Pleasing the Bear

Russia is grouchy these days. They feel they have been discounted and ignored for too long. All their really talented people move to London or Boca Raton. The oil thing kind of works for them, but not really. China is the sexier former Marxist-Leninist. Even former cold and hot war adversary Vietnam gets more love. The Russians think to themselves, "One more vodka before I try to seduce the oil magnate's daughter, maybe two more vodkas..."...just kidding.

One imagines that they miss being taken note of in this world the way the Soviets were. And so what are they doing? Old Soviet stuff! 'Sending huge bombers out on long-haul sorties. 'Getting their subs to show up in all manner of strange arctic venues. 'Figuratively reclaiming Central Asia for the Tzar.

What we need to do is start caring about them again. We need to stroke the Russian Bear like one would a difficult and borderline-schizoid second cousin at Thanksgiving Dinner. 'Make them feel like they matter without all the little war-game silliness. Let's let the biggest country in the world know that we care about their bigness! Perhaps some praise for the Bolshoi combined with long Dostoyevsky retrospectives. 'An old film of Russian soldiers hugging American ones. 'More TV shows about Sputnick! We can do this and thus avert some really messy fascism popping up in Russia!