the opinionist

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.”

She continued, “… anyone who knows anything about this will tell you that there is no way that … ten interceptors in Poland and radar sites in the Czech Republic are a threat to Russia or that they are somehow going to diminish Russia’s deterrent of thousands of warheads … this is a missile defense system that is for limited purposes.”

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 •  Email This Post • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback