A decade ago Andrei Navrozov warned that the liberalization of the Soviet Union was sponsored by the KGB. He also noted that the KGB was not the tooth fairy. The Russian press, he said, was purposely allowed to concentrate on the "internal failures" of the Russian economy, which had been in a state of collapse since 1917, "just as the Soviet strategic infrastructure has prospered since 1917."

Navrozov also wrote about the "transfer of science and technology" from the West to Russia. He said that this transfer would be intensified "in the coming days of the pan-Eurasian NEP when totalitarianism puts on a capitalist face. ..." He said that this process would make Russia's superiority "irreversible" as "the lines separating Eastern and Western Europe will finally become as meaningless as constitutional guarantees ... in a world of naked and irrefutable force."

Those who mocked Navrozov as a "conspiracy theorist" now have some apologies to make. Navrozov was clearly prescient while his critics were blind and stupid. In the 1920s Lenin and his followers fooled with a return to capitalism, then called NEP (New Economic Policy). The NEP men of the 1990s, like the NEP men of Lenin's 1920s capitalist adventure, were fattened under the bright sunshine of glasnost and perestroika. Now they are coming under arrest. Tycoons like Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky have served their purpose, just as the NEP men of the 1920s served theirs. The music of Stalin's anthem has returned, as many of us knew it would. Yes, it has new words that mention God, but who is to say these new words will be sung by the soldiers and sailors of Russia's new war machine? The old words are what most come to mind. The new words, with the old music, may never take root.

And perhaps that is the intention.

The pale optimists of the West are yet afraid to face the truth. It is a truth that writers like Navrozov tried to warn them of a decade ago. But fools will never accept fair warning in advance. And besides, too many well-foddered, famous wise ones built their punditry on illusory good news. First there was Gorbachev's perestroika. Then there was the collapse of communism and the "peace dividend." The markets went up and up, the capitalists rubbed their hands in glee as the U.S. military got Bill Clinton as commander-in-chief. Our strategists without strategic sense, gloating over their unexpected and unearned Cold War victory, removed our tactical nuclear weapons from America's ground forces. At the same time, they gave billions to Russia, allowing supercomputers and other technology to flow eastward.

But now the Kremlin's liberal farce is nearing its logical end. As any child can see, a KGB officer is president of Russia, the Duma has moved to block future privatizations while businesses in private hands are reverting to state control.

As for human rights in Russia, public order is yet maintained by Bolshevik methods. Torture is the main investigative tool of the Russian police; the courts are ineffective, the security services are all powerful. People have freedom of speech in Russia, but even this is ultimately equivocal. Journalists keep dying under strange circumstances in that unfortunate country. And who knows how many will be arrested in a future crackdown?

While Americans have been shopping under a regime of market hedonism, Russia has been preparing its population and armed forces for a future conflict, laying the foundations for a modernized war machine and a new alliance bloc. In addition, Russia has been carefully deploying its forces, violating treaty commitments in the process.

In recent days the Washington Times, Reuters and the Associated Press have reported that Russia has secretly moved tactical nuclear weapons into Kaliningrad, a base complex located on the Baltic Sea (outside of Russia itself). This movement took place over the last six months, in direct violation of understandings and agreements that effectively ended the Cold War in the early 1990s.

The danger in Russia's move should be obvious. The United States Army destroyed its tactical nuclear weapons in the 1990s. The U.S. Navy has also done away with its tactical nuclear warheads. But the Russians did not follow suit. Claiming poverty, they stashed between 15,000 and 30,000 tactical nuclear weapons in storage, and now they are retrieving what has been stored. On the American side, there is nothing in storage to respond with.

It now appears the strategy of Soviet collapse was very simple. The Soviet empire was disassembled with rapid reassembly in mind. Now that the reassembly has begun, the West is stunned and cannot effectively counter a whole series of Russian moves.

According to Pentagon officials, the Russian transfer of nukes to Kaliningrad was detected in June, 2000. The Clinton administration has therefore known about this for months (and has done nothing). On Thursday the U.S. State Department said it would soon raise the Kaliningrad issue with the Russians. But as Bill Gertz of the Washington Times pointed out, the State Department spokesman's remarks "are a sign the administration has not raised the matter with Moscow during arms control talks in the past six months. ..."

Some readers will be shocked, but they shouldn't be. This has been the pattern of the Clinton administration from Day One. It was also evident, to some degree, in the previous Bush administration. We have passed through a decade of strategic errors and blunders.

Predictably, if there isn't a new consciousness in this country, and a new resolve to address emerging strategic imbalances, we're going to be in serious trouble. The delusions of the past decade will not defend the United States in the next. Russia has now acquired definite military advantages.

Consider Russia's newfound superiority in military technology, long masked by stories of a defunct and undersupplied military. Last Wednesday Russia's press offered further details regarding the Kremlin's new stealth technology (which allows military aircraft to escape radar detection). According to Itar-Tass, the new stealth capability relies on a plasma field which surrounds combat aircraft and absorbs electromagnetic waves.

The West has largely ignored reports of new and advanced Russian weapons. This column has already discussed Russia's new fuel air grenade, which can give a single Russian soldier the firepower of a howitzer. In terms of air weapons, the United States Air Force has delayed purchasing the F-22, but the supposedly underfunded Russian Air Force has tested its new SU-35UB with its super-cruise and stealth capabilities. We should also mention the Dec. 26 deployment of a third regiment of mobile ICBMs in Russia. These are widely acknowledged as the world's most sophisticated nuclear missiles.

But not to worry. We are told that Russia is a poor country. It is therefore not a threat. The Russians, after all, have no money to attack us with. They cannot bombard us effectively with 10-dollar bills. They cannot overcome our nonexistent missile defenses with fives and ones. As everyone knows, it doesn't matter how many nuclear weapons you have. It only matters how many malls and shops you have, especially if they're filled with communist Chinese trinkets.

On the other hand, what if Russia's financial debt -- Russia's lack of money -- is itself an opportunity for bombardment?

On Thursday it was reported that Russia defaulted on its debt of $48 billion (owed to the Paris Club of sovereign creditors). This default was announced even though Russia's economy is booming -- even though Russia's international currency reserves are at record high levels. Previous Russian defaults were due to financial problems in Russia. This present default has no financial explanation.

Perhaps there is a strategic explanation.

Another Russian move that should cause us to worry has to do with the Russian Navy. On Dec. 28 Adm. Vladimir Kuroyedov announced he was going to mount a massive naval deployment in 2001. "It is time for our ships to move away from the pier," he said. Without offering any explanation, Kuroyedov said that Russia would soon deploy surface ships to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, as well as the Mediterranean Sea.

Andrei Navrozov, whom I quoted at the beginning of this column, blamed the Western press for failing to understand where Russia was going with glasnost and perestroika. He said that our best Western experts, our vaunted Sovietologists, did not understand the ABCs of totalitarianism. He suspected Western pundits were shallow. He thought they would succumb to the Russian deception strategy of the 1990s. In Navrozov's 1991 essay, "The Coming Order," he asked if it was reasonable to expect Western journalists to "replicate the deceptions ... of the unfree Soviet press when the simulacrum of capitalism and 'democracy' becomes a pan-Eurasian reality?"

We know the answer today. The Western press was fooled by Russia's KGB-led democracy and its false-front capitalism. The shallowness of our media and academia in this regard is now undeniable. The crisis we are entering was not caused by neglect or inattention. It resulted from willful self-deception and psychological weakness. There is something wrong with our intellectual and political leaders. There is also something wrong with the way they discuss strategic issues.

Now is a good time for second thoughts. The delusions of the last decade must be set aside. Russia is mounting a new challenge, bringing new weapons into play. What else has to happen for this to be understood?