OPINION:
Some suggest that a personal animosity toward Hillary Clinton motivates Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, Mr. Putin’s ’reset button’ comment on the Hillary tiding suggests the man does not take her seriously enough to merit a personal animosity. Perhaps it is a Stalin/Hitler thing — competing brands of socialism presenting a Russian worry. Stalin’s government did much to define Hitler as the to-be-dreaded fascist, as we today use the term. Given the similarities of ends and means, international communism and national socialism were more alike than different at the time. Stalin needed to distance his movement from Hitler’s movement for political reasons.
Maybe Mr. Putin didn’t want to go head-to-head with a United States brand of socialism.
President Trump rejects the neoconservative view that the United States should be the world’s policeman. Maybe this in and of itself was reason enough for Mr. Putin to have supported Mr. Trump’s election to president. One thing we do know: The zealot left welcomes the in-power bogeyman. (Barack Obama’s blaming of President Bush years into his presidency was getting old.)
It is said that the need comes before the object of the need. With Mr. Trump as president, an actual bone gets thrown to the rabid dog. Maybe Mr. Putin simply wishes to sit back and watch the show.
Vietnam was a military defeat for the United States because it was a political defeat. These days, nobody plays politics better than Vladimir Putin.
PAUL BURTON
San Francisco
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