Putin

     The biggest threat to the United States and to its western allies is not ISIS and Al Qaeda, or a half a dozen other Islamic Extremists groups.  They are indeed a threat, but they can be eliminated if properly handled, something that the West and the U.S. has yet to do!  The biggest threat isn't that crazy Kim Jong Un and North Korea, although North Korea is extremely dangerous, nor is it Iran with its developing nuclear capability.  The biggest threat has always been right there staring us in the face, never went away for almost a century - it used to be the Soviet Union, now it is the Russian Federation, or more correctly, Vladimir Putin.  The Soviet Union may be gone, but Russia is very much still present and its current leader, Vladimir Putin, is Joseph Stalin reincarnate!
     Putin is not quite as crude as Stalin, although I wouldn't call him exactly smooth either!  Putin is just a modernized version of that mass murderer/dictator, Stalin.  I think the West has been lulled to think that Russia is no longer a threat, especially with all the economic problems that it has been having since the demise of the Soviet Union.  But what we and the rest of the West have failed to note is that Putin has revived the Russian military by completely restructuring, modernizing the system.  He has openly announced during his first term as president of Russia (2000-2004) that he would rebuild the Russian military and bring Russia back to its glory.  He may not have said it openly, but it was obvious what he meant that Russia would dominate the West!  Of course he claimed that it was just a metaphor, that Russia would dominate economically.  But it was nothing but a thinly veiled threat/promise to bring the Russian military to the days of Soviet Union vs. the West!
     Vladimir Putin was born in 1952 and even as a child was fascinated with the various TV and movie characters that fought the Nazis and the West in spy thrillers!  The Soviets may not have had access to James Bond movies or our TV spy shows of the 1960s, but they did have their own versions on the big screen and the TV.  Putin, since childhood, wanted to become a Soviet intelligence officer like the heroes in the movies and TV shows that he admired.  He attended the Leningrad State University and upon graduation entered the service of KGB, their CIA! It was his dream job! Apparently he was a very talented and hard working KGB officer for he rose steadily in rank and by 1991 before the Soviet Union dissolved, he had reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.  The KGB, unlike the CIA, has a military rank structure. 
     It was then, when the Soviet Union fell apart, that the young Vladimir Putin made a comment to the press that "the greatest tragedy of the 20th Century was the demise of the Soviet Union."  Putin by then had left KGB after 16 years and had entered local politics, that is why he was interviewed, when he was running for one of the local offices.  His run at local politics was successful and four years later in 1995 he went to Moscow and entered national politics by joining Boris Yeltsin's government.  It wasn't long before he seemed to have appeared out of nowhere into national prominence!  In 1999 Boris Yeltsin suddenly resigned and Vladimir Putin became the Acting President of Russia.  He must have liked his new position for in 2000 when elections were held he ran for the presidency.  The election was very controversial and there were all sorts of accusations of fraud, but Vladimir Putin won the election!
     Beginning with his first term, he immediately launched into rebuilding the Russian military.  He also brought back the old Soviet anthem as the new Russian national anthem.  That should have been a clear warning to every one!  The lyrics were changed a bit here and there, but it was the same old communist anthem!  Apparently we didn't pay much attention to what was going on, what he was doing.  We did recognize the fact that he was rebuilding Russia and was trying to revive some nationalistic spirit among the people.  Many Russians complained, but no one listened.  He seemed to be somewhat heavy handed with his opposition, but that we thought was simply Russia's lack of experience as a "free country" that caused such behavior.  Amid more cries of foul, election fraud, etc., Putin was reelected for a second term in 2004.  When he finished his second term and the Russian constitution did not allow him to run for a third consecutive term, he hand picked his successor, Dimitry Medvedev, and instead took on the job of Prime Minister for a four year term and became the "shadow" president.  Everyone knew that he ran the show. 
     In 2011, just before Medvedev's term expired, Putin had the constitution changed to allow for a six year term for presidency, beginning with the 2012, of course, not before.  So now, having "fairly" won the election by a landslide, he is in his third year of a six year term.  No doubt he will run again in 2018 and win, which means he will be in the office until 2024!  At that point he may decide he had enough, he will be 74 then!
     Vladimir Putin is reputed to be the richest man in the world.  He made a fortune off the Sochi Olympics and he gets a cut out of everything, the oil and gas revenue, weapons sales, whatever else.  In a sense he is actually worse than Stalin.  His actions can be just as crude and poorly disguised, like the take over of Crimea and the current crises in Ukraine.  He doesn't care, as long as he gets his way.  Political Correctness is not one of his concerns, in fact PC does not exist in his world!  He has a deep distain for the West and hatred for the United States!  After all, as a young man, he spent 16 years with KGB that targeted the West and the United States in particular.  US was the enemy, and in his mind, it still is!
     His heavy handed style may seem crude to us, but it works for him.  In the latest episode, he had his chief rival knocked off KGB style, then announced to the public that he would get the guilty party.  Miraculously, within a short period five Chechens were captured and accused of being involved in the Nemtsov killing.  A sixth one blew himself up rather than getting captured.  Supposedly the Chechens killed Nemtsov in retaliation for some comments that he made about the killing of cartoonists in Paris.  That is a ridiculous!  What is more than likely is that the Chechens were indeed hired for the hit, then double crossed and arrested and are used as patsies!  The current head of Chechnya is a good buddy of Putin's and more than willing to supply him with hit men if he needs any!  Chechnya, by the way, is known as the "wild west" full of freelance hit men.
     Putin despises the West and hates the United States, it is easy enough to see in his facial expressions whenever he is meeting with counterparts from the West or the United States.  Like the old communist that he is, he believes that the West is corrupt, weak, and without backbone!  He periodically tests the West by pushing and sees that the response is always to give ground! To Putin that is a sign of weakness.  He does not yet feel that the Russian military is ready to take on the West, but it is getting there! He has reorganized it, streamlined and modernized it.  There are now 100 well armed modern rapid deployment type mechanized and airborne brigades in the Russian army.  No more of those huge cumbersome divisions of millions that the Soviet Union had.  The Russian army is now made up of half a million well trained volunteers, no more conscripts!
     While Putin is modernizing and increasing his army, we are going to reduce ours below the levels of post World War Two, to about a 200,000 man army.  There is something not quite right in this!  Either there is a disconnect, or Pentagon knows something that it is not telling us.