A Scapegoat for Domestic Use

From Mike Sigov at the Toledo Blade:

Russia's figurehead president, Dmitry Medvedev, blamed the United States for "setting Russia up."

The absurdity of this accusation brings to mind Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, namely the part where a little boy tried to get attention by claiming that Tom, who became unusually popular by faking his own drowning, had beaten him up a short time before. (...)

No thanks to the goodwill of the Kremlin, which favors the United States as a scapegoat for domestic use. Russia simply can't afford a Cold War because its $2 trillion gross domestic product is about a seventh of the United States' nearly $14 trillion GDP, while Russia's $40 billion military budget is one-twelfth of annual U.S. military spending of about half-a-trillion dollars.

Moreover, that gap is generally expected to widen.

Nevertheless, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's "mini-me" - President Medvedev, who was obviously inspired by Russia's victorious five-day military campaign in tiny Georgia - has been issuing warnings to the free world.