Written by David Gowdey   

I was a child of the cold war. I was brought up in an America that firmly believed the Russians were the bad guys, that the sun never shined behind the "iron curtain," that people in the Soviet Union and its satellites, deprived of liberty and freedom, lived lives of drudgery and despair. I became one of the last generation of cold warriors when I entered university. Like so many of my generation, I studied Russian history, Soviet politics, military strategy, etc. My major in Graduate school was Soviet maritime strategy - two years before the Berlin wall came down and the Soviet Union crumbled. My career was obsolete before I even got started. Or maybe not.

As events have unfolded in Ukraine one of the things that has struck me is how dumb the comments of the current generation of Russian "experts" have seemed. It's as though these experts never studied Russian history or even modern European history at all. The comments have been so lacking in any informed perspective, that it's getting harder not to wonder whether this isn't some elaborate conspiracy to start a new cold war. Surely these commentators can't really be as dumb as they sound with their ridiculous theories of Putin's mental instability, his nefarious territorial ambitions, and his Machiavellian plotting. One wonders if they aren't reading off of the same fictional script.

In the real world, Russian "experts" know that Russian history is largely a catalog of military invasions from the Mongols to the Nazis. The last invasion, and perhaps the worst, happened only 73 years ago. Russia is now populated by the children and grandchildren of those who lived through the Nazi invasion. The fear of military invasion is not a theoretical construct for Russians, they know it can happen.

This "paranoia" has meant that, regardless of political ideology, the primary motivation of Russian leaders from Tsars to Commissars and now to Putin, has always been to protect the "motherland" from external invasion. The primary policy for doing that for centuries has been for Russia to keep a buffer of friendly countries on her borders. In Russian strategy, the role of these countries is to prevent an enemy from massing military forces along the Russian border, allowing them to directly invade the "motherland." This has been a core national security interest for Russia for centuries.

When the Ukraine declared its independence one of the prices it paid was its tacit agreement to continue as a pro-Russian buffer state in foreign policy and military terms. During World War II, much of the population of western Ukraine joined the Nazis in attacking Russia. Ukrainians enlisted in the SS, and many eagerly participated in the massacre of Jews. When Russian leaders refer to Ukrainian nationalists as Neo-Nazis this is not hyperbole, it is historical fact. Russia remains extremely suspicious of these elements of the Ukrainian population - having forgiven perhaps but not forgotten.

Under these circumstances, the attempt by the EU to bring Ukraine into closer alliance was a clear threat to Russian core national security interests. Ukrainian President Yanukovich was most likely informed of this when President Putin made his economic counteroffer- an offer President Yanukovich "couldn't refuse" in Mafia parlance. When pro-western demonstrators overthrew President Yanukovich in response to his "capitulation" to Putin, the threat to Russian core national security interests was clear and immediate. Putin reacted as any other Russian leader would have. In fact, he arguably reacted more moderately than those Politburo members that sent Soviet Tanks into Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

So, no, Putin is not irrational, nor is he a scheming Machiavellian. Unfortunately, those labels belong to the western policymakers in Europe and the US who thought that they could push the EU and NATO right up to the Russian border. They threatened Russian core national interests, and Russia responded exactly as it should have been expected to respond. They poked the bear, and the bear responded by slicing off Crimea. Whether Russia moves into Eastern Ukraine will largely depend upon whether it perceives that the leadership in Kiev, Berlin, Paris and Washington got the message. Hopefully they did. Wrong moves in Ukraine could easily lead to war between Russia and the west, a war in which both sides possess enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet. We need real experts advising the public who know Russian history and who will tell the truth.