With an administration full of his Daddy’s people who last did any foreign relations when we were accustomed to thinking of Russia as the Devil Incarnate, it’s no surprise the Blank Stare is taking us back into the Cold War with the biggest expulsion of suspected spies since Reagan took similar action in 1986. Reuters It’s not as if both countries haven’t been spying on each other in the interim. A Russian Foreign Ministry official’s comment that the order “went much deeper than a mere expulsion” should be seen in light of the US’ destabilizing move of meeting with Chechen representatives, and of course the broader context of our planned unilateral abrogation of the ABM Treaty to build the NMD (national missile defense) system. Russia signalled its intention to respond 1:1 to the expulsions. As usual, the Shrub and his handlers “do protest too much”, finding it necessary to assure us that he was in charge of this decision. The ‘spin’ aims to persuade us that the President has a new, hard-line, “realistic” way of looking at our foreign adversaries.