So my friends it begins again. May Putin, Medvedev and Sechin find a warm glass of Pulonium in their vodka. The masters of the dark arts return.

Back to the Cubans, would they actually want Russian bombers on their soil? At the moment the US has no EU support for sanctions on Cuba, so logically wouldn’t a Cuban/Russian love-in push the EU and those with better relations with Cuba, closer to the Americans? Fidel’s brother is already implenting reforms such as allowing mobile phones and leasing land to private farmers – ratcheting up the pressure could well be something the Cuban economy might not cope to well with.

There isn’t much evidence Washington wanted to threaten the USSR in the 1950s. Contain yes, threaten no. The Korean War and Berlin Airlift – the two most significant Cold War events in the 1950s – were unprovoked acts of aggression carried out at the behest of Stalin.

Thus far, there is no confirmation that Russia is indeed returning militarily to Cuba. It is, however, a signal of what could happen if the United Stated does not heed Russian demands for Washington to back off from Moscow’s turf. This would be, in Moscow’s eyes, an equal response to the United States’ signing ballistic missile defense system treaties with the Czech Republic and Poland — right on Russia’s doorstep — as well as discussing NATO membership with the former Soviet states of Ukraine and Georgia.

Russia did, in fact, respond to the West’s encroachment: cutting energy supplies to Europe and sending more military into Georgia’s secessionist regions. But the problem was that Moscow simply hadn’t gotten Washington’s attention.

Washington has been too wrapped up in other issues — such as the upcoming presidential election, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, negotiations with Iran and simply not believing Russia had any real tools with which to threaten it –- that it airily dismissed all of Moscow’s provocations. This has made Russia’s reprisals Europe’s problem at a time when Moscow wants to prove it once again is a global power and can stand up against its traditional foe: the United States. So Russia sent a signal of something that the United States simply cannot ignore — the moving of the Russian-U.S. tug-of-war from Russia’s doorstep to the U.S. doorstep. This is a serious threat and one with which Washington is quite familiar.

The Cuba option would be a powerful move against the United States — just as it was during the 1950s and 1960s — because it directly penetrates the United States’ immediate periphery. Combine the Cuba rumors with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s trip to Moscow this past week — which held its own flurry of rumored deals over Russian bases and defense deals — and Moscow is reminding the Americans of a prior miscalculation. In the 1950s, Washington assumed that it could threaten the Soviet Union along its borders in Europe, South Asia and East Asia. And the United States believed it could not be threatened in its homeland, in the Western Hemisphere — America assumed no foreign power would dare violate the Monroe Doctrine. Washington bet that Moscow did not have an equivalent threat, and it was wrong.

The Soviet Union’s move into Cuba back then changed the entire dynamic of the Cold War. The Soviet presence threatened the sea lanes out of the Gulf of Mexico, major facilities in Florida, all of the Caribbean airspace and some of the Eastern Seaboard. It forced the U.S. Navy and Air Force to shift resources and account for Soviet units there. It diverted the CIA into Latin America, forcing the conflicts in Central American and Grenada. Despite its inherent military vulnerability, Cuba was one of the most strategic Soviet assets. Nothing was the same after Cuba.

The Russians are reminding the Americans of their prior miscalculations on how Russians respond to perceived threats. The United States has shifted its focus from its periphery and once again moved to responding to threats that could never truly physically hit the homeland — such as an Iranian missile threat. In the nearly 20 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has returned to and enjoyed a world where any potential military threat is an ocean and half a world away.

For now, this is just a signal and no real movement on the ground has been made. Russia is serious, however, about its ability to follow through if the United States does not release the pressure elsewhere. The moves over Cuba are not an indicator of the Russians’ global intentions, but are meant to signal an increase in Moscow’s assertiveness. It is a gutsy and interesting move by the Russians. We have yet to see whether the Americans have really noticed (or want to admit that they noticed) and can divert attention from the Middle East and domestic politics to address the Russian threat — either by backing down or by escalating the situation, which would bring back a Cold War standoff.

Of course, if Washington and Moscow do get serious about things such as Cuba, then the U.S. escalation would go far beyond what Russia currently feels threatened over.

Toss the former KGB agent and current Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin into the mix and let him get back to his old drinking buddys from the “good ole’” days of smuggling arms in Latin America and heck who needs a Jihad to keep the military machine rolling were back to 1962, except now the Russians have a little bit of money to work with and the US is in Afganistan. Will Czar Vlady start banging his shoe on the podium?? I watch with curisoity

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Why don’t you ask that question of Guillory, Johnson, Straus and a number of others, who know considerably less than yours truly on a good number of FSU topics?”

Ah Mike – no. I was genuinely asking! You’d said ages ago that you were indeed learning, hence the question. For once I wasnt actually trying to piss you off.
Shit man, take it easy!