konyok – you may be right. the most plausibe explanation for kgb domination of russia is just that they’re the only organization capable of doing so. even if you don’t call it kgb, the institutions basically persist, just as the geostrategic arrangements basically persist. and since the kgb received its discipline from the politburo and central committee, so putin & co. replaced these bodies with their party United Russia and its equivalents. meanwhile, the populace is demoralized, unhealthy, and either fleeing or dying early. china threatens the nearly unpopulated eastern steppers simply by transferring its population there, first on work visas, then perhaps with families, if that should come to pass. its armed forces decay. its energy diplomacy is ham-handed. no one is fooled by its double-talk with respect to its “near abroad.”
and yet, as plausible and natural an analysis as this seems, there is always the air of mystery about kremlin intentions and activities. there is the curious relationship with iran, and now chavez. there are maneuvors in central asia and bombers testing US airspace and naval battlegroups. there is he yamantu mountain complex. there is the dmitri donskoi in the western hemisphere.
and, more importantly, there are revelations by kgb defectors who come to tell us, in different decades under very different circumstances and in different mediums, that subversion – not direct military threat – was always all along the USSR’s and KGB’s main weapon against the capitalist West. and you read about Aldrich Ames, arrested 1994. you read exotic theories about orchestrated revolutions in Eastern Europe – and realize that the ‘revolution’ there was amazingly bloodless, considering the regime that was toppled. and didn’t it all seem a little top-down, anyway? after all, the soviets had been great organizers of mass demonstrations even just after world war 2 in east germany – even before it was “east” germany.
you read about operations like TRUST and WiN. you read revelations about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the incredible statecraft it revealed, not at all the picture you thought you knew.
doesn’t it make you think – hey, wait a minute. so, what’re they doing now then? did they all just spontaneously combust on Christmas Day 1991?
