A Government Of The Mafia, For The Mafia

Charles Krauthammer examines Vladimir Putin's harsh rhetorical attack on the United States last week and sees an emerging new struggle. While he does not believe Russia - especially Putin and the rest of mafia-like government - want a return to the Soviet Union exactly, he does see another dangerous trend.

There is something amusing about criticism of the use of force by the man who turned Chechnya into a smoldering ruin; about the invocation of international law by the man who will not allow Scotland Yard to interrogate the polonium-soaked thugs it suspects of murdering Alexander Litvinenko, yet another Putin opponent who met an untimely and unprosecuted death; about the bullying of other countries decried by a man who cuts off energy supplies to Ukraine, Georgia and Belarus in brazen acts of political and economic extortion.

Less amusing is the greater meaning of Putin's Munich speech. It marks Russia's coming out. Flush with oil and gas revenue, the consolidation of dictatorial authority at home and the capitulation of both domestic and Western companies to his seizure of their assets, Putin issued his boldest declaration yet that post-Soviet Russia is preparing to reassert itself on the world stage.

Perhaps the most important line in his speech was the least noted because it seemed so innocuous. "I very often hear appeals by our partners, including our European partners, to the effect that Russia should play an increasingly active role in world affairs," he said. "It is hardly necessary to incite us to do so."

Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko once boasted that no conflict anywhere on the globe could be settled without taking into account the attitude and interests of the Soviet Union. Gromyko's description of Soviet influence constitutes the best definition ever formulated of the term "superpower."

And that is the real goal, in Krauthammer's estimation. Soviet style influence without Soviet style economics. And that explains Russia's ongoing attempts to forge tighter and tighter bonds with countries that are at odds with the US and with the world itself. The raging anti-Americanism in the West's elites is being exploited ruthless by the evolving kleptocracy that Russia has become. But the narcissists in the West and here in the US still think it is all about America and that other countries only act in response to US actions. They fail to notice that Russia is acting in the interests of its mafia dons and actively against the US and the West itself.