Russia: Enemy of America’s War on Terror

By George Koukeas —— Bio and Archives December 11, 2007

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Recently, the news articles have been reporting that Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin has made a seemingly new alliance with Iranian dictator  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  However, this alliance has been long-standing and is currently a means to discrediting America and isolating “her” from allied nations. 

Putin’s convenient excuse for siding with Iran is his claim that he is dissatisfied with America’s foreign policy.  In actuality, he tries making America look like its policies are “reprehensible” and are repelling “allies” like Russia.         By being the example, Putin hopes to encourage other nations to dissociate themselves from America.  This, in turn, evidences a Russian-Iranian plot to isolate America while keeping Israel “busy” with it’s own terrorist problem, a problem sparked partially by Iran’s support of Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists.         Why would Ahmadinejad and Putin want to divide and conquer Israel and America? Because America and Israel, when allied, can more effectively stop the terrorism and WMD acquisition that both Ahmadinejad and Putin are indulging in.  So both autocrats decided to exploit their long-time partnership.        That Putin and Ahmadinejad have a long-time association is not surprising when considering that both are dictatorial, although Putin’s despotism differs in type and degree.  Putin’s unveiled his despotic leanings when he instituted a more autocratic rule in Russia, a non-democratic move.  In his article, “Kasparov: Russian election a farce”, AP Writer Steve Gutterman revealed that Putin imprisons protestors who disagree with his party (United Russia), sends his government cronies to intimidate political rivals who are running for Presidency and continually rewrites political rules to benefit himself and his party.  In the article, protestor Garry Kasparov, having been arrested for protesting Putin, was quoted as saying that Russia is “an authoritarian state with a very serious tendency toward single-party dictatorship.”  
     That Russia has been a long-time covert ally of an American enemy like Iran, is substantiated by Russia’s transportation of weapons supplies to Iran’s nuclear power program.  Further, Russia has plenty of weapons to trade with Iran.  In fact, Russia had been mentioned by many internet articles back in 2004 for having plenty of WMDs that were not dismantled by international authorities.  Russia’s prolonged alliance with Iran explains why Putin opposed the US on a number of weapons-related issues.  For example, when America suggested in front of the international community that Iran was building nuclear weapons and wanted Iran to be stopped, Russia disagreed by advocating that Iran should be given more time to “prove” to the UN that it’s nuclear program is peaceful (i.e that its not making nuclear WMD).  In actuality, Russia was clearly biased toward Iran’s side, had a vested interest in an Iranian nuclear weapons program, and was perhaps fulfilling whatever agreement both nations chose.     
     Because Russia has taken the side of an Islamic dictatorship that supports terrorists, Russia has now proven itself to be an enemy of America and a threat to our war on terror.  Putin’s support of terrorists is at least indirect in that he is supporting a terrorist-sponsoring dictatorship like Iran while Iran opposes America.  But there are other reasons for the likelihood that Putin is supporting terrorists directly.  Most dictatorships and those regimes aspiring to be dictatorships normally use terrorists to fight wars by proxy to weaken and destabilize stronger, freer nations.  Putin’s being authoritarian makes it plausible that he, too, could use terrorists and use them for the same purpose.  Also, Russia has supported terrorists very frequently in it’s Communist past (just because Russia is no longer Communist doesn’t mean its stopped the practice of using terrorists, just like present-day Russia has not stopped its “WMD-hiding” plan).  Furthermore, Putin is an ex-KGB official and could still have personal Communist beliefs despite Soviet Russia’s former collapse.  Putin is dangerous because he wants to relive his country’s former Cold War against America, as Putin himself has publically stated. 
     In addition to supporting Iran, Russia also supported Iraq when Saddam Hussein was in charge.  Russia had, in the past, helped Iraq by dealing in the exchange of oil for weapons/WMD.  Russia has always been supportive of terror-supporting dictatorships and that is only “inches and degrees” removed from actually using terrorists directly.  As a supporter of dictatorships and terrorism, Russia is not America’s ally and never was. 
    Espionage and the nonviolent aspects of war strategy must be used to weaken Russia in case we one day have to fight them militarily due to Russia’s alliance with terrorists.  Weakening Russia means stealing information concerning its military capabilities, its future plans against America, and exploiting Russia’s political and other instabilities.  While this happens, the US government should devise future covert plans against Russia.  In the meantime, diplomacy can superficially be maintained to stave off possibilities of armed conflict.   This can help us bide our time with Russia while we fight the war in Iraq.  We must make similar preparations against Iran with plans for covert sabotage.  The US and other free countries must coordinate their efforts to fighting despotism, terrorism and regimes that support terrorism.