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The Biden-Harris administration celebrated its one-year anniversary, embarrassed and defeated. Its project to bring socialism to the U. S. has so far failed. Both, in the popular front by the non-elitist, non-woke, traditionalist American society (the majority) and in Congress, the Left is witnessing an adamant resistance. The inflation rate is the highest in nearly four decades. Its one-dimensional, unscientific covid policy is a disgrace. The missed liberation opportunity in Cuba, and the collapse of Afghanistan demonstrate that American resolve, under this presidency, is infirm. Russia has added to the country’s woes and is now bullying America.
Despite denying that an invasion of Ukraine is imminent, Vladimir Putin has amassed over 100,000 Russian troops on the sovereign country’s border. In 2014, confronting the flimsy leadership of another Democratic president (Barack Obama), Russia transgressed Ukrainian territory and stole Crimea. Putin has been making the same arguments about the Russian minority in Ukraine that Adolf Hitler made about ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland and Austria when Germany invaded and seized those territories. Had Hitler not had a weak counterpart like Neville Chamberlain, history may have taken a different course. Likewise, Putin is acting on his perceptions of the Biden-Harris leadership formula.
Russia’s autocrat is a lawyer and was a KGB intelligence officer for fifteen years (1975-1990) who retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel. In 1998, Putin returned to the intelligence field to head the Federal Security Service, the KGB’s successor espionage and counterespionage agency. Like the short-lived Russian democratic experience of the early 20th century (1905-1917), the fall of Soviet communism in 1991 saw democracy’s death begin to take shape when Putin was appointed prime minister in 1999 and later elected president in 2000. Instead of the General Secretary of the Communist Party position, an elected Czar, in questionable elections, is more characteristic of Putin’s current role. Yet, Russian hegemonic expansion around the globe is a goal of post-Soviet Russia’s authoritarian regime.
Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov hinted on Thursday, January 13 that Russia could deploy military infrastructure, troops, and/or missiles, to Cuba and Venezuela. The fact is that Russian incursion in the Western Hemisphere has been an ongoing phenomenon since 2000. An elaborate spying satellite called Glonass was set up by Putin’s Russia in Nicaragua in 2016. While the Obama-Castro pact was publicly unfolding during the former president’s visit to Cuba in 2016, a Russian spy submarine lay in Havana Harbor just blocks from where the American delegation was meeting.
The Havana Syndrome, that neurological malady from probable high-density microwave radiation because of suspected cyber espionage, has inflicted irreversible harm to at least one hundred and thirty American diplomats and their families around the world. The Putin regime is believed to be the mastermind behind this heinous causal instrument of espionage and warfare. The Russian Tupolev Tu-160 bombers with the capability of carrying nuclear weaponry were dispatched to Venezuela, in 2018, in a show of solidarity with the Maduro dictatorship. It is no secret that Putin has been a consistent supplier of armaments, for over a decade, to the socialist regime in Caracas. Among the first two international figures to congratulate the Cuban communist regime on its crackdown of the 11th of July Uprising were the dictators of China, Xi Jinping, and Russia.
Putin has upped the ante, given the current American government’s inertia in defending freedom. The Russian regime stated on January 21that it wants all NATO troops to vacate Bulgaria and Romania. Putin is trying to redraw the world map to pre-1997. Undoubtedly, the imperialistic demands by the Russian dictator will continue their escalation mode. Historically, Russian despotic regimes have advanced when weakness if perceived by their American counterpart. John F. Kennedy’s betrayal at the Bay of Pigs liberation attempt in Cuba, in April 1961, proved pivotal in Nikita Khrushchev’s calculations. Four months later the Berlin Wall was erected and the placement of nuclear missiles on the imprisoned island was calibrated.
The doddering Biden-Harris administration, frail and without a moral compass, appears to be no match for the Russian despot. The question becomes, not how determined the current American executive branch will go in supporting liberty and confronting tyranny, but rather how bold is tyranny feeling these days.
Julio M Shiling, political scientist, writer, director of Patria de Martí and The Cuban American Voice, lecturer and media commentator. A native of Cuba, he currently lives in the United States. Twitter: @JulioMShiling // Julio es politólogo, escritor, director de Patria de Martí y The Cuban American Voice. Conferenciante y comentarista en los medios. Natural de Cuba, vive actualmente en EE UU.