Putin is playing a dangerous game... but not with the US

There is, it could be said, something reassuringly normal about the current climate of international affairs in relation to the Great Bear of Russia. For over half a decade the issue of Islamist terrorism and its eventual conseuqence of our military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq have dominated international politics.

Clearly the political fascism inherent in Islamism is of a major concern to the stability of not just the region from which it emanates, but also the wider world upon which it has had shocking and devastating impacts.

However, whilst it remains a continuing cultural and political threat, it also remains a marginal issue in realistic terms. In some respects it is very much "contained" in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is of course rather shitty for the people there, be they visitors of inhabitants, but in pure terms of stopping acts of terror at home it is, largely a success.

Yes we have had some appalling acts of terrorism since it began with that sunny September morning in 2001, but the acts themselves remain rare and very isolated in Western capitals. Now compare this with the potential of good old-fashioned power politics that the other strain of fascism in the world, Vladimir Putin has decided to start playing.

The threat by Putin to target European cities in response to the location of US missile defence sites close to its borders is, and it’s almost a cliché, a hark back to the days of the Cold War and the Arms Race. There is of course one vital difference this time perhaps, an Arms Race has the potential to actually be real rather than be sabre-rattling by a Soviet regime that was pot less and didn’t have half the missiles it said it had.

Russia today, is an oligarchy of fascisto-captialism (did I just invent a word?), which means that they do indeed have the cash to have lots of ICBMs. The question is how do you deal with such a potential threat? The reactionary Left are clear what we must do of course, whilst they bemoan the internal state of Putin's Russia (see the front page of today's Independent) they equally clear that this is all America's fault for wanting to defend herself and her allies (see today's Leader in the same paper).

The default opposition to anything America does is, for them at least, far stronger a cause than to genuinely oppose the former KGB chief in the Kremlin. However, there is, as I said, something reassuringly normal about the situation that is developing. For whilst Putin's bellicose rhetoric is of concern, he is, arguably, a rational actor on the world stage. He is making a chess move, or for want of a better phrase, playing a game of chicken to see who will blink first. It is power politics, rather than non-negotiable ideological politics though.

Ironically at the centre point of Russia's and the USA's spat though is a state which is very much in forefront of the other international affairs issue of the moment, Islamism, islamofascism or what you will. Putin, and consequently Russia's problem though is its failure to realise that a militarily strengthened Iran will pose a massive potential threat to Russia itself*, not just the traditional Western grouping of allies.

After all, at it's core, the ideological position of Islamism is non-negotiable, and whilst some may argue Iran is not quite there yet, it remains an unstable tinderbox where the risk of playing with matches by it is one that should be taking with extreme caution. Putin failure it seems is not realise the combustibility of the state to which he is tieing himself. A state that could, remove its support as soon as look at him given its clerical anti-Enlightenment view of the world.

For whilst Russia may not be part of the "West" as we have come to call it, it is part of the Western philosophical tradition. This makes it as much a target as the rest of us to those that wish to impose their anti-Enlightenment medieval worldview upon the rest of us. Iran's alliance for Russia is purely and expedient and transient one with the veneer of power politics.

Where does this lead us? Bizarrely it leads us back to the subject that has dominated the international arena since 2001. We have a traditional showdown of rational realpolitik actors rolling high stakes and the one who blinks first will of course be "humiliated", but one of them will blink. Meanwhile at the sidelines, we have a state that, actually, doesn't really like either of the other two very much, but it is not the right time for her to engage in the game.... yet.

* I am not saying Iran could have Russia in a fight. Just that the chances of Iran biting the hand that feeds it and causing a nasty gangrenous sore is a greater threat to Russia than that it perceived to see from the USA.