Sunday, September 7, 2014

Russia Headed For Disaster

Russian Fascist Dictator Vladimir Putin is leading his country toward a national disaster in the name of a New Russia, meaning the old Soviet Union.   For a short time, it seemed that Russia would join the family of democratic nations in Europe living in peace with its neighbors.  However, that window is closing as Russia appears to be going back to its dark days of the Czars and Communist Dictators.   Putin, who was once the head of the old KGB Secret Police during the Soviet Era longs for the good old days when Russia was feared by its neighbors. 

Putin has apparently forgotten that along with those good old days came economic chaos and bread lines.  This Blogger knows.   I visited the Soviet Union in 1974 when I was a 24 year old teacher.  I was in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev and Odessa.   I saw a country that was decades behind the United States even then.  I saw the lines to buy food.  I traded my jeans, then in demand, to see the inside of a Russian apartment where six people lived in three very small, poorly constructed rooms in a tenement building. 

As part of Putin's response to Western sanctions, he has banned certain foods from coming into Russia from Europe and the US.  Big deal, who is that going to hurt.   The Russian people will face higher prices for those foods and shortages, which will lead to those very same lines that I saw 40 years ago.  The Russian standard of living is based on peace and stability in the region.   Putin's attack on Ukraine and now with him threatening other former Soviet provinces will only lead to economic chaos for the Russian people.  Frankly, it is pretty damn dumb and for what.  Russia is already a very big country with plentiful natural resources.  It does not need the surrounding countries to be a powerful nation.   What is does need is to start producing products and services people outside Russia want to buy. 

All the United States needs to do to literally destroy the Russian economy is to go full speed ahead developing all of our energy resources, which will bring down the price of oil and natural gas; about the only two things the Russians have to sell of any value.   President Ronald Reagan did just that as oil fell to less than $20 a barrel during his Presidency.  It literally was the key to bringing down the old Soviet Union.   Dictator Vladamir Putin, may have nuclear weapons, but he is playing with fire that could destroy Russia from within.  

The Russian economy can be destroyed pretty easily.   The Russian people can't eat nuclear weapons.  This might make Putin even more dangerous, however, the Russian people are not about to go back to the bad old days when they had to wait in long lines just to buy bread.   If that happens again, Russians are likely to demand Putin's head.  Russian history is full of bloody endings, so it is not that far fetched.    History demonstrates that Dictators often die when things go bad. 

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