Putin's machismo and the spectre of a war

Sabre rattling or more?

Raju Korti
For a self-proclaimed "trouble-maker", Russian President Vladimir Putin has flirted with trouble long enough to have actually fallen in love with it. His remarkable stint with the KGB and subsequent years in Politics have honed his talent in the craft with a carefully cultivated image of masculinity that Putin revels in underplaying.
In tune with that machismo image, the Russian President -- as is his won't -- has now issued a threat to the Americans without mincing words. "Try taking away Crimea away from us and we shall treat you to a nuclear war," Putin said with a nonchalance which to me, sits pretty compatibly on his deadpan face.
The Crimean Peninsula is a chunk of land mass to the south of Ukraine, now in the eye of an international political storm that involves two key players Russia and the United States. It became an autonomous Republic of Crimea within an independent Ukraine early 1991. Sovereignty and control of the peninsula got mired in a territorial dispute between Russia and Ukraine with Russia signing a treaty of accession last year and absorbing it into the Russian Federation. That accession fell foul of Ukraine and most of the international community. In some ways, this development to many was reminiscent of Kashmir's accession with India.
Putin's "meddling" in the affairs of the neighboring countries hasn't gone down well with the NATO countries led by the Commissioner of World Police, the United States. His role in Cold War, oil deadlock and Syrian crisis, to name a few, certainly shook the American self-arrogated right to dabble in world affairs. That doesn't come as a surprise at all.
From tagging dangerous animals to stopping wildfires, to playing half-naked with guns on vacation, Putin may not be among the most popular guys in the world, but he sure makes the world sit up and take notice. Even the ultimate pennant of masculinity Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn't draw the kind of interest he does. Little wonder then the Americans try to demonize him and blink each time Putin rides rough shod and cocks a snook at their perceived superiority. The Americans are watching with gaping eyes as Mr Intrigue has now directly threatened to nuke them in case they harbored any ideas of meddling in Ukraine.
The Americans have by now very well realized that the authoritarian leader who didn't stop at "eliminating" his adversaries back home and who brazenly withstood allegations of a rigged election, couldn't care less if his country was eventually suspended from G8 for annexing Crimea.
The Ukrainian crisis was, of course, compounded by a trigger from within. Putin just took a cue from the exiled Ukrainian President who sought Russian military intervention to quell the revolution that threatened to rip it apart. The Americans watched helplessly as Putin managed to get an authorization from the Parliament to deploy troops in the region and gain a complete toehold in the Crimean Peninsula. In a referendum, considered bogus by the West, an overwhelming 90% plus voters demanded that they secede from Ukraine. If the Russians were hurt by the economic sanctions imposed upon them, they didn't show it. The Russian move to grant political asylum to Edward Snowden (who leaked classified information from the NSA) rubbed more salt on the wounds.
Under Putin, Russia's ties with NATO and the US were even more tumultuous. From a cautious beginning, Putin first supported the US war on terror where many saw a new strategic partnership building. All such hopes were quickly razed to dust when the US extended NATO's presence to Russian borders and the two nations relapsed into their old ways of scratching each other's backs.
Putin has made it clear that the NATO encroachment in the region by supplying weapons against pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine will invite a nuclear backlash. A potentially dangerous situation.
I would like to make parallel case studies here. Former US ambassador to India Daniel Patrick Moynihan had once described Kashmir as the world's most dangerous place on the premise of not entirely unfounded fears that it could trigger of nuclear conflict any time. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has worded it differently by saying that "For the West, the demonization of Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one." Kashmir and Ukraine are evenly poised in terms of world peace or the absence of it. In Kashmir there are players with unsound mind while in Ukraine there are players who know what entails. As insanity keeps unfolding, both sit on a bomb and pretend it will only keep ticking.