A reaction is inevitable. The blundering and dissimulation of Russian naval authorities made a shameful contrast to the efficiency of the Norwegian deepwater divers. The maladroit response to the tragedy by Vladimir Putin dealt a blow to his new government. Just after the sinking, ordinary Russians talked about help from the United States, Britain or Germany but not from neighboring Norway, a country of 4.3 million people that is now rich because of North Sea oil but in the past was poor.
Humiliation can be a powerful force.
The loss of the submarine Kursk and the humiliating circumstances that have surrounded it recall events in 1904 and 1905. At the beginning of the last century, czarist Russia expanded into the Far East with great confidence in its imperial destiny. It occupied the Chinese naval base of Port Arthur and was extending the Trans-Siberian Railroad to the Pacific and promoting Russian influence in Manchuria. The expansion clashed with Japan's imperial ambitions in China and Korea. Japan only 30 years earlier had been an isolated feudal nation.