Get ready for a knuckle sandwich. Vladimir Putin is bringing together the old Soviet bloc into "one clenched fist." Together with China and India and Cuba and North Korea and Iran and Vietnam, etc., the Russians are openly saying they will put an end to America's global hegemony.

But how will American hegemony be brought to an end?

Well, in the first place, there is this growing anti-American alliance. Also, Russia has been involved for many years in secretive military preparations, the misuse of IMF funds, along with stealing and hacking.

Hacking?

Consider the fact that Bill Gates made a set of keys for the Kingdom of Internet -- a kingdom that increasingly looks down on every technical subsystem in the United States. Consider the fact that Russian hackers recently raided Mr. Gates' company, Microsoft, and stole the aforesaid keys. According to sources inside Microsoft's Redmond headquarters, the Russians penetrated Microsoft's defense system and stole Windows software and security codes.

And what can be done with these security codes?

Contrary to what you might think, Russian hackers are not petty criminals. They are soldiers in a war, interested in developing a sabotage capability against American banks, communications systems, the power grid and other basic utilities. Their objective is not to get rich by stealing software. Their objective is to defeat the United States by scrambling the brains of our computer subsystems.

Now why would the Russians want to stop the motor of the world? Why would they contemplate a cyberattack on America? After all, where is the profit in bringing America to its knees? Russians inevitably want what Americans want. They want to wear blue jeans and eat burgers. They want Coca-Cola and a big American car with tail fins.

Right?

Think again, America. Don't believe everything you hear. Moscow has cleverly aimed your own capitalist preconceptions back at you. They have taken up your own slogans in order to put you to sleep. It is the ultimate form of flattery which they employ: "America is great, Russia has collapsed. Communism doesn't work."

Behind the screen provided by this flattery, Russia's leaders can openly plot against us, talking to their allies about defeating the United States. Nonetheless, as this column pointed out on Thursday, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs simply says that Russia is not our enemy. He is more worried about China, which has but a fraction of Russia's power.

Capitalism is victorious, we say. Socialism has failed and Russia wants to copy from our system. They want to copy, and they want to download off the Internet. Do not pay attention to the man behind the curtain. Any war preparations in Russia are merely the pathetic jerkings of a long dead corpse.

But a reversal is underway. According to Gen. William E. Odom, writing in the Wall Street Journal on Dec. 13, "A pseudo-Soviet normalcy is emerging in Russia as glasnost declines and perestroika gives way to new stagnation."

Yes, a pseudo-Soviet normalcy is emerging in Russia. But Odom is wrong to think this signifies a "new stagnation." No, Gen. Odom, the Russian military economy has been upgraded and modernized. To offer one example, consider the new submarine the Russians launched last week. But we are caught up in Russia's lies. We still believe that only 40 or 50 fighter-bombers are being built every year in Russia. How, then, do we analyze Russia's voracious and unexplained consumption of electricity and metals? How do we explain intelligence reports that say thousands of Russian fighter-bombers are under construction?

There is something wrong and we have to wake up. We must stop flattering ourselves with the idea that our free market system works while Russian socialism has failed.

The fact is, our economic system is no more capitalist than Russia's was communist. As Ludwig von Mises pointed out decades ago, a genuine socialist economy in Russia would have meant a reversion to the stone age. And as everyone knows, Russia put the first man in space and built the first intercontinental rockets. This is not evidence of what Mises called socialism. It is something altogether different which once tagged itself as socialist. The truth is, Russia's economy is a radically different type of capitalist economy, in which consumer production is limited so that military production can be perfected. What we have called socialism in Russia is merely a system for restricting consumption by forcibly diverting all the best brains and material into weapons.

A couple of years ago I sat next to Col. Stanislav Lunev at a party. Lunev is a high ranking GRU defector from Russia. Lunev and I were listening to a retired politician praise Reagan and Thatcher for "defeating socialism," and for saving the free market. Col. Lunev was puzzled by this. He leaned over and whispered to me: "What is he talking about?"

"I don't get it either," I replied.

"The West is a socialist paradise," Lunev continued, whispering again into my ear. "Each according to his ability, each according to his need has been realized in America. But in Russia there is true rugged individualism, with every man for himself."

Lunev's stunning reversal, where the West is Marxist and the East is following a primitive capitalist model, is not without merit. For example, most Russians grow their own food, engaging in a basic kind of capitalism that Americans do not. The state does not really take care of people in Russia. If you have ever been in a Russian hospital you would understand this perfectly. Because the state didn't really do much for the Russian people, it forced them to do things for themselves. The Russian black market, in reality, is a capitalist system unto itself. Perhaps it is more free-wheeling than anything that exists in the West.

Meanwhile, in the West, corporations which resemble giant socialist collectives have combined with the welfare state to take care of the poor, the unemployed, and the unfortunate. Therefore, it could be said with a little humor, that the West is more Marxist than the East.

Of course, we shouldn't go overboard with this. The lesson to be learned is that highly idealized categories -- like "capitalism" and "socialism" -- can be very misleading when applied to real life.

Russia's so-called "collapse" is therefore an equivocal event, poorly understood in the West. Any assumption we make about their system, based on our own ideological prejudices or stereotypes, is bound to be wrong. Even more dangerous, we should not delude ourselves about the true nature of our own system -- which has become incredibly socialistic.

The real competition between nations involves a game of power politics. To play this game you must set aside stereotypes and strive to understand what is really happening. In doing this, you must stick to facts and not theories.

In this regard, the words of Russian President Vladimir Putin are not theories. They express his intentions and the direction of his policy. During Putin's visit to Cuba, the Russian president made the following statement. He said: "Russia intends to bridge the gap between the so-called golden billion and the rest of humanity -- and we will be solving this question by taking our very good ties with Cuba into account."

The "golden billion" are those who live in the developed countries -- the so-called capitalist countries. On the other side stand the global have-nots -- the "rest of humanity," as Putin calls them. The bridging of the gap between the two sides, according to Putin, means the end of America's economic and military power. He is not talking about making the poor countries rich, but instead he is talking about making the rich countries poor. His language is clearly not that of a business man. It is the language of a commanding general. Talking of America's position as the world's leading country, Putin said, "Similar attempts at world domination were made numerous times throughout the course of history ... and it is well known how they all ended."

Fidel Castro, the communist dictator of Cuba, agreed that the dominance of America and the "golden billion" had to end. It was, after all, a grave injustice to allow some people to live better than other people: " Even in the age of colonialism and slavery," said Castro, "the poor were not stolen from by the rich like this."

Recently there have been cigarette ads in Moscow. A Russian brand, named Zolotaya Yava, says it is "striking back" at America. To visualize this process, the Statue of Liberty is depicted in a Russian fur hat.

The Russians have hacked into Microsoft for a reason. They are lying about their own military capabilities and budget for a reason. Russia's president has flown to Cuba for a reason. It is time for us to set aside the stupid idea that the Cold War ever ended.

It is time to get ready for a knuckle sandwich.