Thanks, Russia!
Russia has deployed Iskander missiles with a range of hundreds of kilometers in its Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad, which borders NATO members Poland and Lithuania, the pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia reported on Monday.
Mind you, it is kind of pointless. What would those missiles do there that Russian ballistic missiles in core Russia can't do?
Of course, it all makes sense from Russia's bizarre point of view:
Although the Cold War ended in 1991, and Russia lost, many Russians refuse to accept that outcome, nor the loss of half the Russian empire that the czars (mainly) and the communists spent several centuries putting together. Thus we have senior Russian officials still accusing the United States of planning to destroy Russia in various imaginative ways.
I think it would hurt more for the Russians to accept that we only think about them when they throw a tantrum or bizarrely try to screw with us while they ignore a rising China on their border.
But if Russia tries something, I hope we have some plans to do something to them while they hit the Baltic States and Poland--limited though their military options are.
Russia annoys me. They can nuke us or get under our skin. They sure do enjoy the latter. I hope paranoia doesn't increase the risk of the former.
I'm assuming the Chinese feed Russia's paranoia about us whenever they can.
UPDATE: Putin denies Russia has actually put those missiles in that enclave, despite their justification based on our NATO missile defense shield (Hello??!! Iran??):
"One of the possible responses is to deploy Iskander complexes in Kaliningrad ... but I want to draw your attention to the fact that we have not yet made this decision yet, let them calm down," the Kremlin leader said.
I'd like to point out that I was pretty calm about the news--wrong though Putin says it is--saying their deployment was rather pointless, adding little to Russian military capabilities.
I could return the "calm down" advice over the panty twisting the Russians are enjoying over the small missile defense system we say we will build in eastern NATO to guard against Iranian nukes when they are deployed. Russia's military capabilities--well, their capabilities between a Spetnaz raid and nuclear strikes, anyway--don't worry me.
But they do have pretty big nuclear assets--including unregulated theater nuclear weapons, thanks to our latest START treaty--that in the hands of paranoid leadership could be a lethal danger in a crisis.
