Is Putin Performing a ‘Crazy Ivan’? A New Cold War Stirs
The term ‘Crazy Ivan‘ was made famous by Tom Clancy’s first novel - ‘The Hunt for Red October‘ - published in 1984 and the subsequent blockbuster movie starring Harrison Ford and Sean Connery.
The term, as called out by Sonar Operator Seaman Jones [Courtney B. Vance], is (or was) used by the U.S. Navy to describe a Soviet submarine maneuver - where a Soviet submarine commander would instruct his crew to perform a sudden series of sharp turns in order to check for adversaries hiding behind the submarine in its “baffles” [where the submarine's own propellers 'wake' blocks sonar coverage].
The ‘Crazy Ivan‘ turns - instigated by paranoia or fear of American submarines getting too close - was an extremely dangerous performance and catastrophic collisions could and did happen when American submarines did in fact follow too close!
For the sake of pure nostalgia for the ‘Cold War‘ - a more simple time it seems - when the grandiose ambitions of two superpower adversaries were kept clearly in check by an apocalyptic arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM’s) - is it possible that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is performing a series of diplomatic ‘Crazy Ivans’?
In recent months Putin’s rhetoric against the U.S. - supported by his notion of the U.S.’s overbearing, hegemonic, influence in global affairs - has risen to a near fever pitch. Is this just good old fashioned Soviet paranoia? After all, Vladimir Putin is a product of the Soviet KGB - as an intelligence officer at the highest point of the Cold War.
As previous discussed (in an earlier post) Russia has finally emerged from the depths of post-Soviet lethargy and despair and its economic and political power is enjoying a resurgence under the, some might argue, dictatorial leadership of President Putin.
Putin has started to look beyond the borders of Russia and has cast an envious focus on the nations that were formerly choked by Soviet dominance. To his recently stated annoyance - ten states of the former Soviet Union are now members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.
Four additional former Soviet states are vying for membership to this treaty of nations seeking ’solidarity, freedom and security’ - Albania, Croatia and Macedonia and Georgia.
NATO, to some degree a relic of the Cold War itself, refuses to fade gracefully into history books and is enjoying a resurgence of activity in Afghanistan and as a global tool of the U.S.’s declared ‘War on Terror’.
Under the first term of President George W Bush - the U.S. announced the phased roll-out and deployment of a missile defense shield and five years later this ‘phased’ deployment has reached the borders of Russia! NATO member countries seeking the benefits, security and comfort of the U.S. have eagerly embraced the installation of listening stations and missile interceptors on their territories and literally within miles of Russia.
President Bush announced the purpose of this anti-ballistic missile shield on December 17, 2002 in a White House press conference. Only fourteen months after the catastrophic events of 9/11, he was only too eager to tie this terrorist event into his strategy for an all-encompassing shield from perceived ‘evil doers’.
September 11, 2001 underscored that our Nation faces unprecedented threats, in a world that has changed greatly since the Cold War. To better protect our country against the threats of today and tomorrow, my Administration has developed a new national security strategy, and new supporting strategies for making our homeland more secure and for combating weapons of mass destruction. Throughout my Administration, I have made clear that the United States will take every necessary measure to protect our citizens against what is perhaps the gravest danger of all: the catastrophic harm that may result from hostile states or terrorist groups armed with weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them.
Russia made a mumbled rejection of this strategy - the deployment of an anti-ballistic missile system and the withdrawal by the U.S. from the 30-year old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty - in 2002 and its foreign minister simply stated his ‘regret‘.
Five years later and the Russians have become a little more emphatic in their unease and annoyance wth the U.S. and Russian relations have taken a distinctly chilly turn for the worse.
Earlier this month (February 9, 2007) - Russian Presidential candidate and former Russian Secretary of Defense, Sergei Ivanov, called the shield a “a new virtual Berlin wall.”
The Russian state media, RIA-Novosi, said it best, “Moscow has always strongly resisted the deployment of a missile shield in its former backyard in Central Europe, describing the plans as a threat to national security.”
President Putin declared his utter distaste for U.S. foreign policy - as noted in a previous post - at the recent 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy.
Putin states quite bluntly, “One state … the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?”
In an escalation of tensions, Russia’s General Nikolai Solovtsov has even gone so far as to threaten an effective withdrawal from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty, which forced the US and the Soviet Union to ban nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles - as reports the Financial Times.
And yesterday, February 21st, U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, was reported to have ‘lashed back‘ at threats by Russia to target former-Soviet states willing and able to station the U.S. missile shield on their territories with nuclear warheads.
At the press conference between Secretary Rice and the German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Rice emphatically stated that “these missile defenses are for purposes having to do with post-9/11 threats.”
Whilst we can look almost romantically at the simple notion of the ‘Cold War’ - of two easily labeled foes with one mutually understood problem, ‘distrust’ - those simple days have been replaced by a greatly weakened U.S., an energetic Russia with newfound monopolistic energy wealth, and a destabilized and fractured ‘war on terror’ against an Islamofascism that makes Communism look positively quaint.
With a new U.S. administration in scheduled for 2008 and a ‘potentially‘ new Russian presidency in the same year - the world once again stands on the brink of chilly hostilities between countries with nuclear superpower capabilities. [Russia still possesses and regularly services its 10,000 nuclear weapons with bravado-based spit'n'polish!] Don’t we have enough on our plates right now?
Putin performs a political ‘Crazy Ivan’ and a new ‘Cold War’ stirs. Lovely.
Posted on February 22nd, 2007 under Anti-Missile Shield, Crazy Ivan, Czech Republic, NATO, Poland, Putin, Russia, Sergei Ivanov • 
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June 4th, 2007 at 4:02 am
Just a short comment that neither Croatia nor Macedonia were ever “Soviet states”. Former Yugoslavia was a very different country from the rest of the Soviet bloc.
February 21st, 2008 at 7:48 am
Putin is a bit smarter than you give him credit for. He sees the big picture, thus why he is on the “other” side. IE, wary of NATO, also gives some underhanded support for Iran instead of Israel.
The US has been rallying an aura of wariness towards Russia.
February 25th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Russia is a Superpower again, there is no question there are. There is enough information out there that provides plenty of facts Russia is back on the Superpower front: http://www.kommersant.com/page.asp?id=768929
Yet the issue why Russia is up in arms again is the issue with NATO (this concerns China too). It boils down to from the original promise from former US president Ronald Reagan, telling President Mikhail Gorbachev of Russia if he releases 15 Soviet countries on their own, the US would not force NATO membership to post Soviet countries. Seeing what the US has been doing and detecting democracy on Post Soviet countries to join NATO and the EU is a violation of Ronald Reagan’s agreement to Russia.
Russia has every right to start the arms race again, they hold the world’s largest nuclear weapon arsenal but for the US to police the world to ask post Soviet countries to jump the NATO fence only makes the matter worse with Russia but also China is so close to Russia, they both join the same agreements with each other on their disagreement with NATO & the EU.
The money is rolling into Russia by the trillions as they are now the 5th fastest growing country in the world currently; I mean all their soviet agencies from 1991 have all been turned back on again. They are building 17 major aircraft carriers in the next 20 years (as they are planning to build the world’s largest Navy fleet as they hold the world largest nuclear submarine defense fleet such as building more Russian Typhoon nuclear ICBM missile subs and etc. I mean there is so much being invested in Russian military arsenals that the US foreign policy spoken by presidential candidate Ron Paul that all the US foreign policy spending is making the matters worse with Russia and it’s relationship with the US. Things are starting allover again and the US being so dependent on oil, Iran and Venezuela can withdraw its oil supply to the US at anytime if the US continues to push these counties on the edge. If the oil card is pushed, the US will down fall the entire economy as Russia has been building more allies and the US is losing of it allies (because of it’s expensive foreign policy).
I am an American but I see Russia’s point of view about NATO & the European Union which is really the famous “Bilderberg Group” http://www.prisonplanet.com/reuters_bilderberg.html with is behind the EU banks. Bilderberg is behind a lot of the foreign issues and its connections with the US, NATO and money from the EU. There are plans in places that obviously Russia & China see but the rest of the world doesn’t seem to understand what the US is doing with NATO and the EU memberships.
The EU and NATO need to be stopped. Countries will not rest with these invasions from NATO and the US foreign policies and so will Russia will be up in arms with more nuclear missiles and etc that they are already doing.
February 21st, 2009 at 1:58 am
“Alex”, I’m approving this ‘comment’ despite your negative name calling. “sucks all together” etc because - unlike Russia media - we don’t murder folks with disparate opinions.
Thanks for reading and contributing. Hope to hear from you again. Op.
Ok, first of all, IMHO this website is very stereotypical and sucks all together, but back to the article…almost all countries listed here were never in the Soviet Union…I mean for god’s sake, Poland!? Romania? Hungary… yeah. Really whoever publishes this gets paid very well. Typical propaganda. Second of all money are not rolling into Russia by trillions, as our (yes, im russian) gov-t is trying to exclude US dollars out of the Russian economy, as they are just trash of US inflation (this is why US is losing allies, *Scott*, as US currency being used in foreign countries along with their own is the main cause of inflation, China is the main victim of this: asian crisis, 1993) And i’ll come back to that at the end of the comment. Third, russians are not planning to build the world’s largest navy, at least the gov-t doesn’t really have any reason to do so. And finally, Gorbachev was not the president of USSR, not Russia (yes, there is a difference and I’m pretty sure some people got shocked by this.)
Now back to the whole US inflation thing. During WW2 US suffered the least of all the world countries (believe it or not.) Thus, it was a good idea to keep your buisinesses in the US currency as it was relatively stable compared to the actual gold currency. US gov-t used that to their advantage to get rid of the inflation that was in the country (US still did suffer from the Holocaust.) Plus, it was a good idea as US could easily trade their money (Yes, those green pieces of paper, or even that virtual number which can be entered into a bank account at the press of a few keyboard keys) for real productions, such as, oh for example, oil. Basically, I want to say US gov-t infiltrated dollars into the worldwide economy, while keeping their own dollars in order (you coud buy a new Mercedes in US for 40000$, while you will never see this anywhere else in the world.) Most of the money was put into China and other asian countries like Thailand, Japan, and *vietnam* :). All that happened in 70s-80s-90s. Today (current events), all the chinese gov-t has to do is rally up all the dollars that are in China (like 18 or so trillions, I’m not sure) and appeal to the US government with all that money to, say… buy Alaska, or California, or Texas, or even the US all together. Yea, good times :). Now the US would have two options:
1) Change their currency with a limited international exchange amount (like 1000$/person) which will get the Chinese pretty damn angry, worst case scenario being WW3 between US and China. Once again good times :).
2) US can have a revolution, and change their economy completely, to some ****ed up form like communism for example. But I’m pretty sure no one in the States will be too happy about that.
So now, if Obama does manage to pull USA out of all this, he will be the next Jeseus basically.
Ok, so those are some things to ponder about, and BTW the wars in Iraq, Afgan and Vietnam (and apparently Iran now as well) were started because those countries now only trade oil for Euros instead of the dollars like good old times.
March 14th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
I just wanted to point out one small error on this page. Harrison ford was not in the move “Hunt for Red October.” The part of Jack Ryan was played by Alec Baldwin. Harrison Ford took up the roll in “Patriot Games” and once more in “Clear and Present Danger.”