Putin's Victory in America

 The Donald Trump-instigated right-wing storming today of the U.S. Capitol while Congress was counting the electoral votes for Joe Biden's and Kamala Harris' victory in last November's election is the pinnacle of Vladimir Putin's attack on America.  Since 2016 and perhaps before, Putin has sought to undermine democracy in America, since American democracy, the fount of freedom in the modern world, is a titanic embarrassment to dictators and demagogues such as Putin.  Putin has some strange influence over Trump, and Trump throughout his Presidency has sought to emulate Putin and other autocrats.  Putin's intelligence services have massively hacked the U.S. government and American businesses, with nary a whisper of protest from Trump.  For all we know, Putin has access to the inner workings of all significant parts of the U.S. government, apparently with Trump's acquiescence.  

The American people, however, weren't prepared to knuckle under to demagoguery.  Last November, they stood by their democratic principles and freely elected Joe Biden President and Kamala Harris Vice President, thus delivering to Putin a massive defeat in his war against American democracy.  But Trump and his goon-followers, in the most unAmerican way, have disgracefully refused to participate in a peaceful transfer of authority.   They assaulted one of the most fundamental symbols of our nation, the U.S. Capitol, and besmirched it with their unAmerican, undemocratic, violent malice.  Trump's goons won for Putin.

But their victory was short-lived.  Even as I write, Congress, which had to temporarily stop counting electoral votes because of the mob violence, has resumed its work and will count the votes electing Biden and Harris.  Putin's victory will prove Pyrrhic.  Democracy has survived and won.

Russia's Nuclear Missile Defeat

When Vladimir Putin, Russia's President, recently announced an array of new Russian nuclear weapons (see https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/02/europe/putin-russia-weapons-analysis-intl/index.html), he unwittingly acknowledged another strategic defeat for Russia.  To be an effective threat, these weapons will have to produced in significant numbers.  Russia is relatively poor nation with a falling life expectancy.  The price of petroleum, its primary export, has fallen sharply in recent years, causing economic contraction.  It has massive environmental problems and a slow birth rate that will lead to the same demographic time bomb that bedevils many nations today. By any reasonable estimation, Russia doesn't have the money for these new weapons.

Putin, like a bad general, is fighting the last war.  For understandable reasons, Russians are paranoid about being attacked militarily by other nations.  They suffered terribly at the hands of the Nazis during World War II, losing 20 million or more people.  But generals who prepare for the next war, not the last one, are the ones headed for victory.  Whether or not Putin believes it, America won't attack Russia militarily.  It will only defend itself, as it did recently when Russian mercenaries attacked U.S. troops in Syria.  The lopsided American victory in that instance should give Putin pause about further military engagement with the United States.  But who knows what goes on in his head.

By diverting large sums of money into weapons technology and the building of a new, large nuclear arsenal, Putin guarantees that his nation will be economically crippled for decades.  The United States won the Cold War because its economy vastly outgrew the Soviet economy, and the Soviet Union no longer had the wealth to maintain its Eurasian empire.  It had to break up and it did.  China is far more powerful than Russia today, not because it has better weapons but because it has a far stronger economy.  America, too, is far more powerful because it is economically way ahead of Russia and widening the gap.  By designing and building more nuclear weapons, Putin has put Russia on the path to another defeat.