Six years ago, President Bush announced the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and our intention to deploy defenses against emerging threats from countries such as North Korea and Iran. Contrary to prevailing expectations, the sky did not fall.

Six years ago, Russia was still weak. Now, thanks to soaring oil and gas prices and having a third of the world's reserves, they have weight they can throw around, and the desire to do so. This is in part thanks to the broken economic model imposed in the early 1990s at the behest of neocons, which resulted in the pauperisation of much of the Russian population, along with the massive enrichment of a tiny elite. Now the odious Putin is merely establishing himself and his cronies as the elite of the elite.

It's difficult to defend Europe from Iran or Korea if your interceptors are along the Polish border, and both Bush and Putin know what they are really for. (For Korea they'd be in Norway; for Iran in Bulgaria or Austria).

Islamic militancy, Russian neofascism... it's payback time for the Empire.