by Stephen Bryen

I am not a Kremlinologist, and Kremlinology sort of went out of fashion with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But I always enjoyed the speculation that Kremlin-watchers were so good at. Who lined up on top of the reviewing stand in Red Square during military parades; who was missing; who said what to whom? These and countless other outward signs were diagnosed and re-diagnosed ad nauseam, but sometimes the Kremlin-watchers got it right.

Should we be doing that again now? There is clearly something big going on in Russia. Is Putin listening to the hard-line faction, or is he (or was he) trying to promote a different option?

Putin took himself to New York not just to tell the UN what he intended to do in Syria, but more importantly to make a case to Obama about what both of them should do. Obama rejected Putin’s…