Putin Living in the Past

I've had mixed feelings about Putin, now I'm pretty sure he's not quite right.

MOSCOW (AP) - Russia tested new missiles Tuesday that a Kremlin official boasted could penetrate any defense system, and President Vladimir Putin warned that U.S. plans for an anti-missile shield in Europe would turn the region into a "powder keg."

First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Russia tested an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying multiple independent warheads, and it also successfully conducted a "preliminary" test of a tactical cruise missile that he said could fly farther than existing, similar weapons.

"As of today, Russia has new tactical and strategic complexes that are capable of overcoming any existing or future missile defense systems," Ivanov said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency. "So in terms of defense and security, Russians can look calmly to the country's future."

OK, so if you have the technology to defeat the ICBM missile defense, why would putting one up make Europe a powder keg? And why aren't you smart enough not to tell the enemy that you can defeat their defenses? Is he trying to say that Russia didn't have MIRVs before now? I'm a bit dubious on that statement.

And doesn't he get the point that the missile defense shield is to prevent being nuked by countries that aren't playing the MAD scenario that the US and the USSR fully understood?

So why exactly is he so vehemently against a missile defense shield? Maybe because his country has no way of countering it in reality. And he doesn't understand that the US and Europe are looking to Russia as a major economic partner rather than an adversary? Hell, Russia's military could stomp all of Europe in a conventional war right now. Their only worry would be that France would go nuclear.