By Steve Hynd
Several wingnut bloggers are hyperventilating about the news that two Russian hunter-killer subs have been detected lurking off the American East Coast - with some even going as far as to blame Obama's "appeasement" of enemies.
Utter tosh of course.
We've been tracking the resurgence of the Russian military - funded by high oil prices - here at Newshoggers for some time now. And although it's obvious that there's a move to counterbalance American military dominance and move away from a unipolar world, mostly it is about resurgent Russian pride and domestic politics. If anything, the Bush Years as an exemplar of just how unpleasant unipolar American hegemony can be, with two aggressive invasions and occupations as well as saber rattling at Russia, Iran and a slew of other nations, might be blamed for current Russian attempts to push back.
But the two subs are Akula class, subs that were designed primarily to hunt other subs, and are actually hundreds of miles away from the coast in international waters. They don't carry ballistic missiles. As such, their presence is no different from the perennial presence of American Los Angeles Class hunter-killer subs creeping about the fringes of Russian territorial waters. Turn about is usually regarded as fair play and the only unusual thing here is that the Russians haven't had the capability to do so for 15 years.
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