After President Ronald Reagan won the Cold War for us and the Soviet Union went Chapter 11, rather than let them fester in their resulting economic ruin (and these were people who for decades had been aiming nuclear missiles at us while spreading the antithesis of democracy around the world), we poured gazillions in U.S. taxpayers’ money into helping them get back on their feet, sans the communist bit.

Years later, along came Vladimir Putin’s regime. I say regime rather than administration because the man is cut more in the mold of a Soviet strongman than any kind of democratic leader.

Despite all the diplomatic triple speak and related drama, he is not any sort of friend of the U.S. Russia has gotten back on its feet, and obviously Putin figures he doesn’t need us anymore. He certainly hasn’t proven to be any kind of ally of America, and has opposed us on a number of issues at the U.N. He is a better friend of the Iranian government, an enemy of the U.S. and indeed an enemy of freedom, than he is of ours.

President Vladimir Putin cautioned Tuesday that Russia would increase the combat-readiness of its strategic nuclear forces to ensure a “swift and adequate response to any aggressor.”

Putin also said that Russia’s will be pulling out of a key arms control treaty, which he calls a necessary response to NATO “muscle-flexing” near its frontiers.

The statements, which come amid simmering tensions between Moscow and the West, reflect the Kremlin’s assertive posture less than two weeks before Russia’s Dec. 2 parliamentary elections.

So first he pretty much threatens us with nukes lest we attack his country, which makes little if any sense since he should know that we entertain no malevolence toward Russia, then he withdraws his country from the CFE Treaty.

His reason?

The missile defense plan we wish to implement in proximity to his sovereign bailiwick, the one that would have been a perpetual tragedy had it not been for our largesse (that means me & you — I don’t know if the dog named Boo has paid any taxes, so I’ll exclude him — and our hard-earned tax liability).

The 1990 CFE treaty, which originally set limits on weapons of NATO and Warsaw Pact countries, was revised in 1999. Russia says the old version has lost relevance since former Soviet satellites have joined NATO.

Russia ratified the updated treaty in 2004, but the United States and other NATO members have refused to follow suit, saying Moscow first must fulfill obligations to withdraw forces from Georgia and from Moldova’s separatist Trans-Dniester region.

As a counterproposal to the U.S. missile defense plans, Putin earlier this year offered the United States joint use of a Soviet-built, Russian-operated radar in Azerbaijan. Washington said it was studying the proposal, but U.S. officials said the radar couldn’t be considered as a replacement for the sites in Poland and the Czech Republic.

“Regrettably, Russian proposals about the creation of a joint missile defense system with equal access for all its participants have remained unanswered,” Putin said Tuesday.

Right, Vlad proposes that we intertwine our defense venues with aparatus owned and operated by his government and on his turf. That sounds like something Bill Clinton might have agreed to, as long as he had a permission slip from China.

Putin bears watching very closely, he might well be the originator of another Cold War, this one infinitely more dangerous than the last as there is now an Islamofascist third party in the equation of global political and security concerns, and there are elements of same in a few former Soviet republics.

If I were the DCI in the E. Howard Hunt era, I’d probably instruct my Deputy Director, Operations to “take him out, make it look like Chechen separatists did it.”