play is too important to trivialize. Sometimes we tend to view the world through the respective prisms we would prefer to view it. During the Cold War, Reagan famously derided the Middle East as too complex to get entrenched in; the Soviets were Bad Guy numero uno, understandably, and thus withdrawal from Beirut, and submissiveness to an Iranian-backed Hezbollah fresh from killing hundreds of Marines, made more geopolitical sense. At the time, Islamic extremists were not the primary motivating factor in our national defense. The Red Army was.

 

We mustn’t subscribe to the same logic today. It was a mistake to take Islamist terrorism lackadaisically from 1979 until 2001, even though part of that time overlapped our twilight battle with Moscow. Likewise, it would be a grave error if we were to dice up our foreign affairs and prioritize our counterterrorism efforts over this new apparent necessity to hedge off against Putin. 

 

Russia’s recent belligerence does not mean our life-and-death struggle against Jihadists is over, or now somehow less important… and it does not mean we have entered another bipolar paradigm reminiscent of the Cold War.

 

It simply means we must judge Vladimir Putin as he is forcing us to judge him. The question remains: which presidential candidate is ready to do that?

 

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