Vladimir Putin is putting up spectacular aggressive displays these days, making near-miss air attacks on our recon planes, expanding his military bases in Syria and Iran, and probably helping the Yemeni Houthis launch cruise missiles perilously close to  our naval vessels in the Straits of Hormuz. 

Putin is strategic in his thinking, and a lot of his anti-American posing is phony, simply because the West poses no genuine threat to Mother Russia.  Certainly not compared to jihad. 

The question is, therefore, why Putin is stirring up the biggest post-Soviet fuss ever.  What does he stand to gain from Western scare headlines? 

Russia is not interested in nuclear confrontations, where everybody loses and nobody wins.  Instead, he is putting on his war dance to gain Obama concessions that most Americans may never see, like tactical retreats by U.S. forces in the Gulf, oil price concessions from the Saudis, and a free hand against Chechen ISIS terrorists who would love to go back to kill Russian infidels in Moscow.

Because Obama is the weakest U.S. president in history, Putin may see the coming months as the best time to squeeze out the last American concessions.  He may also calculate that Hillary wants to stop the email leaks so badly that she might promise concessions if she is elected. 

Obama can no longer hide his secret support of Muslim jihad in Syria, in Libya, and here at home, while Hillary's closest aide is Huma Abedin, who received lifelong indoctrination in an activist Muslim Brotherhood family. 

Like it or not, Huma fits the profile of an M.B. agent to perfection.  The Moobers could wish for nothing better than high-level loyalists at the top of the U.S. government.  That is why many millions of M.B. dollars are flowing through the Clinton Foundation into Democratic (and maybe Republican) pockets. 

Jihadist infiltration is a humongous political scandal, and only Donald Trump seems to be willing to talk about it. 

Vladimir Putin therefore has a genuine interest in common with Trump.  This is not a case of "dual loyalties," as the left would love to say, but a rational calculation of common interest between the West and Russia.  Jihad wants to kill off Russia, Europe, and the United States.  A common defense against jihad would only be common sense. 

Nobody can believe a single word coming out of the Democratic National Committee, but they may actually be right in thinking that Putin is behind the enormous email leaks exposing Hillary as well as John Podesta, the sinister Gray Eminence behind this administration. 

It's important to remember that Putin came to power after Chechen jihadists murdered schoolchildren in an atrocious massacre in Beslan twenty years ago.  Anti-jihad reflexes are built into the Russian psyche after ten centuries of conflict.  Like the Tsars, Putin has gone back to the Russian Orthodox Church as his ideological base.  Seeing Putin with the patriarch of Moscow in news photos builds his credibility, with some 70 percent of the population expressing confidence in the Church. 

Trendy Americans and  Europeans are too stuck in the secularist narrative to even perceive the resurgence of traditional religion in places like Poland and Russia.  The fact is that Orthodoxy survived 70 years of the most intense persecution from Lenin onward, and every Russian knows it.  The Orthodox Church is identified with Russian nationalism, including military defense against Muslim jihad and Polish (Catholic) invasions from the West.

Today, Putin claims the right to bomb Saudi- and U.S.-sponsored jihadis in Syria.  Russia has a legitimate fear that ISIS terrorists will come back to stage suicide bombings in Russia, with its enormous, hard-to-seal borders.  A forward defense against jihad fanatics is never a bad idea.  Furthermore, there is a rational case to be made that NATO expansion into Russia's historic sphere of influence after Perestroika was a bad idea.  Russia may be paranoid about current U.S. policy, but it has a long, long history of real enemies as well. 

Historically, Ukraine's capital of Kiev was the first capital of Russia, and there is a great deal of cultural continuity.  The Russian point of view on the Ukraine may be self-serving, but it is not completely illogical. 

Because of the relentless advance of jihad attacks against the West, the United States should be looking for defensive alliances.  Unlike the Soviet Union, Putin's Russia is not an ideologically global-imperialist power; it has far too much to worry about from its traditional enemies on all sides, including jihad. 

It is therefore a major mistake to think that Putin is still a Soviet imperialist.  He has bigger fish to fry these days. 

Historically, Russia was not anti-Western until Lenin and the Soviet Union.  Marxism is an aggressive imperialist ideology, like jihad, but Russia has long harbored strong positive and strong negative feelings toward the modern West.  Tsar Peter the Great famously traveled to Western Europe to learn and import the best technology of the time, and today, St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) is still the most forward-looking city in Russia, along with Moscow.  Putin grew up in what is now St. Petersburg and is intimately familiar with that history. 

If Trump comes out triumphant in this election, he could produce a "Nixon to China" moment, like the one negotiated by Kissinger after the Vietnam War put the U.S. at an enormous disadvantage against Communist imperialism.  Nixon went to China to split up the two giant pillars of global Marxist aggression, and the result, over a few decades, was magnificent.  It was a turning point in the Cold War, and in the end, it brought capitalist prosperity to China's coastal cities (and, to a lesser degree, to Russia). 

Today we are losing the jihad war, in good part because the Muslim Brotherhood, the Saudis, and the Iranians have infiltrated the West, rendering us close to helpless.  Angela Merkel's shameful surrender to the Turkish-sponsored jihad "rapefugee" invasion several months ago was an unprecedented demonstration of imbecilic Western weakness. 

At this point in history, Russia, China, and India are the only major powers that have been immunized by a long, long history of jihadist massacres.  Our organs of propaganda have been turned by the enemy, a fact that should be obvious to all. 

One big reason why Trump scares the D.C. establishment is the fear of public exposure of jihadist penetration in Washington. 

That is also the biggest reason for patriots to vote for Trump.  Never forget that we are at war – an ideological war of aggression declared against non-Muslims many centuries ago.  Arab and Iranian oil wealth reignited the coals of jihad, leading to today's peril.  Our potential allies are waiting to be approached, and Putin is too shrewd not to spot a vital moment.