Many eyebrows would be raised over the statement of the Germany’s foreign minister that without Moscow’s cooperation many crises in the world cannot be solved because the Soviets had inflicted many injuries on the mind and body of the Germans and their relations had never been cordial in the strict sense of the word in the past. It is, however, a fact that, lately, Moscow has been making its presence felt on the world stage in so many ways and many countries like Germany now realise that it has become a force to be reckoned with. Since Reagan’s era the world had become uni-polar with Washington calling the shot everywhere. This seems to be no longer the case now. In Putin, Russia has, at long last, found a leader who feels nostalgic about the Soviet Union’s past, who becomes restive whenever he thinks how the CIA managed the break up of the Soviet empire and who is desperate to restore the lost prestige of his country in the world. Small wonder that there is no love lost between him and the US Establishment. Putin fondly remembers the heyday of Moscow when it headed the Warsaw Pact which had more fire power than the American-sponsored NATO. It is difficult for him to accept secondary role for his country in world’s politics and his views are in marked departure from those of Gorbachev who is accused by many Russians of presiding over the dismemberment of Soviet Union by his kid-glove policies. Putin represent those Russians who want their country to once again assume leadership role in the world. To see their arch rival US performing a dominant role on the world stage is a wound that rankles them.
Putin cannot put the clock back though he has been trying hard during the past couple of years not to allow any political adventure of Obama go unchallenged. Time was when Moscow spearheaded the Third World countries and stood like a solid rock behind the countries against which Washington nursed evil designs. Its open support for President Nasser in the Middle East crisis back in 1960s and its showdown with the US when the latter wanted to invade Cuba for toppling Fidel Castro are, to mention, a few examples. Time was when Moscow had upstaged Washington in space technology by sending Sputnik into the space.
It came as a shock to many Third World countries to see a super power like Soviet Union which had touched its zenith nosediving and touching its nadir but let us admit that it has to blame none but itself for its downfall. The Soviet leadership wrote its own political obituary by overstretching its resources and unnecessarily involving itself in mad military adventures in many countries and spending too much on its military arsenal which was bound to adversely affect its economy. The CIA too was busy in its efforts to de-stabilise it and the uncertain political conditions in Soviet Union made its task easy.
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