Beware the Russian Halloween Boogeyman
This is going to be a scary Halloween if you believe in the Russian boogeyman. Russia’s military strikes in Syria have unleashed a new bout of scary Russian conspiracy stories in the Western media, just as Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 resulted in anxious concerns that Russia was attempting to reclaim the entire former Soviet Union, starting with Ukraine and the Baltic States.
For the Western media, Putin is now the ultimate James Bond villain, concocting a number of evil plots inside the Kremlin to bring down the entire free world. His super-powerful missiles capable of flying 1,000 miles to hit precise ISIS targets in Syria has people suddenly fearing that Russia is holding back its laser tanks and death rays for Western Europe. At the very least, Russian bombers flying over Syrian airspace are going to cause mid-air collisions with U.S. bombers and launch World War III.
If you’ve ever watched Keanu Reeves in “John Wick,” you know there’s a lot that the Russian boogeyman is capable of doing.
The New York Times, for example, is now pushing the ultimate boogeyman scenario: a plot by Russian submarines to cut the world’s undersea Internet cables and lurch the world into digital darkness. It’s plausible on a certain level — Russian Internet censorship is a big concern these days, and after seeing Russian President Vladimir Putin dive to the bottom of the sea in a submersible vehicle this summer, it’s even possible to imagine that it will be Vladimir Vladimirovich himself doing the actual cutting of the cables.
However, the proof is more circumstantial than real — anything the Russians do these days is suspicious, and submarines lingering near undersea cables makes people nervous. There’s even been a panicked report by the U.S. Pentagon that the Russians might actually contemplate a cyber first strike to take out the Internet if there’s a war in Europe. Remember, we live in the era of phantom Russian submarines in Sweden and Russian bombers buzzing London, so anything is believable these days.
And, not to be outdone, The Daily Beast has been trumpeting a bizarre alliance between the Kremlin and Taliban in Afghanistan (complete with the image of a AK47-toting Taliban terrorist in front of St. Basil’s). The core of the idea makes sense — Russia wants to crush ISIS and is deathly afraid of radical Islam spreading to its borders from Afghanistan or Central Asia. The smart money says that Russia is already covertly funding the Tajiks to deal with ISIS.
But a pact with the Taliban? That would be a pact with the devil, even worse than a pact with Hitler. Anyone remember the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact from 1939? Remember, it was the Afghan mujahedeen funded by the U.S. to fight the Soviets who eventually became the Taliban. So a partnership with the Taliban would mean that the Russians would be partnering with the very same people who booted them out of Afghanistan during the Cold War? In a world filled with Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and ISIS, it’s hard to decide which is the least of the three evils.
If that’s not enough to throw a scare into you this Halloween, how about a Russian plot to build military bases in the Arctic in preparation for World War III?
Or maybe you’d prefer a plot by Russia and Iran to divide up the Middle East, including much of Iraq?
Or, even better, a plot by Russia to take over much of the world and form The Third Empire?
Or if Stalinist conspiracies are more your thing, how about a plot by the Kremlin to liquidate the entrepreneurial class, the way Stalin liquidated the kulak class?
And, of course, there’s the old standby — Russia partnering with China to crush the West and upend the entire geopolitical order.
If all else fails — trot out “The War Scare of 1983” as proof of the crazy stuff that the paranoid leaders in the Kremlin are capable of doing. During the Cold War, apparently, the Kremlin leadership really and truly believed that the Americans were planning to launch a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union. That’s a pretty chilling notion, especially since the folks in charge of the Kremlin today have extensive roots in the old KGB days of the Soviet Union.
The grain of truth in all these conspiracy plots, of course, is that Russia really, really wants to change the narrative about Ukraine. You could cynically read the entire Russian military intervention in Syria as just a cynical way to shift the topic of conversation. Who can worry about Ukraine, Russia seems to be saying, when there’s mayhem breaking out in the Middle East?
The danger, of course, is that people making decisions in the White House and Pentagon start to believe all these conspiracy rumors. You don’t need to watch “John Wick” to believe in the Russian boogeyman.
Tili, tili, bom. Close your eyes now. Someone’s walking outside the house. And knocks on the door. Tili, tili, bom. The nightbirds are chirping. He is already inside. To visit those who cannot sleep. He’s coming… Closer!
