Brezhnev Envy

Olga Oliker is associate director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. She has written for CNN World an analysis of Putin's possible motives in moving troops into Ukraine.

Oliker's sobering words are likely to wring an "oh, crap" reaction from those of us old enough to remember the Cold War:

It’s possible that what Putin wants out of all this, aside from protection of Russian speakers the world over, is, if not a new Cold War, something very like one. After all, during the old Cold War, Moscow was strong, its interests respected, its prestige on par with that of Washington.

Maybe former KGB guy Vladimir Putin does envy Leonid Brezhnev, stranger things have happened.