Speaking before an annual conference on international security in Munich recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin said this of the concept of “unilateralism” in an attempt to complain about the allegedly hegemonic position of the U.S. in the world today:

It is world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.

He was talking without listening to himself, the signal hallmark of the old Soviet state that soon collapsed and disappeared. As the Boston Globe wrote:

Even the most ardent European critic of Bush’s unipolar delusion could not ignore Putin’s hypocrisy. The Putin who decried the use of force in Munich is the Kremlin boss behind Russia’s brutal, war in Chechnya. His castigation of interference in the internal affairs of other states came from a leader backing secessionist movements in two provinces of Georgia and one in Moldova. His critique of unilateral bullying was delivered by the president who shut off gas supplies to Ukraine last winter and to Belarus this winter. Then there is the irony of Putin complaining about “one center of authority, one center of force, one center of decision-making.” There could hardly be a more apt description of the power system Putin has built in Russia. His inner circle of KGB veterans controls the energy and banking conglomerates, the major media, the provincial governors, the judiciary, and the Russian legislature. If there is anybody in the modern world who understands what it means to rule a unipolar system, it is Putin.

In other words, Putin is hoist with his own petard. He smugly believes he has proven how evil and hypocritical the United States is, rallying the nations of the world to join with Russia in opposing it, and in so doing he has actually proven how hopelessly bankrupt his own government really is.

This is the “emperor’s new clothes” phenomenon that has always plagued Russia. Russia’s rulers quite literally live in a tower (it’s red rather than ivory) completely cut off from reality. Simply put, there’s nobody to tell Putin how far afield he’s wandered, so he just walks around naked all the time. This is what happens when you obliterate the media and opposition political parties.

And it was only the beginning of Putin’s amazing flameout. Because not only was he condemning his own form of government, he was attacking the world’s most powerful nation for no good reason, provoking it into a cold war posture and galvanizing American allies just as the old men of the Kremlin used to do in Soviet times. In fact, the only thing missing from the Munich spectacle was a shoe being waived.

You see, not only did Putin apparently forget that he himself rules over Russia in a totally unilateral manner, he also forgot the context in which his remarks were being made. It’s a context of (a) massive military buildup and (b) horrifying incidents of political murder and (c) worldwide fear of Russian efforts to weaponize its energy resources. Putin has just announced a nearly 25% increase in Russian military spending including massive arms sales to American enemies like China, Iran, and Venezuela, and he has presided over a litany of killings of Kremlin critics ranging from Anna Politkovskaya to Alexander Litvinenko (in between are more than a dozen journalists including many names Westerners hardly even know, like Yuri Shchekochikhin). He’d kicked Western oil companies out of Russia’s major oil and gas fields, and gone so far as to arrest and jail major oil company executives (in fact, he just recently announced a whole new round of charges against Yukos head Mikhail Khodorkovsky, essentially trying him for the same crime twice).

Instead of trying to put out the fires of Western concern over these issues, Putin arrogantly chose to pour gasoline on them, just as was done in Soviet times. Apparently, then as now, Russia’s rulers are simply unable to contain their hatred of the West, no matter how much it may be in their best interests to do so. The result? Google News now has over 1,500 international news articles reporting on Putin’s declaration of Cold War II with the United States. Estonia’s president condemned Putin’s remarks, using them as an opportunity “to urge the EU to rethink relations with ‘a country that considers democracy on its borders as a threat, or despotism inside its borders as a source of stability.’” Sweden’s Foreign Minister stated: “We should take him at his word. This was the real Russia of now, and possibly in four or five years time it could go further in this direction. We have to have a dialogue with Russia but we must be hard-nosed and realistic. We must stand up for our values.” Czech Republic’s Foreign Minister sarcastically thanked Putin, saying he had vindicated NATO’s decision to take in members from the former Soviet east over the past decade. Ron Asmus, executive director of the Transatlantic Centre think tank in Brussels, stated “This Munich conference is normally about the Americans and Europeans bitching at each other. It will be interesting to see whether Putin actually managed to bring us together.”

Worst of all, Putin’s good friend George Bush was alienated. The White House responded to Putin’s crazed, egomaniacal tirade as follows: “His accusations are wrong. We are surprised and disappointed with President Putin’s comments.” New Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had already said a few days earlier, while testifying before the House Armed Services Committee: We need the full range of military capabilities. We don’t know what’s going to develop in places like Russia and China, in North Korea, in Iran and elsewhere.” Russia filed a formal diplomatic protest over this statement. Then Gates went to Munich and heard Putin escalate his rhetoric even further. What do you think the Bush administration now sees when it looks into Putin’s eyes?

So Putin has infuriated the entire world, except the clan of crazed Russian nationalists within Russia who agree with him. But he already enjoyed 70% job approval, does he really feel he needs to bump it up to 71%? Meanwhile, Russia continues to lose as many as 1 million people from its population ever year. It’s citizens continue to commit suicide at a truly alarming rate, and they continue to work for an average hourly wage of $2.50. In other words, Putin will now have contend with exactly the same burden of an arms race and an imploding social structure that destroyed the USSR. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, since after all he’s nothing more than a proud KGB spy who obviously longs for the good old days.

Kim Zigfeld publishes the Russia blog La Russophobe.