Pirate's Cove

When will the NY Times apologize to Mitt Romney for laughing at him for this?

“When you were asked, what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said ‘Russia.’ Not Al-Qaeda; you said Russia,” Obama charged. “And, the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”

That was a big point in the 2012 election, and hurt Mitt, with media folks taking him to task. Others have noted that Mitt was rather correct, and now

It’s Putin’s World. We Just Live in It.

Its economy, already smaller than Italy’s, may be sputtering but, two decades after a virtually unknown former K.G.B. spy took power in the Kremlin on Dec. 31, 1999, Russia and its president, Vladimir V. Putin, have just had what could be their best year yet.

The United States, an implacable foe during the Cold War but now presided over by a president determined to “get along with Russia,” is convulsed and distracted by impeachment; Britain, the other main pillar of a trans-Atlantic alliance that Mr. Putin has worked for years to undermine, is also turning inward and just voted for a government that vows to exit the European Union by the end of January.

The Middle East, where American and British influence once reigned supreme, has increasingly tilted toward Moscow as it turned the tide of war in Syria, provided Turkey, a member of NATO, with advanced missile systems, and signed contracts worth billions of dollar with Saudi Arabia, America’s closest ally in the Arab world. Russia has also drawn close to Egypt, another longtime American ally, become a key player in Libya’s civil war, and moved toward what looks more and more like an alliance with China.

It has been barely five years since President Barack Obama’s dismissive 2014 judgment of Russia as a “regional power” capable only of threatening its neighbors “not out of strength but out of weakness.” Its successes raise a mystifying question: How has a country like Russia, huge in size — it has 11 time zones — but puny when measured by economic and other important metrics, become such a potent force?

Not really mentioned is Obama ignoring the dangers from Putin controlled Russia for 8 years. Nor Obama telling Medvedev on a hot mike that he’d have more flexibility when he won the election. There was no real pushback against Russian expansion. What did he really do when Russia invaded Crimea?

But, then, what could be done? Would we go to war? Russia isn’t Iraq. It has submarines and carriers and attack ships and lots more troops and tanks and missiles, and, oh, yeah, nuclear weapons. Obama and Hillary tried to muck around with Russian elections (which led to Russia mucking around in an attempt to make sure Hillary lost). Russia has always punched above its weight class, due to its outsized military. Otherwise, it would be a true 3rd world shithole.

“Maybe he’s holding small cards, but he seems unafraid to play them,” said Michael McFaul, a former United States ambassador to Moscow and now a scholar at Stanford. “That’s what makes Putin so scary.”

Mr. Putin acknowledged as much in an interview with the film director Oliver Stone. “The question is not about having much power,” he said. “It’s about using the power you have in the right way.”

And Putin likes to use that power. But, here’s the most telling paragraph

Russian mind games have been particularly successful in the United States, which Mr. Putin and his officials regularly accuse of paranoid Russophobia but whose fixation on Russia has only multiplied the force of its influence. Moscow’s efforts to sow division through Facebook and other social media platforms were low-budget and often primitive, but they have had a disproportionate effect on the American political process.

And the NY Times and the rest of the Democrat supporting news outlets have fallen for it time and again, just like the rest of the Democrats.

Read: Good News: It’s Putin’s World, And We’re Living In It »