By Investor's Business Daily
New Cold War: A revised Russian military doctrine identifies NATO as Moscow's No. 1 threat, as the Obama administration announced it was returning control of 15 bases in Europe back to the host governments.
Russian President Vladimir Putin gave President Obama a lump of coal in his Christmas stocking in the form of a revised strategic doctrine.
It re-emphasizes that NATO, notwithstanding President Obama's "flexibility" and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's "reset" button, is the No. 1 strategic threat facing Russia.
We are reminded of Obama's rebuke of Mitt Romney in the third presidential debate, when the GOP nominee was ridiculed for listing, in response to a question, Russia as our No. 1 strategic geopolitical threat.
"The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because ... the Cold War's been over for 20 years," said the president who promised the Russians more flexibility as he disarmed the United States.
Apparently Putin does not share the view that the frigid era of confrontation is over.
The latest Russian strategic doctrine, the fourth since the end of a Soviet Union whose demise Putin has mourned and whose territories he seeks to reclaim, comes after the 2008 war against the former Soviet republic of Georgia, its annexation of Crimea and its creeping invasion of Ukraine.
Russian strategic doctrine was revised by Boris Yeltsin after the USSR's demise. It was revised again in 2000 under Putin, and again in 2010 by Dmitry Medvedev.
Some would argue the newest incarnation merely gives shape for the first time to Russian neighbors' fears and has a few disturbing new wrinkles that bear watching in light of a staggering Russian military renaissance.
The doctrine announces Russia intends the "lawful use of the armed forces . . . to ensure the protection of its citizens outside the Russian federation."
This was the pretext Moscow used to seize the Crimea and Nazi Germany's excuse to annex Austria and the Sudetenland prior to World War II. This is not good news for the Baltic states NATO is obligated to defend.