Russian way 021015

When the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union began to implode there was dancing in western streets.  Western politicians gleefully proclaimed the "Bear" was dead and rushed into Soviet Republics.  The truth is the Bear wasn't dead, just hibernating. 

Wearing Cold War blinders the politician failed to appreciate that while the Soviets overthrew the imperial regime it built on its Russian culture.  Keeping many of the imperial institutions under new management the Soviets adjusted and modernized the Old Russian Empire.  People went into imperial labor camps in even greater numbers, called Soviet Gulags, returning them to a virtual serfdom that powered modernization.

In the mid-1800 the Russian Empire stretched from California across northern Asia deep into Eastern Europe. In 1867 the United States purchased the Californian settlements and all of Alaska for 7.2 million dollars.  The Tsars (Czars) built their empire in the traditional way: by sword, political threats and bribery. Imperialism settled ethnic Russian in newly acquired territories, displacing natives, insuring their control the regions.  This provided justification for any future incursions as protection of Russian minorities.  The ebb and flow of Eastern Europe politics during the imperial period is complicated.  Basically during the 18th and 19th centuries Russia seized much of Ottoman Europe, the splintered parts of the Ukraine, Poland, and Baltic States to complete its modern empire.  When the Soviets seized power in Russia some of the states drifted toward independence but the Soviets quickly brought them back into the Empire as Soviet Republics with tactics  reminiscence of Czarist Cossacks.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin's recent seizure of the Crimea is not a return to Soviet cold war strategy but rather a page out of the imperial Czarist playbook.  Crimea was been taken from the Ottoman Turks in the mid-19th century and infused with Russians now considered to be historic Russian Territory.  Putin's moves in the Ukraine (the largest country in Europe) also follows Czarist precedents, protecting Russians abused by the Ukrainian Slavs with patriotic  "volunteers" defending the oppressed.

The West has a 100 percent record in understanding Russians, always wrong.  The western model of foreign policy is a game for rational actors. The Russians have never been rational in the western sense but always act in a uniquely Russian manner as an imperialist amalgam of its Asian and European heritage.

It is probable that after nearly 20 years in the Russian power position Putin sees himself as the new Tsar.  As "Putin the Great" he may feel driven to return the empire to its former glory.  The world is focused on the Ukraine, which is classic imperial strategy of distraction, deception and attrition. Distraction from pressures placed on Eastern Europe, its southern border and deception in Greece and Egypt. Nothing is as it seems, historically Russia accepts cost that outweigh rewards.   While the west contemplates giving away half of the Ukraine or destroying Europe in a scorched earth game of dominos Russia plays three-dimensional chess for an empire.   It's the Russian Way.