RUSSIAN BUBBLEHEADS SAFE!

Look at any of the news photo's of the crew of the Russian submersible that was recently saved and you can tell exactly what those submariners are thinking ...

"We should be dead now!"

I can't think of a scarier situation than being a Russian submariner, trapped in your craft at the bottom of the ocean, with the RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT as your only hope of salvation!

Fortunately these men are alive today - thanks to the British and their little unmanned submersible - SCORPIO!

And kudo's to the Russian government for making the phone call in time. Yes, there are reports that they delayed the call for help unduly - but progress, even small progress, is a blessed thing when it comes to the Russians. At least they MADE the call this time!

In an earlier post, I pointed out that it would have been a tragic waste if these men were to die - stranded - in only 625 feet of water. At such a shallow depth, virtually the whole range of rescue methodologies are open for employment. Yet the Russians appear to have had NO METHOD to save these guys. When the Brits showed up with their unmanned SCORPIO - voila! Getting these guys back to the surface was a piece of cake.

The problem with the Russians is that they still, even now, cling to the "conscription mentality" of the old Soviet military that says that contingencies don't have to be planned for because personnel are expendible. That mentality works for a totalitarian regime - such as the Soviet Union was. It will not fly in a Democracy however. In Democracies, the population kind of expects their government to take steps to ensure their sons, daughters, brothers and sisters serving in the military are kept as safe as reasonably possible. They expect for the government to PLAN contingencies to rescue personnel who are stranded like this.

But the Russian government, incredibly, still doesn't understand this - if they did, then WE would never have heard about these stranded submariners - the Russian Navy would have pulled them out on it's own even before President Putin was informed of it. That's how simple this rescue was - or should have been.

I often wonder if we, the Democratic West, have done enough to "welcome" the Russians into Democracy. I'm not talking about throwing money at them - I'm talking about simple things that Democracies in the West do all the time. Stuff like personnel exchanges among our armed forces. I can't for the life of me think of a reason that we'll be fighting the Russians anytime soon. I CAN think of many reasons we should be allied with them. Just like us, they are fighting terrorism- and basically they are fighting, in Chechnya, the same terrorists we're fighting in Iraq and around the world.

So quite aside from just throwing money their way - why can't we do some REAL partnership building things like military personnel exchanges? Why can't we have a few Russian bubbleheads over to witness how our Submariners do business? We have the best Submariners in the world - bar none. And our submarine safety procedures and contingency plans have proven themselves time and again. Why can't we send a few of our guys over to see how they do business and maybe share a pointer or two? This is exactly what we do with the Brits, the Aussies, the Turks, even the French occasionally!

There can still be restrictions, we're not going to show them everything! But a little more openess here might help the Russians along in their quest to become a true Democracy. There simply must be more to this relationship between the U.S. and the Russians than I'm seeing right now - because from what I see - we should be in each other's hip pockets! Bosum Buddies! That's not the case though.

Hopefully one day the suspicions on both sides will evaporate to the point that we can cooperate a little better with each other.

By the way, on a side note - this story of the trapped Russian submariners is so interesting to me because I, myself, spent many years as a U.S. "Cold War" Submariner. I had many undersea encounters with SOVIET Submariners and I can tell you - I've always respected these guys. They always had lousy equipment - but they also had an uncanny ability to exploit that equipment to the fullest extent. They have always been experts in taking advantage of their advantages and I can tell you - they have GUTS! They never had a government that appreciated it - but they did have GUTS! They would be a good crowd to have on "our side".