UPDATED below

Russia is resuming regular air patrols with its long range strategic bombers:

"Air patrol areas will include zones of commercial shipping and economic activity. As of today, combat patrolling will be on a permanent basis. It has a strategic character," Putin said.

The president said that although the country stopped strategic flights to remote regions in 1992, "Unfortunately, not everyone followed our example."

Headlines and commentators in the U.S. will certainly claim this to be a somehow aggressive act.

That is nonsense. This is a defensive move Russia has to do. It fears that the U.S. might otherwise pressure it by threatening a nuclear first strike. That fear is certainly not baseless.

To understand, let’s take a look at this recommendable piece in Foreign Affairs written last year by two political science professors from U.S. universities:

Today, for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy. It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike. This dramatic shift in the nuclear balance of power stems from a series of improvements in the United States’ nuclear systems, the precipitous decline of Russia’s arsenal, and the glacial pace of modernization of China’s nuclear forces. Unless Washington’s policies change or Moscow and Beijing take steps to increase the size and readiness of their forces, Russia and China — and the rest of the world — will live in the shadow of U.S. nuclear primacy for many years to come.

The authors explain in detail why they come to this conclusion. For example, while the U.S. keeps significant numbers of submarines with nuclear weapons on patrol anytime. Russia’s subs rarely leave their harbor at all. They continue:

Is the United States intentionally pursuing nuclear primacy? Or is primacy an unintended byproduct of intra-Pentagon competition for budget share or of programs designed to counter new threats from terrorists and so-called rogue states? Motivations are always hard to pin down, but the weight of the evidence suggests that Washington is, in fact, deliberately seeking nuclear primacy.

What Russia is trying to do by renewing bomber patrol activity is to counter a very real threat of U.S. first strike capability and the political pressure that comes with the threat. The Russian anger over the U.S. proposed missile defense in Europe can likewise be explained:

[T]he sort of missile defenses that the United States might plausibly deploy would be valuable primarily in an offensive context, not a defensive one — as an adjunct to a U.S. first-strike capability, not as a standalone shield. If the United States launched a nuclear attack against Russia (or China), the targeted country would be left with a tiny surviving arsenal — if any at all. At that point, even a relatively modest or inefficient missile-defense system might well be enough to protect against any retaliatory strikes, because the devastated enemy would have so few warheads and decoys left.

Russia does not acquiesce the global primacy the U.S. is trying to achieve. The step Russia has taken now is not yet a decisive counter to that U.S. intent. But it significantly increases the cost to pursue it.

UPDATE:

Josh Marshall, in discussing the revived Russian patrols, serves as a good example of what is wrong with the "serious people" who make up U.S. foreign policy:

Not everything that happens these days is uniquely President Bush’s fault. Vladimir Putin is no great shakes either. And you can debate whether this is more a reaction to the White House’s aggressive push for missile defense shields and military deals with countries on Russia’s border or more part of Putin’s own growing authoritarianism, trying to stoke xenophobia and increased militarism.

First: Why does Josh think that Putin is "not in great shakes"? Russia is certainly much better off now than it was 7 years ago when Putin became President. Since then real GDP in Russia did grow by some 6.5% per year. The current account balance is positive. Old debt was paid off and $300 billion of reserves were created. The wild west kleptocracy mostly under control. Since 2000 the Russian RTS stock index increased in US$ terms nine-fold from 200 to 1800. Putin has the highest approval rate of any national leader in the world. "Not in great shakes"?

Second: Reading the Foreign Affair piece quoted above and various U.S. strategy papers that set the U.S. military goal of "full spectrum dominance", can there be any doubt that it is Russia reacting to U.S. policy here? Where is proof for Putin’s alleged "growing authoritarianism" – especially when compared to Bush’s "Unitary Executive" ventures. 

Aside from Russia Marshall goes on to proclaim:

What is not debatable however is that there is more going on in the world — more opportunities and more threats — than what happens in the few hundred mile radius around the ancient capital of Baghdad. There is, as we can see, Russia, which still has a few thousand nuclear warheads which could cause some serious headaches. There’s China, a vast economic and potential military power that will bulk larger and larger in our lives over the course of this century. There’s Pakistan, India, half a billion people to our south speaking Spanish and Portuguese. The list goes on and on.

What threats is Marshall anticipating here? One might understand that instability in Pakistan is a problem. But there the U.S. is part of the circumstances that created those problems in the first place. It is certainly not the solution.

But how are China, India and South America a threat? And if they would be, what would Marshall do about it?

But our whole national dialog, hundreds of billions of dollars and a lot more are going to Iraq. And more generally the fantasy 450 year long-war epic battle with the Islamofascists. We’re close to breaking the US Army and Marine Corps with over-extended deployments. And in hotspots around the world, there’s a vacuum, as the world sort of rushes past us. In many ways this is the greatest danger in Iraq, not that our future as a nation is at stake in staying (as the right would have it) or even that it’s necessarily at stake in leaving but that our engagement with the country has fixed us with a dangerous national myopia which is letting many other problems fester unattended for going on a decade.

The military capacity of the U.S. is degraded a bit, and that has Marshall concerned. Why? What "hotspots" are there that need the Marines? What "vacuum" is he talking about the Air Force might be asked to fill with bombs?

Josh, there are people in China and India and South America, not a "vacuum". Those people can very well care for themselves, thank you, and those people and the policies they are setting for themselves are not "unattended festering problems". There is no need for U.S. intervention, certainly not militarily, in China, India or South America. So why is the inability of the U.S. to intervene a problem?

One can only have Marshall’s concerns when one believes in some god given right or need for the U.S. to intervene in other peoples business whenever it likes – anywhere.

That is the real problem with U.S. foreign policy. Some false self-portrait as the enlightened city on the hill that the U.S. never was and never will be. Some assumed responsibility to intervene whenever people decide to live their own way. Some manifest destiny that is nothing but a scam of a self declared right to rob the world.

This is exactly the phantasm that let people like Marshall agree to the war on Iraq. That war is now a problem. It is a problem for him not because it was a huge mistake in the philosophy of "serious" U.S. foreign policy people. But the only reason he forwards is because it hinders them and him to use the same failed philosophy now to solemnly agree on total war on Whomever elsewhere.