Guns before butter, and lacking brain matter

I would like to treat my Tory (and not) colleagues to a circus show. Or at least it would be one if it couldn't kill us sometime.

When relations with the West get cranky, Russia got into the habit of firing up one of those long cigars that should go up into near-space and then come crashing on the heads of evil Westerners turning them into a mushroom cloud. They did this several times, once being when the USA got a bit too pushy for their taste on the issue of Chechnya. Now their smokey tools went up again, so Russia must be losing its patience on some issue. Again.

Now I am not one openly supporting weapon development and deployment, although I really don't mind knowing I sleep under a well-guarded nuclear umbrella. However Russian ministers and generals seem to have swallowed their brains together with their vodkas, as the Reuters report shows us. Its own missile commander says the new anti-missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic might be regarded as legitimate targets should circumstances arise.

I really hope these words were the result of some latent drunkedness or a bad hangover headache. The commanding officer makes no secret of the fact they'd have a plan to neutralize part of the European defence system, i.e. strike both Nato and EU members. These words amount to a threat and are a re-opening of the Cold War for God's sake. The Russkies' brains have frozen over! Europe is no threat to Russia and they know it all too well. They just consider Eastern Europe their backyard where no-one should tread.

Poland has been repeatedly walked over by Russia over the course of history, and the whole of Eastern Europe had a taste of Russian socialism and Russian guns, it is more than fair for them to seek some shelter from a clumsy bully who hasn't come off a domination trip yet. The Czech Republic and Poland are sovereign nations and as such exercise their full rights over their own territory, which includes honoring military alliances. No-one has the right to bully them and threaten them, especially when NATO and the EU have definitely other worries than Russia.

I see no alternative but pledge full allegiance and support for the Atlantic Alliance and pray for the fast deployment of defence systems in Eastern Europe. As the BBC's correspondent puts it "russia is an enormous country with a just as huge inferiority complex". It feels threatened by anything and anyone who doesn't agree to its hegemony.

I can sleep serene: the USSR lost the Cold War without a single shot being fired. If they restart it, they'll lose again. Yes the West balks at lack of democracy at its borders. Russia can balk at the West's expansion of prosperity and partnership. The West wouldn't have interfered with any election anyway, and Russia could have gone on doing its own business and harassing foreign firms. But it shouldn't complain about others wanting to join the Western club and looking East suspiciously.

It just boils down to the simple reality that Russia has no skill at making or keeping friends among civilized and democratic nations. An armed loner. We should all be worried.