Geopolitical thread

[Philip]

A good lecture for Pranab M and the mandarins...oops,sorry,"maharajahs" of our MEA.
Great quote from Kishore Madhubani,S'pore's veteran diplomat who has a superb intellect,great speaker.

(As Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore's former UN ambassador, observed in the Financial Times a few days ago, "most of the world is bemused by western moralising on Georgia". While the western view is that the world "should support the underdog, Georgia, against Russia ... most support Russia against the bullying west. The gap between the western narrative and the rest of the world could not be clearer.")

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... eignpolicy

Georgia is the graveyard of America's unipolar worldRussia's defiance in the Caucasus has brought down the curtain on Bush senior's new world order - not before time

Seumas Milne The Guardian, Thursday August 28 2008

If there were any doubt that the rules of the international game have changed for good, the events of the past few days should have dispelled it. On Monday, President Bush demanded that Russia's leaders reject their parliament's appeal to recognise the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Within 24 hours, Bush had his response: President Medvedev announced Russia's recognition of the two contested Georgian enclaves.

The Russian message was unmistakable: the outcome of the war triggered by Georgia's attack on South Ossetia on August 7 is non-negotiable - and nothing the titans of the US empire do or say is going to reverse it. After that, the British foreign secretary David Miliband's posturing yesterday in Kiev about building a "coalition against Russian aggression" merely looked foolish.

That this month's events in the Caucasus signal an international turning point is no longer in question. The comparisons with August 1914 are of course ridiculous, and even the speculation about a new cold war overdone. For all the manoeuvres in the Black Sea and nuclear-backed threats, the standoff between Russia and the US is not remotely comparable to the events that led up to the first world war. Nor do the current tensions have anything like the ideological and global dimensions that shaped the 40-year confrontation between the west and the Soviet Union.

But what is clear is that America's unipolar moment has passed - and the new world order heralded by Bush's father in the dying days of the Soviet Union in 1991 is no more. The days when one power was able to bestride the globe like a colossus, enforcing its will in every continent, challenged only by popular movements for national independence and isolated "rogue states", are now over. For nearly two decades, while Russia sunk into "catastroika" and China built an economic powerhouse, the US has exercised unprecedented and unaccountable global power, arrogating to itself and its allies the right to invade and occupy other countries, untroubled by international law or institutions, sucking ever more states into the orbit of its voracious military alliance.

Now, pumped up with petrodollars, Russia has called a halt to this relentless expansion and demonstrated that the US writ doesn't run in every backyard. And although it has been a regional, not a global, challenge, this object lesson in the new limits of American power has already been absorbed from central Asia to Latin America.

In Georgia itself, both Medvedev's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia's independence and Russia's destruction of Georgian military capacity have been designed to leave no room for doubt that the issue of the enclaves' reintegration has been closed. There are certainly dangers for Russia's own territorial integrity in legitimising breakaway states. But the move will have little practical impact and is presumably partly intended to create bargaining chips for future negotiations.

Miliband's attempt in Ukraine, meanwhile, to deny the obvious parallels with the US-orchestrated recognition of Kosovo's independence earlier this year rang particularly hollow, as did his denunciation of invasions of sovereign states and double standards. Both the west and Russia have abused the charge of "genocide" to try and give themselves legal cover, but Russia is surely on stronger ground over South Ossetia - where its own internationally recognised peacekeepers were directly attacked by the Georgian army - than Nato was in Kosovo in 1999, where most ethnic cleansing took place after the US-led assault began.

There has been much talk among western politicians in recent days about Russia isolating itself from the international community. But unless that simply means North America and Europe, nothing could be further from the truth. While the US and British media have swung into full cold-war mode over the Georgia crisis, the rest of the world has seen it in a very different light. As Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore's former UN ambassador, observed in the Financial Times a few days ago, "most of the world is bemused by western moralising on Georgia". While the western view is that the world "should support the underdog, Georgia, against Russia ... most support Russia against the bullying west. The gap between the western narrative and the rest of the world could not be clearer."

Why that should be so isn't hard to understand. It's not only that the US and its camp followers have trampled on international law and the UN to bring death and destruction to the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the early 1990s, the Pentagon warned that to ensure no global rival emerged, the US would need to "account for the interests of advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership". But when it came to Russia, all that was forgotten in a fog of imperial hubris that has left the US overstretched and unable to prevent the return of a multipolar world.

Of course, that new multipolarity can easily be overstated. Russia is a regional power and there is no imminent prospect of a serious global challenger to the US, which will remain overwhelmingly the most powerful state in the world for years to come. It can also exacerbate the risk of conflict. But only the most solipsistic western mindset can fail to grasp the necessity of a counterbalance in international relations that can restrict the freedom of any one power to impose its will on other countries unilaterally.

One western response, championed by the Times this week, is to damn this growing challenge to US domination on the grounds that it is led by autocratic states in the shape of Russia and China. In reality, western alarm clearly has very little to do with democracy. When Russia collapsed into the US orbit under Boris Yeltsin, his bombardment of the Russian parliament and shamelessly rigged elections were treated with the greatest western understanding.

The real gripe is not with these states' lack of accountability - Russian public opinion is in any case overwhelmingly supportive of its government's actions in Georgia - but their strategic challenge and economic rivalry. For the rest of us, a new assertiveness by Russia and other rising powers doesn't just offer some restraint on the unbridled exercise of global imperial power, it should also increase the pressure for a revival of a rules-based system of international relations. In the circumstances, that might come to seem quite appealing to whoever is elected US president.

[email protected]

[renukb]

Europe and Russia: A History of Confrontation
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,214 ... 30,00.html

Over the last decade, Russia and the West have repeatedly clashed over security, trade and diplomatic issues. Take a look at the most critical moments.

1997-99 NATO Enlargement:
NATO invites Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary to join the alliance. Russia protests, but the three countries join in March 1999.

1999 Kosovo:
NATO bombs Serbia to stop the war in the breakaway province of Kosovo. Russia protests, but is unable to intervene.

1999 Chechnya:
Russia invades its breakaway province of Chechnya. Western leaders accuse Russia of human-rights abuses, to the fury of its new president, Vladimir Putin.

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Russia has opposed NATO's eastward expansions
2002-04 NATO and EU Enlargements:

NATO and the EU invite several new members from the former Soviet sphere to join. Russia again objects, but the enlargements take place in spring 2004.

2005-07 Trade Rows:
Following the EU's 2004 enlargement, new members Poland and Lithuania find themselves in conflict with Russia over a ban on Polish meat imports and a shut-off of oil to Lithuania. Both countries veto talks on a strategic EU-Russia deal. Moscow accuses them of holding its relationship with the EU for ransom.

2007 Missile Defense:
The US announces plans to site parts of an anti-missile system in NATO and EU members Poland and the Czech Republic. Russia threatens to aim nuclear missiles at the duo in response.

2007 Cyber War:
The Estonian government relocates a Red Army war memorial in Tallinn. Ethnic Russians retaliate by rioting in Tallinn, attacking EU diplomats in Moscow and launching a massive cyber-attack on Estonian government systems. European politicians condemn the attacks. Russia retorts by accusing Europe of trying to "rewrite the history" of World War II.

2008 Kosovo:
Kosovo declares independence in February. The US and most European states recognize it, but stress that it is a unique case. Russia condemns the move and warns that it will be seen as a precedent in other conflict areas such as Georgia.

2008 NATO Enlargement:
At a summit in April, NATO leaders agree that Georgia and Ukraine should join the alliance at an unspecified future point. Russia warns that this would destabilize the security situation in the Caucasus.

DPA news agency (kjb)

[renukb]

UK's economic ties with Russia
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7584538.stm

Russia's decision to recognise the independence of Georgia's breakaway enclaves has triggered talk of a new cold war.

Top US officials have said Russia's continued military presence in Georgia could jeopardise its membership in the Group of Eight and its bid to join the World Trade Organization.

The crisis has also revealed how the UK economy might be vulnerable if tensions escalate further.

ENERGY
The UK, and Europe, are increasingly reliant on Russia for energy supplies.

The UK became a net importer of gas in 2004 as supplies in the North Sea dwindled and Russia is a major source of our imports.

Russian energy giant Gazprom controls much of the country's oil and gas interests - supplying a fifth of the EU's overall gas needs.

Russia has not been afraid to use its gas as an economic weapon on the international stage. It cut supplies to Ukraine in March in a row over $1.5bn in unpaid debts.


THE CITY
The UK's financial sector has benefitted from the boom in Russia's economy spurred by high oil and commodity prices.

London has emerged as the favoured place for Russian companies to go public - this has meant plenty of work for City bankers and lawyers.

The luxury property market has also been underpinned by sales to Russian billionaires, whose wives are regulars at the capital's swanky department stores.

By some estimates, top London store sales to Russian tourists have been rising at 40% a year.


COMPANIES
UK firms are among the biggest investors in Russia, particularly in the oil and gas sector.

But the Russian government has become increasingly sensitive to foreign ownership of this key sector of the economy.

Both BP and Shell have been involved in conflict with the Russian government over their investments in Russia.

Shell has had to abandon its gas field developments on Sakhalin island after a dispute over environmental laws.

BP has faced lawsuits, visa rows and industrial spying claims in its dispute with four Russian billionaires over control of its TNK-BP joint oil venture.

TNK-BP's American chief executive Robert Dudley has been forced to leave Russia because of "sustained harassment".

BP was also forced to temporarily close a pipeline that runs through Georgia as a precautionary measure after Russian planes reportedly targeted it. The pipeline was designed to bypass dependence on Russia or Iran as a means of transporting oil from the Caspian Sea.

But analysts say that Russia's huge stash of foreign exchange reserves would allow it to cope if foreign investment was withdrawn from the country.

[renukb]

Behold the Bear:
10 Reasons Americans Should Care about Russia
http://www.russiablog.org/2008/08/behol ... ns_ame.php


1. Russia Is the World's Largest Country, Straddling Europe, China and the Islamic World. Even with the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia remains the world's largest country, spanning 11 time zones. This vast landmass has much of the world's natural resources and 141 million people. Russia’s size and burgeoning economy influence markets worldwide. The country shares common global economic interests with the U.S., with both direct and indirect effects, including promoting more tolerant forms of Islam and ensuring that China's rise remains peaceful.


2. Russia and America Have Traditionally Been Allies—Not Enemies. Except for the Cold War, Russia and America have often shared common purpose. Russian troops served alongside U.S. Marines to protect foreigners during the Boxer Rebellion in China. In the First World War, Russia sided with America's allies against Germany. During World War II, Russians, partially equipped by American aid, engaged and destroyed over 80 percent of the Nazi armies. On September 11, 2001, Russian President Vladimir Putin was the first leader to call President George Bush. He offered the use of Russian territory and intelligence services in the war against Al-Qaeda. Within weeks, American bombers were flying through Russian airspace to strike Taliban targets in Afghanistan. History shouldn’t be ignored. Russia and America might not always share values, but as they have at times in the past, they might find common ground through shared strategic and economic interests.


3. Russia Can Be a Quiet Partner, Not an Adversary in the Global Struggle Against Terrorism. In April 2008, Russia quietly reached an agreement with NATO to allow Russian territory to be used for the resupply of NATO's peacekeeping troops in Afghanistan. This agreement came despite NATO’s expansion up to Russia's borders, a point of ongoing contention between Moscow and Washington. Despite Moscow’s concerns about NATO expansion, a small fleet of privately chartered Russian Antonov heavy airlifters is regularly being employed by the Pentagon to ship American and allied materiel into Iraq and Afghanistan. Common strategic interests can lead to greater shared economic concerns.


4. Russia Benefits from (and Might Help Provide) Stability in the Middle East and Iran. Some commentators have said Russia is siding with Iran against the U.S. and Israel. But a more accurate version of the truth might be that Moscow's main goals have been to maintain good relations with its neighbor while helping alleviate the threat of another regional conflict. Although Moscow has supplied Iran with a civilian reactor, it has tried to prevent Iran's enriched uranium from being diverted to any secret bomb-making project. When Iran wouldn’t cooperate with inspectors in 2006, Russia joined America by supporting sanctions against Iran at the United Nations.

The U.S., Israel, and many Gulf Arab states are justifiably skeptical that Iran’s nuclear program is solely for producing electricity. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threats to "wipe Israel off the map" and his support for extremist groups are unacceptable. The Kremlin has condemned Ahmadinejad’s threats, but may believe that it has no choice but to engage Iran through trade and diplomacy, as Iran’s economically sclerotic regime could implode someday, just like that of the Soviet Union. Given Tehran’s desperate need to export more oil and gas for hard currency, Iran probably does need nuclear power, and the U.S. knows and accepts that. The question is, can it be limited to peaceful uses? The evidence is that the mullahs have other ambitions. In the Middle East and Iran, security, energy and economic interests entangle, to one degree or another, most of the world’s nations. Russia might have a foothold from which America could benefit economically and strategically.


5. Russia Is a Pivotal Player in Global Energy Markets. Russia Is the World’s Largest Producer of Natural Gas and One of the World’s Top Two Oil Producers. Russia produces over 9 million barrels of oil per day. It has the largest natural gas reserves in the world, which in turn have made Russia's state-owned monopoly Gazprom one of the globe’s biggest companies by market capitalization. But some industry-specific challenges are on the horizon that could impact global energy prices. In an interview with the Financial Times, Leonid Fedun, the Vice President of OAO Lukoil, Russia’s largest private oil company, said Russian oil production might have peaked in 2007. Does this mean that Russia is running out of oil? Not likely. (Siberia may contain the world’s largest untapped reserves.) The real problem is not a lack of oil in the ground, but high taxes that are hindering reinvestment of profits into Russia’s oil industry. President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin have called for lowering taxes on Russia’s oil producers, and the government has announced a 10-year tax holiday for major offshore oil and gas projects in Russian waters.

As a major commodities exporter still lacking a well-developed domestic agriculture industry, Russia remains vulnerable to the global wave of inflation in food prices. Many financial analysts believe that taming double digit inflation will require Russia to let its currency, the ruble, appreciate considerably. This appreciation could lead more CIS countries and cash-flush Mideast oil exporters to pick a basket of euros and rubles over dollars as their reserve currencies. Such a shift could push the dollar further down in value, improving the competitiveness of U.S. exports but hurting the vast majority of Americans who depend on one inelastic import priced in dollars—oil. Unlike citizens of China and the OPEC countries, Russian consumers do not receive subsidized gasoline from their country’s state-owned companies.


6. Russia and America Are Interlinked Through Our Financial Systems. When President Bush’s Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert Kimmitt visited Moscow in June 2007, he asked the Kremlin to invest more of its $130 billion dollar Stabilization Fund in the United States. Conversely, just a decade ago, representatives of Boris Yeltsin’s bankrupt government sought billions in loans from the International Monetary Fund. Russia’s Stabilization Fund is now the fifth largest pool of capital in the world, trailing only the Sovereign Wealth Funds of China and the Gulf Arab emirates. While Congress continues to fret over the burgeoning influence of sovereign wealth funds from Russia, China and the Middle East, Russian companies are taking advantage of the weakening dollar to acquire assets, such as steel mills and gas station chains, in the United States. Russia’s Stabilization Fund recently announced that it owned $50 billion in U.S.-government backed securities, including short-term paper issued by the troubled agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.


7. American Investors and U.S. Companies Are Investing in Russia. U.S.-Russia transactions are certainly not a one-way street. U.S. direct investment is one of the reasons Russia is ranked second only to China in the amount of foreign capital it attracts. And thanks to global emerging market mutual funds and new EM-focused exchange traded funds, millions of individual American investors can now own Russian equities in their portfolio, and hundreds of thousands do. These include Russian companies whose American Deposit Receipts trade on the New York Stock Exchange and U.S. over the counter markets such as Vympelcom, Gazprom, and Norilsk Nickel, as well as firms that trade on the London or Moscow exchanges such as Sberbank and Wimm-Bill-Dann. Major New York-based investment banks (Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan) are underwriting Russian IPOs on the London and Moscow exchanges, including the massive breakup and privatization of Russia’s Unified Energy Systems electric power monopoly.

Meanwhile, many American car manufacturers are planning to build new factories in Russia. With only 220 cars per thousand people (compared to 815 in the U.S), Russia offers enormous room for growth in the automotive sector. Russia is now one of the most profitable markets for General Motors in the world, and the company plans to expand its manufacturing in the Russian Federation. American big box retailers such as Wal-Mart are plotting their strategies to compete against European incumbents such as IKEA-Mega and Carrefour in the booming Russian retail market. Starbucks has come to Moscow and plans to expand its franchise in Russia even with strong competition from local brands Coffee House and Shokoladnitsa (Chocolatier).


8. Russia and America Are Interlinked Through Our Nuclear Power Industries. Millions of Americans who have enjoyed the benefits of emission-free nuclear energy are probably unaware that some of the fuel for this electricity came from decommissioned Russian atomic warheads. Since 1994, the “Megatons to Megawatts” program has supplied American reactors with 327 tons of highly enriched uranium from Russia, or the equivalent of 13,093 dismantled warheads. In May 2008, the U.S. and Russia reached a new agreement to share nuclear technologies. Russia is planning to create a repository for low-level radioactive waste from the U.S. and other countries. Russia’s federal energy policy calls for more than doubling the percentage of electricity supplied by nuclear energy to the Russian power grid by 2020.


9. America and Russia Are Interlinked Through Science and Technology. Outside of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., very few Americans are aware that Russian and American laboratories are working on a new nano-technology water filtration with an American company, Global Water Group, Inc. in Dallas, Texas. Very few Americans are also aware that the Atlanta, Ga.-based U.S. Centers for Disease Control employs scientists at the Vektor State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology in Novosibirsk to counteract the threat of bioterrorism. Russia and America continue to jointly operate the International Space Station, though Americans have only heard about this in recent months due to a toilet breaking in orbit. Russian-mined titanium has been used in advanced American aircraft from the SR-71 to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, and today Boeing maintains a design center staffed by 1,400 Russian engineers in Moscow.


10. Russian Popular Culture Is Once Again Reaching Audiences in the West. The 2006 U.S. release by Fox Searchlight Pictures of Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor), followed by its sequel Day Watch (Dnevnoi Dozor) in 2007 marked a turning point for the spread of Russian popular culture in America. For the first time since the collapse of the USSR, Russian directors have proven that their blockbusters can draw audiences away from Hollywood films within Russia, and that studios are beginning to think that Russian movies can attract an audience in America. The proof? The third installment of director Timur Bekmanbetov’s epic horror series, Twilight Watch (Sumerechny Dozor), is being filmed in English. And 2008’s Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie, was a veritable all-Russian affair, from the direction and cinematography to the musical compositions and accounting.

Russians are finally beginning to be known at the pop culture level in the English-speaking world for more than producing vodka and mafia. American expats already know that Moscow is becoming famous for its night life and shopping, with U.S. brands like Ralph Lauren, Hummer, and even Starbucks coming to Moscow and other Russian cities. Finally, millions of Russians and Ukrainians are discovering that most American of cultural exports—hip-hop music—being produced in their own language.

[ramana]

Awesome Ramana garu.

Am totally blown away by the level, the quality, the clarity, the insight..... wow. Bloody wow.

Mazaa aa gaya. Once again, Thanks for pointing this one out!

We have them too but those who are not yet upto speed call them CTists.

If you look at his whole series of writings the core belief is that his system is the best and he bats for his nation and civilizational interests. Clarity comes from singlemindedness of purpose.

[vsudhir]

We have them too but those who are not yet upto speed call them CTists.

If you look at his whole series of writings the core belief is that his system is the best and he bats for his nation and civilizational interests. Clarity comes from singlemindedness of purpose.

Very true.

What he prognosticates for 2000 has more than come true. The stage D of his demographic model - falling birth rates and rising proportion of elderly with ever longer lifespans - is in full gloom in the Gora-7 and Japan (honorary goras anyhow).

His focus on china as a showcase of whats wrong with the asia model is significant for the sole reason that it affords him the excuse to overlook analyzing India - a civilizational sui generis on an unprecedented scale.

The amateur vs professional weapons theorizing gets complicated with the decentralization of the terrorism conduit and the possibility of its use for professional-weapons-proliferation.

All in all, wow simply because it puts a framework and a way of thinking fwd that throws new light on so many things. But for the intervention of the king of Poland, unlooked for, at the gatesof Vienna in 1683, oirope as a civilization would have been as wounded as India was from the islamic barbarian ideology. The huns did leave a scar or ten, but the operative part is they 'left'. They didnt stay on unlike the muslims in india.

[svinayak]

Espresso, Italy
http://watchingamerica.com/News/4858/pr ... a-network/
New Americans
Protected by Network



By Suketu Mehta

The notion of "melting pot" is by now obsolete. Today one lands in the United States, individually or in groups, without merging into a melting pot.

Translated By Ashley Bell

August 21st, 2008



Italy - Espresso - Original Article (Italian)

The new U.S. immigrants live in tribes. But they should also open themselves up to other groups. Since 1871 Walt Whitman had foreseen the future of communications between human beings. He described it in his poem "A Passage to India": "Lo, soul! seest thou not God’s purpose from the first? The earth to be spann’d, connected by net-work." By means of Whitman's verses, I explain to myself how an immigrant could land without papers, without money or lodging in such an expensive metropolises as New York or San Francisco to start a new life. The answer is in connections: in every city each one finds support in their own village or own tribe, whether it be an association of computer engineers, of alumni or of confessional groups. In this way, an immigrant can work and get married, live and die within his or her network

What is the difference between immigrants of the previous century and those of our day? Today, many immigrants are in continuous transit between their place of residence and their land of origin. Every new inhabitant of New York carries with them their style of life and moves between two worlds in a constant coming and going. The notion of "melting pot" is by now obsolete. Today one lands in the United States, individually or in groups, without merging into a melting pot. Each one remains resolutely himself. At the end of the 19th century, the Irish or Italian immigrant who disembarked at Ellis Island dreamed of 'returning home' maybe only once before dying; while today thanks to low cost flights, immigrants, at least those who are legal, can return home even a few weeks after their first landing at JFK. What is exile when a round trip flight scarcely costs 500 dollars?

Today immigrants don't see the necessity of adopting an imaginary and idealized American style of life, they can live in America more or less as they were living before leaving their country. Crossing the Manhattan bridge on a cold January morning one could run into thousands of young Mexicans who run with the portrait of Padre Jesus, the patron saint of the village of Ticuani (Puebla), printed on their tee-shirt. This ritual run, called Antocha, is originally a pilgrimage from Mexico City to Ticuani in honor of the saint; except that these youths run from the center of Manhattan to a church in Brooklyn, where there is a real size reproduction of the saint venerated in their native village.

In New York, a multilingual city, one can find strange intersections of networks, of groups that form a common front against an adversary. I met a young guy from Gujarat in Queens who told me that he was part of a gang in Jackson Heights called Punjabi Boys Network, comprised of boys coming from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh--all countries that, at a given time, were at war with one another. But in Queens this is overridden by what unites these boys; their antagonism towards the high school Latinos and African-Americans. In fact, the formation of networks between the immigrants carries a risk; that of the marginalization of already existing groups such as African-Americans who find themselves having to compete with the new arrivals for jobs. Between 2000 and 2004, the black population of New York City decreased by thirty thousand units. Many blacks born in the United States leave the cities and in their place new immigrations from Africa and from the Caribbean are settling. While the national unemployment rate is at 5.7 percent, in recent years two thirds (if not half) of young black boys with a high school diploma have not found work; and among those who abandoned their studies the rate of unemployment fluctuates between 59 and 72 percent!

When they are able to make progress on the social scale, the networks of immigrants work in favor of their countries of origin. The efforts of Indian engineers to support water projects or introduce modern technology into villages in India have had a determinant importance. But the action of these networks presents a considerable shortcoming: the lack of relationships with other minority groups in the USA. According to an estimate by sociologist Anna Lee Saxenian, in the hi-tech sector the presence of African Americans and Latinos “is around 2 percent.” Immigration provokes resentment among natives who are not able to endure the competition at the level of qualifications and salary; and the animosity increases when the new immigrants seem to reverse and pour out their social commitment and their generosity on their home countries, where they spend the money earned in the United States. It is easy to see unpleasant accusations being formed such as that of “double loyalty.”

In the 1950s and 1960s, Jewish-Americans participated in the struggles for civil rights, building a bridge with the African-American community which has proven to endure, even in times of disagreement among these groups. When they have success, Asians, like Africans and Europeans, should also look around the place in which they live and give help to where the need is greatest. It is necessary that within the networks one arrives at a reciprocal assistance, looking outside one’s own tribe and village. Only in this way are communities and nations formed. Only in this way will their networks really span the Earth.

[Philip]

NATO's mischief brought to heel by Russia.

Belligerent bluster
Editorial The Guardian, Friday August 29 2008

Something shattered when the Georgian artillery opened up with a massive barrage on Tskhinvali on August 7 (Colonel Arsen Tsukhishvili, chief of staff of the Artillery Brigade said with pride that 300 of his gun barrels fired at the enemy simultaneously). What broke was not only the columns of Russian tanks the Georgian artillery was aiming at. It was a 16-year post-Soviet consensus about the power of Russia to affect the course taken by its neighbours. The cold, unspoken western calculation was that, the quicker we pushed eastwards with a combination of political, oil and military projects, the less Russia could resist. Even an economically resurgent Russia was still judged to be either too weak, too poor or just too ramshackle to stop it.

To claim, as David Miliband did yesterday, that Nato did not have a sphere of influence and that the eastern expansion of the military alliance was merely an expression of individual democracies exercising their new-found sovereignty, was breathtakingly disingenuous. In May, a subcommittee of the Nato Parliamentary Assembly, a body that brings together parliamentarians from Nato members and its partners visited Romania and Bulgaria, two of the six states along the Black Sea and the latest members of Nato. The topics discussed on this visit strayed far from its brief - energy and environmental security. The committee heard how Romania and Bulgaria occupy a strategic position between Europe, the largest energy consumer, and the oil-producing countries. Two rival oil and gas pipelines, the EU-backed Nabucco pipeline and the South Stream project backed by Russia, arrive here. Talk of oil and gas led seamlessly on to the military role Nato could play in securing this supply. Paragraph 28 of the executive summary of this visit reads: "Nato has not traditionally played a role in energy security matters ... It can however play a more active role defending energy infrastructure and the flow of oil and gas on the high seas ... Nato might also provide security for infrastructure in energy-producing states facing unrest."

Nato yesterday brushed aside Russian claims that an naval exercise in the western part of the Black Sea had anything to do with the crisis going on in the eastern shore. The Nato parliamentarian's visit held before the Georgian crisis erupted says otherwise. If this is not a "sphere of influence" being constructed and planned by Nato's existing members along Russia's most sensitive border in the South Caucasus and right though Russia's most sensitive sea, what is?

The cold war was a nuclear standoff between two military superpowers with mutually opposed economic systems and ideological beliefs. The new period we could be entering lacks many cold war ingredients. Russia is weaker militarily than the Soviet Union was and its reach is not global. It can sell arms to Syria or Iran, but it can no longer restart the revolution in Angola or Cuba. Russia is unashamedly capitalist. But it is also now allergically anti-western and free to form its own alliances. That was evident in the Russian President Dmitri Medvedev flying eastwards to Tajikistan on Wednesday for a summit with the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, an assembly which includes Russia, China and four former members of the Soviet Union.

The way to counter the forces unleashed on August 7 is clear: stop rearranging the furniture on Russia's sensitive southern border; stop militarising the Black Sea; stop pretending that this is only a conflict about loftier goals, a simple struggle between authoritarianism and western liberal democracy. The ethnically driven post-Soviet map is more complex than that. Local conflicts should be kept local. As things stand, everything is being done to widen them out to the regional level. As a result, Russia and Nato are sleepwalking into a confrontation that neither needs, and neither has planned for.

[Philip]

The new emerging world order and the "BRICs" that will build it.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/commen ... 628259.ece
How to navigate the new global archipelago

The Georgian crisis has revealed the changed rules of international diplomacy. Barack Obama had better learn them fastNader Mousavizadeh
As Russia decides where to draw its new boundary with Georgia a reckoning will be due - among the people of Georgia living amid the wreckage of a failed gamble, and among their Western allies suddenly confronted with diplomatic impotence. But for Barack Obama, a different kind of reckoning is taking place: what happens when the formidable political instincts of the probable next US president meet the limits of his experience in national security.

From everything he has said and written, it is evident that Mr Obama, uniquely among leading US politicians, understands the new contours of global affairs - that the world won't be divided into neat categories of democracies versus autocracies, nor will it converge toward a Western model.

He knows instead, that a world of parts is emerging - of states drifting farther away from each other into a global archipelago of interests and values; and that in an archipelago world, appeals to freedom, democracy and human rights must compete with aims of stability, resource security and the projection of national power.

And yet, as the Georgian conflict spirals into a global crisis, Mr Obama finds himself on the back foot. Initially hesitant in his response to Vladimir Putin's expedition in South Ossetia, he has had to ratchet up his rhetoric in response to John McCain's for-us-or-against-us stance.

The New New World Order
We tilt at windmills as world war looms
The new cold war hots up

This is, as Obama the politician would know, a loser's game, even if Obama the statesman is still finding his way. Trying to outmuscle Mr McCain will invite only contempt among his foes and bewilderment among the millions of his supporters yearning for a different kind of US engagement with the world.

Georgia is only the most recent augury of a new era of zero-sum diplomacy for which the West is ill-prepared. The West's surprise at Russia's response was disconcerting enough. More troubling was the outdated assortment of threats with which it has tried to sound tough. Among the suggestions was a boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics hosted by Russia, denying Russia membership of the World Trade Organisation and excluding it from G8 meetings. A common thread links all three: they are as difficult for the West to achieve as they are unlikely to alter Russia's behaviour.

Obtaining an Olympic boycott six years after the crisis in Georgia will be extremely challenging. Barring access to the WTO just after the collapse of the Doha talks may be less of a sanction than it sounds.

The G8 threat is even less convincing, although it is telling evidence of a 20th-century mindset that is oblivious to international changes. Before Georgia it would have been hard to find anyone seriously arguing for the importance of G8 meetings (Canada and Italy are members; China is not); much less that being denied entrance could be construed as leverage with a great power.

Far more important to the future of international diplomacy was a little-noticed meeting in Yekaterinburg, Russia, last May. There, for the first time, foreign ministers from the so-called Bric countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) met to advance their common agenda in a world hitherto defined by Western rules. The Brics are expected to overtake the combined GDP of the G7 by 2035, and laid down a marker that they will not wait for reform of the post-Second World War institutions to be heard.

Does this mean that China or India will take Russia's side against the West? Not necessarily, but it does suggest a more complex interplay of interests in future. Strategic leverage will have to be earned - crisis by crisis, interest by interest.

Where Iran is concerned (to cite the West's principal pre-Georgia concern), it ought to be apparent that our interests are not identical with those of China, India or even Saudi Arabia. China must balance its concern over Iran's destabilising behaviour with its need for secure oil supplies. Russia will weigh its unease with Iran's nuclear programme against its interest in counteracting US dominance in the Gulf. And Iran's Arab neighbours are hedging their preference for US hegemony in the Gulf with the knowledge that the Persian presence is for ever while distant empires come and go. To gain the support of each of these for any effective policy of containment, concessions must be granted - in the region or elsewhere.

Which brings us to the real lesson of the Georgian debacle: Tbilisi's freedom to challenge Russia had already been traded away by its Western allies - whether they realised it or not. When Kosovo declared independence in February, a senior European official remarked that the West would pay a price for its decision to offer recognition in the face of fierce Russian opposition.

Specifically, he noted that it was likely to happen at a Nato meeting when the Ukrainian and Georgian bids for membership were to be discussed. He was right. At the April meeting, their applications were put on the back burner, demonstrating to Moscow that for some Nato members there was such a thing as a legitimate Russian sphere of interest.

The lesson is not that the West was wrong to recognise Kosovo or that Nato was right to delay Georgia's membership. Rather, it is to suggest that we increasingly live in a world of choices. We may be able to enjoy the satisfaction of supporting the Kosovans or encouraging the Georgians, but we may not be able to do so without paying a price in another arena.

If this appears daunting, imagine the time not too distant when China, Brazil, India and a dozen smaller but significant powers begin to align strategic aims with economic power in their dealings with the West. Avoiding a global zero-sum game will require a President Obama as shrewd as he is inspiring.

Nader Mousavizadeh served as special assistant to the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 1997-2003. He is the editor of the Black Book of Bosnia

[renukb]

Fading superpower, rising rivals: Bernd Debusmann

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - At the Beijing Olympics, China trounced the United States in the contest for gold medals. In the Caucasus, Russia inflicted a humiliating military defeat on Georgia, America's closest ally in the region. At home, the U.S. economy is in deep trouble.

The misery index, a combination of the rates of inflation and unemployment, stands at its highest in 16 years (11.3 percent in July) and there are forecasts of worse to come.

The Olympics marked China's status as a world power and the first time since 1996 that Americans did not win most gold medals. In the Caucasus, Russia showed that it can do as it sees fit in its own backyard, no matter how loudly Washington protests. That includes recognizing as independent states the two breakaway provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, that Georgia claims as its own.

In the Great Power game in the region, the score so far is Russia 1, U.S. nil.

Does all this mean that the oft-predicted end of America's role as the world's only superpower is near? Depends on the definition of "near."

Political power grows from the barrel of a gun, as China's Mao Tse Tung observed, and the United States spends more on its armed forces than the rest of the world combined. There are more than 700 U.S. military bases in some 130 countries.

And despite its current troubles, the U.S. economy is larger than those of the next three countries put together. Continued...
http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersC ... 0120080827

[renukb]

Russia and the New Axis of Evil
http://georgiandaily.com/index.php?opti ... Itemid=132

[renukb]

Is the SCO set to expand?
http://mnweekly.ru/comment/20080828/55343731.html

Pakistan and India have openly expressed their desire to join the SCO. Others are less certain about it. Pakistan, India, Iran, and Mongolia have observer status. Their representatives (from presidents to ministers) regularly attend SCO summits and other events. Turkmen and Afghan leaders routinely come to SCO forums. This is why the question of who can be a fully-fledged SCO member, and who should be denied entry is of paramount importance.

[renukb]

As Food Becomes The New Oil, Russia Plans To Seize Control
http://www.newsweek.com/id/156332

With food prices rising and riots shaking regimes from Haiti to Egypt, a backlash is growing against global free markets. Governments from Moscow to Buenos Aires are moving to regulate grain prices, supplies and distribution. Like oil, food supply is becoming a strategic commodity that central authorities are keener than ever to command. Top producers including Kazakhstan and Indonesia have slapped total bans on wheat and rice exports, respectively, while Argentina and India have imposed prohibitive export tariffs. Russia may go further. The government is mooting a new state agency that would own Russia's 28 biggest grain elevators and shipping terminals, including the export terminal in the Black Sea port of Novorossisk. The idea, says analyst Tanya Costello of Eurasia Group, reflects an "emerging anti-inflation strategy of increased use of administrative and prosecutorial powers to suppress prices."

The results are predictable. Export controls are making global food inflation and shortages worse, while acting as a self-imposed penalty on grain-producing nations that could be capitalizing on high prices. And since history shows that price controls tend to backfire—recall that inflation helped topple the Soviet Union—it's odd to see Moscow leading the move backward. Some Western agribusiness investors fear that if the Russian state redefines grain as a strategic sector, like oils or aerospace, restrictions on prices, trading activity and foreign investment could follow. Clearly, "a number of countries," from Brazil and Egypt, to major rice exporters like Thailand and India, are rethinking the whole idea that market liberalization is "the wave of the future," says Peter Timmer of Stanford University's Program on Food Security and Environment. "I would not be surprised to see government-controlled grain logistics firms play a much bigger role over the next decade."

The Kremlin move comes at an inopportune time. Russia has the world's largest expanse of good farmland—127 million hectares—but most of it is underused for lack of money. Michel Orlov, president of Black Earth Farming, Russia's largest agribusiness, figures that with investment and know-how, the grain harvest could rise from 90 million metric tons last year to more than 250 million tons. With the world's population rising fast, that would make grain a "massive strategic instrument in the hands of Russia." But shares of Black Earth sank 20 percent in July after the Russian Agriculture minister threatened to "look into foreign capital buying up farmland." Orlov welcomes some regulation, but insists Russian farms "need all the money they can get, regardless of what passport it has." That means more free markets, not more state companies.

[ranganathan]

Is the SCO set to expand?
http://mnweekly.ru/comment/20080828/55343731.html

Pakistan and India have openly expressed their desire to join the SCO. Others are less certain about it. Pakistan, India, Iran, and Mongolia have observer status. Their representatives (from presidents to ministers) regularly attend SCO summits and other events. Turkmen and Afghan leaders routinely come to SCO forums. This is why the question of who can be a fully-fledged SCO member, and who should be denied entry is of paramount importance.

As far as I know India has never expressed interest in joining this group. Politically India will not join it as India would seem to be in anti-US camp with china and lately russia. The nuke deal still hangs in balance and I can't see india pressing for membership/

[Singha]

Wow Libya is the new Munna. take a look at the statue the was returned and ponder
how truly pure and islamic it is.
[img]
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/4 ... 26_282.jpg[/img]


BBC:=
Italy seals Libya colonial deal
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (left) shakes hands with Libya's Col Muammar Gaddafi in Benghazi on 30 August
Mr Berlusconi (left) and Col Gaddafi shook hands

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has signed an agreement to pay Libya $5bn as part of a deal to resolve colonial-era disputes.

Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi said the settlement signed in the city of Benghazi opened the door to partnership between the two states.

Mr Berlusconi said the deal, which sees the money being released over 25 years, ended "40 years of misunderstanding".

Libya was occupied by Italy in 1911 before becoming a colony in the 1930s.

The former Ottoman territory became an independent country in 1951.

This is the first African country to be compensated by a former colonial master, the BBC's Rana Jawad reports from Benghazi.

The question is, she adds: will this latest move set precedents for other former African countries to follow suit?

Coastal motorway

Mr Berlusconi explained that $200m would be paid annually over the next 25 years through investments in infrastructure projects, the main one being a coastal motorway between the Egyptian and Tunisian borders.

The Venus of Cyrene statue is displayed at the signing ceremony
The headless statue was displayed when the two leaders met

There will also be a colonial-era mine clearing project.

As a goodwill gesture, Italy also returned an ancient statue of Venus, the headless "Venus of Cyrene", which had been taken to Rome in colonial times.

The settlement was a "complete and moral acknowledgement of the damage inflicted on Libya by Italy during the colonial era", the Italian prime minister said.

"In this historic document, Italy apologises for its killing, destruction and repression against Libyans during the colonial rule," Col Gaddafi said for his part.

The agreement was signed in the Benghazi palace which once housed the Italian colonial administration, Reuters news agency reports.

Rome and Tripoli have spent years arguing over compensation for the colonial period.

Mr Berlusconi's one-day trip was his second since June when illegal immigration from Africa to Europe was the key issue of talks.

Italy has been swamped by thousands of African migrants trying to reach its shores by boat.

Libya has come in from the diplomatic cold since 2003 when it abandoned efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

Next week, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to make the first high-ranking American visit to Libya since 1953.

[renukb]

"In this historic document, Italy apologises for its killing, destruction and repression against Libyans during the colonial rule," Col Gaddafi said for his part.

When will UK do this to India and rest of its former colonies? and How much settlement $$ UK is willing to shell out?

[satya]

A return to 1815 is ways forward for Europe

[sum]

Link

Cooperation with discord

Sreeram Chaulia

The SCO’s diversity on the crisis in the Caucasus reveals that no regional organisation can be totally single-minded on each and every topic on the table.

The eighth summit meeting of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, sent mixed signals about the Russo-Western face off over the future of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Partly due to the ambiguity of the SCO’s declaration, sharply contrasting interpretations have arisen about the real position of this important regional institution on the conflict between Russia and Georgia.

Western media outlets are taking delight in highlighting what is being portrayed as a snub and a loss of face for Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who failed to secure the SCO’s recognition of independence of the two separatist regions from Georgia. The SCO’s unwillingness to explicitly condemn Georgian aggression on the disputed territories and its reaffirmation of the French-brokered ‘Six Principles’ formula for stabilising the situation are being projected in the West as defeats for Russian diplomacy and harbingers of Moscow’s international isolation.

The Russian media’s spin on what exactly transpired at the SCO summit is, in the propaganda war context of the ‘new Cold War,’ quite distinct from what is featuring in The New York Times or the London Times. Russian journalist Vladimir Radyuhin wrote in The Hindu that the Dushanbe summit was notable for endorsing Russia’s “active role” in restoring peace in the Caucasus and that Moscow “won crucial support for its efforts in South Ossetia from China and other allies in the SCO.”

The truth lies compressed between these two competing versions of reality. Indeed, sovereignty and statehood are social facts that depend on wide international approval. The Russian Duma’s unanimous vote for the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia has not yet found any takers among the member-states of the United Nations. The SCO’s wishy-washy tone would not have brought much cheer to Mr. Medvedev, who was hasty in pursuing the option of carving out two new nation-states. With the lack of SCO recognition, South Ossetia and Abkhazia could continue to be in international legal limbo for a long time, joining the ranks of proto-states like Western Sahara, Palestine and Kurdistan or waiting to eventually merge into Russia.

If one were to name an international organisation with strong anti-western inclinations, the SCO would rank at the very top alongside the ALBA in Latin America. Why then did the SCO not come out unequivocally in Russia’s favour and confirm its characteristic bias against NATO and western domination of the world?

The answer leads to the doorsteps of China, which has not shown much enthusiasm for Russia’s occupation of parts of Georgia or for its advocacy of national self-determination for Ossetians and Abkhazians. The Chinese reaction to the ‘Five Day War’ that changed the landscape of global power struggle in early August has been unexpectedly cagey. Unlike the NATO bombing campaign on Serbia in 1999 over Kosovo, which Beijing condemned in no mean terms as a threat to international peace, China has not taken an anti-Georgian or anti-western stand in the case of the war in the Caucasus.

China’s sensitivity to self-determination claims in Tibet and Xinjiang were obvious factors that deterred it from backing Russia’s forthright military and diplomatic moves for shutting Georgia permanently out of the disputed land. The other issue staying Beijing’s hand is fear that Moscow might earn too many plaudits from the whole affair and end up becoming the dominant player at the SCO and in Eurasia.

Had the SCO unanimously stood behind Russia on the standoff with Georgia, the extraordinary military success of Moscow would have been tailed by a brilliant diplomatic victory for Mr. Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. China, for all its enthusiasm for a multilateral world, has insecurities vis-À-vis Russia and this has played a role in rendering the SCO somewhat divided between two pillars.

What is interesting about the SCO summit in Dushanbe is that smaller members like Kazakhstan individually said exactly what Mr. Medvedev was hoping to hear from the entire organisation. Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbaev pulled no punches on the sidelines of the summit and announced that his country “understands and supports the measures taken by Russia” in defence against “Georgian armed forces who attacked peaceful civilians.” The distance between this unalloyed stance and the gingerliness of the Chinese government cannot better illustrate the divisions within SCO.

Having acknowledged the less-than-unified nature of the SCO, it bears reminder that practically no international regional organisation can be unanimous on big matters of war and peace. The European Union was badly divided in the run-up to and after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, prompting American neologisms like “old Europe” versus “new Europe.” The inability of the EU to come up with a single voice on foreign policy does not take away from the fact that it is the most successful instance of regional integration in the world.

The African Union has shown feet of clay in living up to its stated aims of promoting democracy on the continent and disallowing a free run for tyrants. Its soft corner for Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe has kept him in the saddle despite his flagrant violations of the principles of democracy. In the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) too, the dilemma of whether or not to press for democracy in Burma (Myanmar) has exposed heterogeneity of views among member states and left it prone to inaction.

The SCO’s diversity on the crisis in the Caucasus reveals that no regional organisation can be totally single-minded on each and every topic on the table. The SCO’s dual power structure, with China and Russia as two heavyweights with a history of bad blood but also a recent past of close-knit partnership, means that there are opposing tugs inviting member states, depending on the issue at hand.

At the same time, western commentators err in thinking that Sino-Russian tensions will eventually doom SCO and split it into two smaller sub-groups. The fact that China has resolved seemingly insoluble border disputes with Russia in the past few years and is involved in very close economic and military exchanges with Russia should put no one in doubt that the two are acting in concert on the world stage.

Not since the decade of the 1950s have Beijing and Moscow inched as close to each other as today. The bonhomie of the two Communist giants vanished after the 1960s, as China veered into the western camp through the machinations of Henry Kissinger and the opportunism of Mao Tse Tung. In the contemporary era, the possibility of China swinging again into the western embrace to checkmate Russia is less probable but it is certainly a strategic option that Washington will attempt.

Cracks in the SCO might appear as opportunities for the U.S. to exploit and deepen, thereby invalidating a formidable regional institution that is in competition with NATO. But then, as mentioned above, no organisation is immune from internecine multiplicity of views. If at all there is a regional alliance that looks jaded and shaky after the war in the Caucasus, it is NATO, not the SCO.

(Sreeram Chaulia is a researcher on international affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in Syracuse, New York.)

[ramana]

From Deccan Chronicle, 5 Sept 2008

Georgia lesson: Don’t fight for others
By Vikram Sood

Normally there would be very little reason for Indians to lose sleep over events in Georgia other than the knowledge that Georgians won three gold medals at the recently-concluded Beijing Olympics. But there have been other reasons that Georgia has been making the headlines in Russia, Europe and, sporadically, in the United States. Important lessons in statecraft flow from this.

Things had been brewing in the Caucasus for some time as the Americans played their game of encircling Russia. A regional summit of Guam (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova) was held in Batumi, Georgia, in July 2008. Guam is ostensibly an organisation for democracy and economic development, but in reality it is a military agreement and a de facto appendage of Nato to be used to extend its zone of influence into the Russian heartland. A US-Guam summit was also held on the sidelines, with Poland participating.

While the world awaited inauguration of the Beijing Olympics, the Georgians, following Washington-injected adrenalin, pushed their troops into South Ossetia, a region within Georgia that has been demanding independence and merger with North Ossetia in Russia. This happened a week after extensive US-Georgia wargames.

The Russians reacted the only way they could — with speed and force. The message for the outside world was that the Russians would do anything to protect their national interest and global opinion was not going to deter them. Lesson one: If a state wants to be recognised as a regional/global power, it must be willing and able to do what it must in national interest in its neighbourhood.

Georgia was not a helpless little country trying to defend itself against the giant next door as has been reported in the Indian press, drawing its information from Western mainstream media. In reality, Georgia was provoking Russia through a mixture of effective media management and Western sympathy. When the Russians reacted with force, there was very little the Americans could do except shake their heads, wring their hands and ask the European Union to join them in admonishing the Russians. Neither the Americans nor Nato was about to go to war with Russia on behalf of Georgia, and certainly not after Iraq and Afghanistan. They had encouraged Georgian adventurism, but had not anticipated Russian reaction. Lesson two: Adventurism, at the behest of distant powers against the local power, can be suicidal.

The third lesson is for the Americans. Intent on creating American clones in Russia’s periphery, they systematically induced various colour revolutions in what was once Soviet territory. The Georgians were promised democracy as a solution to all their problems and as redemption from all their socialist sins. After some initial upheavals, Washington grafted an American citizen, Mikheil Saakashvili, as Georgia’s President. They equipped the Georgian armed forces, Nato trained their men and the US pushed for Nato membership for Georgia, alarming the Russians.

In the 1990s, the Russians had watched helplessly after they dismantled the Warsaw Pact only to find Nato extending its eastern frontiers and the energy giants moving in as Boris Yeltsin and his groupies sold off national assets on the cheap. This was till Vladimir Putin arrived on the scene to reclaim history and geography. Obviously, there are limitations to power and Russia is not yet a write-off. Lesson three, therefore, is: Do not meddle around and do not promise if you cannot deliver. Finally, a lesson for all those involved in realpolitik.

Mr Saakashvili had led an effective media campaign personally and, in the initial days, the Georgians were portrayed by western TV and press as the innocent victims of Russian bullying. There were no takers for the Russian narrative of events. There is no Russian version of the BBC or CNN; nor, for that matter, is there an Indian version. The Russians accused CNN of telecasting footage of Georgian attacks in South Ossetia as Russian attacks in Georgia.

So, if you want to assert yourself, make sure the media is on your side; make sure your voice is heard far and wide and initial imagery is vital too. Soft power is as important as hard power. The question one might ask is why EU, Nato and the US are so keen about a tiny little Republic tucked away in the Caucasian mountains, between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, whose unnatural borders had been created by another Georgian, Joseph Dzhughasvilli, better known as Stalin. The real issue is not democracy or human rights. The real issue is pinning Russia down and freeing energy resources from Russian control.

The conflict in Georgia is not about its resources (it has few) but about its geographical location. The struggle is for control of energy and transport corridors from the Caspian Sea and Central Asia to bypass Russia and thus reduce Western dependency on Russia. The gas and oil pipelines from the Caspian and Central Asia have to go through the Caucasus to reach Europe if consumers want to avoid crossing either Russia or Iran.

The Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline, from Azerbaijan on the Caspian coast to the Eastern Mediterranean coast of Turkey, has been an expensive and a controversial project that was completed in 2006 and has been disrupted by Kurdish separatists. The Russian response has exposed Georgia’s vulnerability and more pipelines through Georgia are unlikely. With winter around the corner, a West Europe that is dependent on Russian gas supplies would want a quick settlement of the dispute. Georgia could thus be the choke point.

Meanwhile, Turkmenistan, on the eastern coast of the Caspian, has offered more gas to China (40 billion cubic metres per year, instead of 30 bcm) through another pipeline. The Kazakhs are constructing a pipeline all the way from the Caspian Sea into China. The pipes, when completed, will stretch more than 7,000 km from Turkmenistan, cross Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and enter China’s Xinjiang province. The Russians plan to hold a conference of gas exporters in November, possibly to discuss the creation of a gas charter similar to Opec. Gas and oil, instead of flowing westward through routes the West wants, could end up flowing eastward. It could be a long hard winter and a Cold War, Version 2, in George W. Bush’s fading months and Dmitry Medvedev’s early days.

Vikram Sood is a former head of the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s external intelligence agency

[ramana]

Reuters Op-Ed:

Fading superpower, Rising rivals

[renukb]

The 10 Big Myths of Russia, Its Leader, And Its New Power
http://www.newsweek.com/id/157497

Far from being a mystery and an enigma—to use Churchill's language—today's Russia now stands revealed as a bully, wrapped in nationalism and cloaked with its leader's arrogance. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's adventure in Georgia has produced shock and awe at the sight of tanks, planes and warships mobilized against a small neighbor. But Russia has always been a great mythmaker—from setting up Potemkin villages in the 18th century to fomenting great fear that Sovietism would conquer the world after 1945. Here are 10 of the biggest myths about today's Russia:

MYTH 1. Putin is the big winner of the incursion into Georgia. Yes, Putin has shown who runs Russia, and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has been sidelined. And yes, Putin won the unanimous support of both houses of the Russian Parliament for the invasion and annexation of parts of Georgia. But he has united Europe after the years of division created by George W. Bush. In 2003, an emergency European Council split down the middle on Iraq. In 2008, European leaders came in behind French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the cautiously strong line advocated from the early days of the crisis by British Foreign Secretary David Miliband. Putin could not even get the support of his erstwhile ally, China, as Beijing looked with horror at Russia's endorsement of busting up frontiers agreed upon by the United Nations.

MYTH 2. The cold war has re-emerged. After 1945, there was a worldwide confrontation between two ideological systems. By contrast, the Georgian conflict was a war without an ideological basis, and within a capitalist system. While Georgia has opted to try to become a small branch subsidiary of transatlantic capitalism, and South Ossetia has become a festering sore of corrupt mafia-military capitalism, Russia has adopted a form of nationalist, state-controlled capitalism that suits the Putin generation of ex-KGB functionaries.


MYTH 3. Russia has been humiliated since 1989. In fact, no other former foe of Western democracy has been so welcomed. Russia has been brought into the G7. The Council of Europe has opened its doors to Russia even if the Duma refuses to recognize the European Court of Human Rights. Every European city has welcomed Russians. Investment has poured into Russia. Bush, Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder all gushed withpraise for Putin when he became president in 2000. For years, Western leaders were largely willing to overlook the deaths of journalists under Putin or the war crimes committed in Chechnya.

MYTH 4. The West refuses to deal with Russia as an equal. Rather it is Russia that cannot treat other European countries as equals. Under Putin there have been endless verbal, diplomatic, cyber or trade disputes with its neighbors, demonstrating that Russia, with an economy smaller than Mexico or South Korea, has not learned the key lesson of the European Union: that all states, no matter how irritating, have to be treated with respect. Russia refuses to afford Poland or Georgia or Estonia the equality it demands for itself.

MYTH 5. The West has sought to encircle Russia. Can a nation that stretches from Europe to Japan and China be encircled? Russia is the only nation allowed to station antiballistic-missile rockets around its capital city. Poland and the Baltic states may not like Russia but are not going to invade. Russian M.P.s sit on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and Russian generals have observer status at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Ukraine and Georgia have a long way to go before they can join NATO or the EU, but by what right are sovereign states not allowed to decide what organizations they can or cannot join?

MYTH 6. South Ossetia is the same as Kosovo. The Kosovars sought the same rights as other nations and peoples in the former Yugoslavia. Despite Slobodan Milosevic's Islamaphobe repression they peacefully created a parallel civil society that won freedom from Belgrade after Serb genocidal brutality obliged NATO to intervene in 1999. While Russia pushed hard to get independence for Montenegro, which now pullulates with Russian money and oligarchs, Russia refused to support the EU-backed Ahtisaari plan for the much bigger population of Kosovo to join other ex-Yugoslavian regions as an independent state. The idea that Russia would have stayed its hand in Georgia if Kosovo's independence had been further delayed is not taken seriously by any observer in the region.

MYTH 7. The next U.S. president will be kinder to Russia. The Republican candidate, Sen. John McCain, has said that when he looks into Putin's eyes he sees three letters: "KGB." Democratic candidate Barack Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, is a close friend of Mikheil Saakashvili and is a foreign-policy hawk. Of the policy of appeasing Milosevic by British foreign ministers in the 1990s, he said that he could hear the "tap, tap, tap of Chamberlain's umbrella at Munich." Whether McCain or Obama sits in the White House, U.S. policy on Russia will not change.

MYTH 8. Europe is divided. The surprising outcome of the EU Council was its unity in suspending talks with Russia on a new partnership agreement. From the leftist Libération to the right-wing Figaro, the tone of editorials has been very firm and hostile to Russian aggression. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, once the darling of the American right, has emerged as the unlikely champion of Putin, but Berlusconi does not carry great weight in EU affairs. Nor has it been the new EU member states in the driving seat. Stable, neutral Sweden and Finland have been loud in expressing concern over Russian aggression and Labour's Miliband has emerged as the voice of EU unity in standing up to Russia.


MYTH 9. There is nothing Europe can do. Oh, yes, there is. Already parliamentarians on the Council of Europe have called for Russian membership to be suspended. The Council of Europe and NATO's Parliamentary Assembly are controlled by M.P. delegates, not governments, and there will be calls for Russian Duma members to be suspended as long as the Duma stands by its unanimous vote to dismember Georgia—also a member of the Council of Europe and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. If Putin refuses to withdraw troops and end the de facto annexation of part of Georgia, Europe's G7 members could suspend Russia's membership and put WTO membership on hold. The EU should increase its presence in Georgia. Building Turkey into the EU and offering a start on membership consultation to Ukraine can turn the Black Sea into a democratic European sea.

MYTH 10. Russia controls Europe's energy. True, up to a point. The cutting of oil or gas supplies is a nuclear weapon not even Arab states have dared to use despite their hatred of Israel. Russia has sent panic waves through policymakers about Europe's energy networks. Britain has failed to provide for energy security by building liquid-natural-gas storage facilities, but this is now happening at Milford Haven. Germany is rethinking its hostility to nuclear power as it considers its dependency on Russian gas and oil, while France provides 85 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. Russia may have been the spur to get increased EU unity on foreign policy and on energy.

Indeed, if Europe can stay calm and united, much of the damage can be undone. Russia would like to split the EU from the United States and separate EU member states into competing nations. It has on its side a gang of useful idiots, who are willing to justify its policies out of dislike for the United States. But this is a struggle over Europe's future, and by understanding the key facts of the situation—and avoiding being misled about who is to blame for it—European policymakers will have gone a long way in figuring out what to do next. Putin is leading Russia into a dead end. If Europe sees through his bluster, he will be revealed as a bully and a would-be emperor who is more naked than he realizes.

MacShane is Labour M.P. for Rotherham and a former Europe minister.

[renukb]

Russia Considers Siting Nuclear Arms in Kaliningrad

http://www.theotherrussia.org/2008/09/0 ... liningrad/

Russia may locate precision-guided weapons in Kaliningrad, the Western enclave region which borders Poland, in response to an American missile defense system in Eastern Europe. As the Gazeta.ru online newspaper reported on September 5th, the plan was laid out by colonel-general Viktor Zavarzin, the chair of the defense committee in Russia’s lower house of Parliament, the State Duma. Zavarzin, who spoke before a conference on Russian forces in the Kaliningrad oblast, did not exclude the siting of tactical nuclear arms in the enclave.

According to Zavarzin, precision-guided weaponry may be installed on Kaliningrad’s border regions with Poland.

Russia is acting tough after Warsaw signed agreements on locating an American missile defense base housing 10 interceptor rockets in Poland, some 185 kilometers from Russian soil.

Responding to a journalist’s question, Zavarzin said that there was no present need to put nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad. However, he said the proposal had been floated, and that it “does not fall under the scope of agreements and negotiations on strategic stability, which we are holding with the Americans.” The decision, he said, was ultimately left to the commander-in-chief. At present, the colonel-general said, Russia needs to modernize its surface, underwater and coastal divisions.

Mikhail Babich, Zavarzin’s deputy on the committee, told Gazeta.ru that placing a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic was a hostile act on the part of the US, and confirmed that Russia was planning a symmetrical response.

“We are developing a series of measures for a symmetrical response to the USA in the context of the deployment of ABM [ballistic missile defense] in Poland and the Czech Republic, and other hostile acts,” Babich said. “They are being developed to guarantee Russia’s safety and as a response in case of a strike on our territory.”

Meanwhile, defense experts questioned by the publication were skeptical about the need for precision-guided weapons and tactical nuclear arms in Russia’s western enclave. Russia’s army, they said, had other hardware that already guaranteed the safety of the country’s western border.

[narmad]

Russia Rising!

The present Russian ambassador had to wait for months before being scheduled to present his credentials to the president. A former IAF chief was so rude to a visiting senior Russian official that a formal complaint had to be lodged and the defence minister had to have a quiet word with him. This gentleman, after retirement, has taken to bad-mouthing Russian equipment on the seminar circuit. He has special comments reserved for the MIG fighters that are the backbone of the Indian Air Force (IAF).

[renukb]

Russia Rising!

The present Russian ambassador had to wait for months before being scheduled to present his credentials to the president. A former IAF chief was so rude to a visiting senior Russian official that a formal complaint had to be lodged and the defence minister had to have a quiet word with him. This gentleman, after retirement, has taken to bad-mouthing Russian equipment on the seminar circuit. He has special comments reserved for the MIG fighters that are the backbone of the Indian Air Force (IAF).

From the link...

Our friend Saakashvili is an interesting fellow. He is a US citizen of Georgian origin who returned to Georgia to seek that country's leadership primed and paid for by the US. Georgia's geography makes it important as any oil pipelines out of Azerbaijan into the West, fully skirting Russia, will have to run through it. Whether egged by Rice or not, Saakashvili miscalculated. The Russian response was swift and devastating. His army, modernised and supplied by the US and Israel, collapsed within hours of the Russian counter attack. Russia is back.

[renukb]

Russia–NATO: return of the great game
http://mnweekly.ru/world/20080904/55345104.html

04/09/2008
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, many intellectuals in Russia and the West announced "the end of history." It seemed that the United States' complete domination of the world was not disputed by anyone.

The subsequent decade, during which Russia lost its foreign policy positions, and its former satellites and even provinces became U.S. and NATO allies, seemed to have buttressed this idea.

The first signal that the situation could change came on September 11, 2001, when it suddenly transpired that U.S. domination did not guarantee Washington absolute security. Mor­eover, for the first time since the Soviet Union's collapse, the United States had to bargain in order to guarantee the loyalty of its allies. With the start of the Iraqi conflict, U.S. domination was called into question even more openly, despite obvious successes in the post-Soviet space such as the admission of the Baltic nations into NATO and permission to use bases in Central Asia.

The second half of the first decade of the new century saw a new trend. Russia's consolidation, buoyed by a favorable economic situation and political stabilization, raised the issue of spheres of influence, at least in the post-Soviet space and Eastern Europe. Many analysts saw the series of colored revolutions that spread across the post-Soviet space as the final renunciation of peaceful settlement of disputes between Russia and the West; but this was not true - Russia did not give up attempts to come to terms with pro-American governments.

The issues of missile defense and the Kosovo problem proved the Rubicon of East-West relations. The West demonstratively ignored Russia's position, and this was bound to evoke response. Russia had to face military confrontation and settle disputes in the CIS to its own benefit, without looking to the West.

Almost as soon as Mikheil Saaka­shvili came to power, many observers began to see Georgia as the most probable arena of an armed conflict with Russia. All the prerequisites for this were in place - Georgia's conflicts with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the presence of many Russian citizens in these republics, and Tbilisi's open desire to subjugate the rebellious territories.

There is no need to describe the history of the five-day war again. Its main geopolitical result is not the recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia but the return of political confrontation between Russia and the West. What could it lead to?

Nobody wants a military solution to the conflict, which could be fatal for the whole world. Both sides will have to prove their cases by political and economic means. Russia's integration into the world economy over the last 15 years has led to a situation where the West cannot inflict serious damage on us without hurting itself as much, if not more.

As a result, Russia's main lobbyists to Western governments are the Western companies, for which a quarrel with the eastern neighbor could be financially ruinous.

Apart from oil and gas, I could recall agreements on the supply of titanium spare parts for the world's biggest aircraft-builders, the Russian market for cars and other hardware, and many other spheres where cessation of economic cooperation will deal substantial damage to Western interests.

And there are political, as well as financial, interests that would be damaged by confrontation with Russia. Space cooperation between Russia and the United States, the air corridor granted by Russia for NATO flights to Afghanistan and some other programs, not as obvious as oil and gas supplies, are too important to be jeopardized over Moscow's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

What will global confrontation be like now? It is clear that the point of no return has already been passed. Russia is not prepared to renounce its positions as it did in the 1990s. The West may be indignant, but it will have to face reality - it has become too expensive to risk.

Where will the next round of confrontation take place? It is hard to predict with certainty, but it is likely to be in Ukraine, where not only the destiny of the Black Sea Fleet but also Russia's influence in Eastern Europe is at stake. This round will be bloodless. At any rate, I would like to hope that Ukraine is not going to oust the Black Sea Fleet from the Crimea by force.

However, the propaganda confrontation will be much more intense than in Georgia. A world event is not the one in which 10,000 take part, but the one which is being filmed by 10 TV cameras.

By Ilya Kramnik

[renukb]

Russia, the U.S. and Iran

It is one of the rites of passage of the fall - every September, the Bush administration returns to the United Nations for another sanctions resolution against Iran. However, this time there is much consternation in Washington that Russia's invasion of Georgia - and the subsequent chill that has descended on relations between Russia and the West - has ended any possibility of cooperation between the United States and Russia in dealing with Iran's nuclear imbroglio. Such fears are overblown.

Russia's assault on Georgia may produce no measurable change of its Iran policy. Indeed, President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia made it clear that, despite the harsh rhetoric that has been exchanged between Moscow and Washington, Russia continues to support efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

The primary reason for the continuity is that both Iran and Russia are essentially satisfied with existing U.S.-European policy of applying incremental and largely symbolic UN sanctions on Tehran. Moscow feels that as long as the diplomatic process remains in play, America is in no position to launch a military strike that could destabilize the Middle East. At the same time, the theocratic regime in Iran has increasingly adjusted to a sanctions policy whose impact is negated by increasing oil prices.

Although Tehran would be grateful for a Russian veto of any future sanctions resolutions, it does seem content with a Russian policy that waters down UN mandates while deepening its commercial ties with Iran. On the one hand, Moscow has supported three previous Security Council injunctions against Iran, yet it has also signed lucrative trade deals and expanded its diplomatic representation in Iran. The incongruity of today's situation is that Russia rebukes Iran for its nuclear infractions while providing technical assistance to the Bushehr plant, which is a critical component of Iran's atomic industry.

For its part, Russia is happy with the standoff between Iran and the United States. Not only does it destabilize international oil markets - keeping prices higher than they ought to be - but Iran's large natural gas reserves are effectively off-limits for European use, reinforcing the continent's dependency on Moscow. At the same time, as Iran strengthens its economic links with key Asian powers, it makes it more dependent on Russia and China for its critical trade and investments. Russia can only benefit from Iran's gradual reorientation toward the East.

Today in Opinion
Afghan civilians: Caught in the crossfireMcCain's energy folliesWill the real McCain please come back
All this is not to suggest that Iran has not benefited from the Russian-Georgian conflagration, but those advantages have been subtle. Tehran is using the Georgian crisis as a cautionary lesson to the Gulf states. From its podiums and platforms, the message emanating from the Islamic Republic is that the Georgians mistakenly accepted American pledges of support, only to pay a heavy price for their naïveté. The Gulf sheikdoms who similarly put much stock in U.S. security assurances would be wise to come to terms with their populous and powerful Persian neighbor. In a region where America is viewed as unpredictable and unreliable, this message has a powerful resonance.

The contours of Russia's policy became obvious in the recent meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran was unable to persuade Moscow and its partners to extend security guarantees to Tehran, or to gain Russian support for switching oil pricing from dollars to euros. Medvedev and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, continued to urge Iran to be flexible and negotiate restraint on its nuclear activities. Yet, Moscow also declared support for Iran's nuclear activities that were designed for peaceful purposes.

Given the fact that technologies employed for civilian use can be the basis of a military program, it is hard to see the utility of Russia's latest pronouncement.

What this means?

Russia is not interested in playing an active role in resolving the Iran crisis on terms America will find acceptable. If the next president is going to solve the Iranian nuclear conundrum, he must appreciate that the UN process has reached its limits, and that the only manner of moving forward is for Washington to engage in direct negotiations with Tehran.

Ray Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Nikolas Gvosdev is a member of the faculty of the U.S. Naval War College.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/08/ ... takeyh.php

[renukb]

Turkey moves to diversify gas supply after Russia row
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/7782639

Reuters, Monday September 8 2008 By Thomas Grove and Orhan Coskun
ISTANBUL, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Turkey is seeking to diversify its natural gas imports as increased tensions with its main supplier Russia has raised fears of a shortage in winter.

Moscow has established a reputation as a reliable supplier to Ankara by increasing gas supplies to Turkey when Iran cuts its exports to meet domestic demand, a near annual occurance.

But fears about Russia's reliability as a partner have risen since a recent trade row that began when Russian customs officials curbed Turkish exports. Moscow has offered no explanation and Turkey has since responded in turn.

"Turkey is in a sort of a bind, because it is vulnerable to Russia for more than 60 percent of its natural gas and 50 percent of its oil. And it is vulnerable because we see there are no alternatives," said Wolfango Piccoli, analyst at Eurasiagroup.

NATO-member Turkey has been in a difficult situation since Russia's intervention in Georgia last month, trying to maintain good relations with its biggest trade partner and energy supplier while upholding its NATO obligations.

Russia supplies more than 60 percent of Turkey's natural gas needs through two pipelines, but raises its exports significantly when Turkey's second largest gas supplier Iran turns off its exports.

Turkey regularly experiences problems with Iran, where poor infrastructure leads to cuts during wintertime. Most recently Iran had to stop exports this year to meet domestic demand after Turkmenistan halted supplies during a pricing disagreement.

Turkish energy firms, including state-owned pipeline company Botas, have applied to Turkey's energy markets regulator for licences to buy liquefied natural gas from the spot market in case Ankara finds itself in a tight spot during the winter months.

"Turkey makes up for deficits in natural gas supply from Iran by importing more from Russia. We are aiming at meeting demand by importing from the spot LNG market in case there are any problems experienced with Russia," said a senior level official at Botas.

Analysts have said increased tensions between Turkey and Russia and the ensuing trade row looks to be punishment for Ankara's decision to allow two U.S. ships to pass through the Bosphorus Strait to provide aid to Georgia after Moscow's military action there. Tensions have made some analysts ponder the possibility of Russia making similar moves in its energy relations.

GEOPOLITICS AND ENERGY
Turkey has also asked Azerbaijan to increase is natural gas imports to Turkey after the second phase of the Azeri Shakh-Deniz project begins, and Hilmi Guler is flying on Monday to Baku, where he is expected to repeat his request.
"When looking at accidents, force majeures, we notice that geopolitics and energy supplies are more tightly interwoven. In the short term it is important that Turkey has a flexible gas source network as possible," said the International Energy Agency's chief economist Fatih Birol.

Turkey also exports to Greece gas supplies, which are seen growing to 3 billion cubic meters annually.
But energy relations between Turkey and Russia will be determined mostly by the role the United States wishes to play in the Black Sea and Turkey's adherence to the Montreux Treaty, which regulates traffic into the Black Sea through the Istanbul Strait, said Piccoli.

"Things depend on the United States and the role they want to play in the Black Sea. Turkey would find itself in a tight place if the United States wants to up its force on the Black Sea," he said. Some analysts still see Russia trying to make Turkey happy in the energy sector as Moscow's largest state-owned energy company Gazprom is eager to get into Turkey's downstream energy sector. Turkey is holding a number of natural gas distribution grid sell-offs during Turkey's energy markets liberalisation process, which Gazprom has expressed interest in.

Turkish energy companies said they doubt Russia will put its energy relations with Turkey at risk, but said they fear what such a move could do to industry during winter months. "We hope (Russian refusal to supply additional gas) doesn't happen. That would be the first time Russia, which has been a reliable supplier to Turkey, would do something like that," said a Turkish energy company that relies solely on Russian natural gas for its activities. (Writing by Thomas Grove; Editing by James Jukwey)

[renukb]

New York Times Syndicate
A Partner and an Adversary
by Bernard-Henri Levy
How the West can maneuver through a very difficult relationship with Putin's Russia.
Post Date 9/8/2008
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html? ... 761c853706


Impose sanctions or not? Europe is clearly hesitating, seemingly frightened by its own potential daring. And, as always, when the troubling spirit of appeasement and fear is in the air, Europe is looking for any plausible reason to do nothing at all.

We keep hearing, for example, that Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili is an unpredictable, even irresponsible and dangerous character. Who's being made fun of here? How can anyone say these things when looking at the man Saakashvili is up against, Vladimir Putin, who has, among other exploits, razed Grozny, wiped out a fifth of the population of Chechnya, allied himself with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, rearmed Syria, and also decided--just like that, one fine day--to resume flights of strategic bombers armed with nuclear payloads? Now that is irresponsible. That is the definition of an unpredictable character. To characterize as dangerous the president of a small nation who dares to resist such a man, while giving a pass to the ex-KGB official who now specializes in mass murder; to show no mercy to the weaker side, while coming up with any number of excuses for the stronger one, which nearly every day gives the West the finger: That is indeed a singular notion of power relations and fairness.

People say, "We knew this war was going to happen. We should have foreseen it and prevented it." That's true. But what exactly did we know was going to happen? And once again, how dare reverse the roles in this way? On one side there is the Georgian whose only mistake may have been to overestimate our willingness to support him. On the other is the Russian who is pursuing the program he laid out in April 2005, when, in an address to the Federal Assembly, he said the collapse of the Soviet Union had been "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century." Yes, you read that correctly: the greatest catastrophe. Greater than the world wars. Greater than Hiroshima, Auschwitz, Cambodia or Rwanda.

If we must choose a date, it was then that a new era began in our relationship with Russia. It was at that moment, when those terrible words were uttered, that we should have been alerted to the early warning signs of a new Cold War. We should not fail to recognize this, nor to fixate on Georgia's possible tactical error while overlooking Russia's strategic plan. We should not overlook, in other words, Putin's desire to undo the "catastrophe" of the transition to democracy by a part of the former Soviet empire--which is clearly his way of thumbing his nose at the rest of the world.

People say, "The mistake, the real mistake, was to taunt the Russian bear by bringing up Georgia's entry into NATO; why couldn't Georgia be satisfied with a nice little partnership with the European Union?" What nerve! And what an expression of bad faith! The truth is that if Georgia asked to enter NATO, it was only because we, the Europeans, had slammed the door to the European Union in its face. The sad reality is that even if a number of us, including my friend and fellow writer Andre Glucksmann, spoke in favor of Georgia's joining NATO, the young Ukrainian and Georgian democracies were later told that this would not be appropriate, the moment was not quite right, the expansion of NATO would be seen as too rapid and difficult to accept, and so forth. To overlook this shameless ditching of Georgia, to close our eyes to it, to criticize Saakashvili for making a choice that we quietly but firmly pushed, is to add insult to injury and flippancy to cowardice.

In the end, people say, "But even if we admit that they are right, what can we do about it? What great country wants to go and die for Tbilisi?" The truth is that it is not about dying, but about being firm and conditioning our relationship with Russia on its minimal respect for the rules in its dealings with its neighbors. And the truth is that in this particular situation, it is not only about those neighbors but about us, we Europeans. Why? Because what is at stake are Europe's energy needs. If Georgia holds its ground and retains its sovereignty and territorial integrity, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline will remain an alternative to Russia's Gazprom and its partners. But if Georgia gives in and returns to the post-Soviet bosom, Russia's hand will be at the switch, leaving the French, Germans and other Europeans almost entirely dependent on it for their heat. Only by openly acknowledging the possibility of blackmail or an interruption in oil or gas supplies can we be realistic and pragmatic. By closing our eyes--by haggling over Georgia's future, when its survival is necessary for our own prosperity and, indirectly, for our democracy--now that's what is unrealistic, impractical and truly irresponsible.

That Russia is a great country, no one can deny. That it is inevitably a partner is obvious. But a partner can sometimes be an adversary. And maintaining normal relations with Russia does not exclude speaking clearly to it about truth and principles.

[renukb]

Russia says to send nuclear warship to Caribbean
http://www.reuters.com/article/politics ... 9220080908

[Philip]

Is "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-Il dead? A Japanese analyst says so and that doubles have stood in for him for quite some time.Kim's absence from the 60th anniversary of the N.Korean state is leading to intense speculation that he is either gravely ill or has departed to join the "Great Leader" Kim his father.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -dead.html

Kim Jong-il fails to attend North Korea celebrations amid rumours he's dead

The failure of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to appear at a military parade to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic has sparked renewed speculation that the reclusive leader is either dead or seriously ill.

By Julian Ryall in Tokyo
Last Updated: 1:46PM BST 09 Sep 2008

A Tokyo professor has claimed that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has been dead since 2003 Photo: REUTERS

Rumours have increased in recent months that the health of Kim, known as the "Dear Leader" to the people of his impoverished nation, has been failing.

There have been frequent reports that Kim suffers from diabetes.

Suggestions that the North Korean leader has been taken ill have been bolstered by reports that a team of elite Chinese doctors have been dispatched to North Korea to treat an unnamed official.

Kim has not been seen in public for several weeks and experts on the North Korean situation say it is hard to believe that he would willingly miss marking the 60th anniversary of the nation.

At a ceremony in Tokyo on Friday evening, no mention was made of the health of Kim, whose name was cheered by the 300 invited dignatries.

Speaking in the shadow of a larger-than-life portrait of the North Korean leader, the deputy head of the North Korean residents' association, Ho Jong Man, failed to comment on Kim's health.

Instead, his speech laid the blame for renewed nuclear tensions squarely at the feet of Washington.

"The United States is to blame for the lack of progress in the six-party talks because Washington has failed to remove Pyongyang from the list of terrorist states," he told a partisan crowd marking the "Hermit Kingdom's" anniversary.

"We will never allow the U.S. to come to North Korea and search within our boundaries, just as they are doing in Iraq at present," he said in an address that would have been scripted in the North Korean capital.

[Philip]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 727437.ece

Germany: 'Deal on Iraq spies' may end Steinmeier's election hopes
Roger Boyes in Berlin

The undercover activities of two German spies in Baghdad just before the US invasion could sabotage the hopes of the Social Democrat Frank-Walter Steinmeier to unseat Angela Merkel, the conservative Chancellor, at the next general election.

The agents, who delivered targeting information for US airstrikes, are due to testify before a parliamentary commission next Thursday and, according to leaked documents published in the latest edition of Stern magazine, are likely to embarrass Mr Steinmeier, the Foreign Minister and Vice-Chancellor.

At the outset of the US war against Saddam in 2003, Mr Steinmeier was chief of staff to Gerhard Schröder, then the Chancellor, and in charge of co-ordinating the work of the intelligence services. Mr Schröder narrowly won the general election of 2002 with the promise that Germany would take no part in a war against Iraq — drawing the fury of the Bush Administration but also the support of many pacifist and left-of-centre voters.

Now it emerges that the Chancellor and Mr Steinmeier may have struck a secret deal with the US to provide on-the-spot intelligence to facilitate the bombardment of Iraq and clear the way for the US-led invasion.
Neo-Nazis march into Germany's property market

“The agents, Lieutenant-Colonel Rainer Mahner and Chief Superintendent Volker Heinster, are the physical embodiment of the lie perpetrated by the then Chancellor Gerhard Schröder which he used to win the September 2002 general election,” says Stern. “The lie of: No to the Iraq war.”

The former Chancellor is now out of active politics and works primarily for Gazprom, the Russian energy concern. Mr Steinmeier is his protégé and the official candidate to challenge Mrs Merkel in the general election next year.

“Today the two agents are like a paralysing poison for the man who wants to be German Chancellor,” says the magazine. The article was co-written by one of Germany's best investigative reporters on terrorist and intelligence affairs, Oliver Schröm.

Only weeks after the 2002 election the head of the German intelligence service, the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst), gained approval from the chancellery to deploy a team of agents in Baghdad. Apparently with Mr Steinmeier's approval, the BND co-ordinated plans with the American Central Intelligence Agency and the Defence Intelligence Agency. According to a leaked security service memo, dated November 28, 2002 — some four months before the beginning of the war — it was agreed that the German agents would report to a German liaison officer attached to the US command in Qatar. Intelligence requests from the Americans would be channelled to the German spies on the ground. The US, it seemed, had almost no trained intelligence officers in place to give context to the satellite photography. “The two Germans became the eyes and ears of the war machine of the American superpower,” Stern said.

When the bombs started to fall the requests came thick and fast. Operating out of the French Embassy, Colonel Mahner, 40, and Superintendent Heinster, 38, a former parachute officer, criss-crossed Baghdad reporting precisely about bomb damage so that the US could tighten its targeting.

Minutes after receiving a US military request they photographed the Sheraton hotel, where members of the regime were supposed to be holed up. GPS co-ordinates were sent for the location of officers belonging to the Republican Guard. Soon afterwards the buildings were flattened by laser-guided bombs. Bridges were checked for hidden explosives. Movements around the Iraqi secret service headquarters were monitored. A typical dispatch, from April 1, 2003, reads: “High quality military vehicles and republican guard soldiers concealed under camouflage netting in half-finished buildings to the right of the ruined Officers club - co-ordinates 44 Degrees, 26 Minutes, 2 Seconds North 33 Degrees 18 Minutes 14 Seconds East Radius ca 150 metres.”

Two days later Mr Schröder delivered a speech to parliament, declaring: “Germany will not participate in this war - and we are sticking to this position.” The agents sent more than 130 messages that were passed on to the Americans. After the end of the war, in May 2003, the agents were treated to thunderous applause at a reception held in BND headquarters on the fringes of Munich. According to Stern's sources, Mr Steinmeier was present. Later the two agents were awarded the Meritorious Service Medal by the Bush Administration.

Mr Steinmeier initially denied knowledge of BND activities in Iraq. This was later deemed, by his office, to be a misunderstanding. Before the parliamentary hearing Mr Steinmeier's line is that there was “a clear political decision not to give active support to the combat activities in Iraq”. Any claim to the contrary, he says, is an attempt to rewrite history.

If he fumbles this inquiry, the left-wingers in the Social Democratic party will desert him in droves and his challenge to Ms Merkel will be a flop. He is due to testify this year.

Long road to power

— Frank-Walter Steinmeier was born in the west German town of Detmold in 1946

— A law graduate, he began his career as a legal researcher at Giessen University

— First joined the staff of Gerhard Schröder — later to be Chancellor — during his time as premier of Lower Saxony in the 1990s

— Head of Mr Schröder’s federal chancellery from 1999. He co-authored welfare and labour reforms, engineered a 2000 deal to phase out nuclear power and is reported to have helped shape Mr Schröder’s foreign policy from 2002

— He was instrumental in Mr Schröder’s refusal to participate in the 2003 invasion of Iraq

— Named Foreign Minister in 2005, serving in Angela Merkel’s “Grand Coalition”

— Made vice-chancellor in November after the resignation of Franz Müntefering

— Designated the SPD candidate for Chancellor this month

Sources: www.dw-world.de; The Times

[renukb]

Hard Russia vs. Soft China

Hard Russia vs. Soft China
11 September 2008
By Joseph S. Nye Jr.
China and Russia have just provided the world with sharp contrasts in the use of power. As the French analyst Dominique Moisi recently put it, "Whereas China intends to seduce and impress the world by the number of its Olympic medals, Russia wants to impress the world by demonstrating its military superiority. This is China's soft power versus Russia's hard power."

Some U.S. analysts, such as Edward Luttwak, have concluded that Russia's invasion of Georgia proves the "irrelevance of soft power," and the dominance of hard military power. In reality, the story will turn out to be more complicated for both countries.

Soft power is the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payment. It is not the solution to all problems. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il's fondness for Hollywood movies is unlikely to affect his nuclear weapons program. And soft power got nowhere in dissuading Afghanistan's Taliban government from supporting al-Qaida in the 1990s.

But other goals, such as the promotion of democracy and human rights, are better achieved by soft power, which can also create an enabling or disabling environment, as the United States discovered in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq.

Skeptics who belittle soft power because it does not solve all problems are like a boxer who fights without using his left hand because his right hand is stronger. Soft power alone is rarely sufficient, but it is often crucial to combine soft and hard power to have an effective strategy of "smart power." As U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last year, "I am here to make the case for strengthening our capacity to use soft power and for better integrating it with hard power."

Military force is obviously a source of hard power, but the same resource can sometimes contribute to soft-power behavior. The impressive job by the U.S. military in providing humanitarian relief after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and the South Asian earthquake in 2005 helped restore the United States' image.

On the other hand, misuse of military resources can undercut soft power. The Soviet Union had a great deal of soft power in the years after World War II, but destroyed it by the way the Kremlin used its hard power against Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

Russia is now going through a period of nationalistic reaction to what it regards as the humiliation it suffered after the Soviet empire collapsed. With the rise in energy prices boosting its economy, Russia has seen an opportunity to reassert its power over its neighbors. In addition, it felt aggrieved by plans for further expansion of NATO, a planned installation of elements of a ballistic missile-defense system in Eastern Europe, and Western recognition of Kosovo's secession from Russia's ally, Serbia.

Russia has sought to weaken Georgia's government for some time. In early August, it set a trap in South Ossetia, and Georgia foolishly walked into it.

If the Kremlin had used its so-called peacekeeping force solely to protect South Ossetians' "self-determination," citing the precedent of Western actions in Kosovo, it would have done little damage to its soft power, and the benefits could have exceeded the costs. But by bombing, blockading and occupying many parts of Georgia, delaying its withdrawal, parading blindfolded Georgian soldiers and failing to protect Georgian citizens, Russia lost its claims to legitimacy and sowed fear and mistrust in much of the world.

Neighbors such as Ukraine have become more wary. An immediate cost was Poland's reversal of its resistance to a U.S. missile-defense system. When Russia appealed for support of its Georgia policy to its fellow members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, China and others refused. Longer-term costs may include the failure of Russia's proposal for a new European security system, a revived European interest in the Nabucco and White Stream gas pipelines that bypass Russia and a decline in foreign investment.

In contrast, China ended August with its soft power enhanced by its successful Olympic Games. In October 2007, Chinese President Hu Jintao declared the country's intent to increase its soft power, and the Olympics were an important part of that strategy. With its establishment of Confucius Institutes to promote Chinese culture, increased international broadcasting, attraction of foreign students to its universities and softer diplomacy toward its neighbors in Southeast Asia, China has made major investments in soft power. Opinion polls show an improvement in its international reputation.

But China's government did not achieve all its Olympic objectives. By not keeping its promises to allow peaceful demonstrations and free Internet access, China undercut its soft-power gains.

It will take more than a successful Olympics to overcome these self-imposed limits. For example, a recent Pew poll showed that despite China's efforts to increase its soft power, the United States remains dominant in all soft-power categories. So, while China won the most gold medals, the Beijing Olympics did not turn the tables on Washington outside the sports arenas. Let's hope that China's leaders will learn the importance of free expression for establishing soft power.

Of course, only time will tell the ultimate outcomes of the guns and gold of August for Russia and China. Unlike an Olympic competition, their recent performances will not be given a final score until well after their power games have been played.

Joseph S. Nye Jr., professor of international relations at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, is the author most recently of "The Powers to Lead." © Project Syndicate

[Philip]

"Russia is back"

http://georgiandaily.com/index.php?opti ... Itemid=132

The rush to rope Georgia into NATO and Poland's indecent haste with which it signed up for US missiles on its soil aimed at Russia (immediately after Saakashvili's Georgian fiasco),hilariously being describd as being meant to deter Iran,a fable that fools no one,has provoked the following Russian response.A Russian military presence in Venezuela,temporary fore the moment,that includes Blackjack strategic bombers and a naval taskforce that includes one battlecruiser.Here is an analysis of the deployment and also Russian exercises in Kazakhastan.

MOSCOW EXTENDS CONFRONTATION WITH THE WEST TO THE CARIBBEAN
Pavel Felgenhauer

The Defense Ministry in Moscow announced this week that warships and long-range bombers would be deployed to the Caribbean for joint military exercises with Venezuela in November. Russia's most powerful warship, the nuclear cruiser Pyotr Velikii, will lead the flotilla, accompanied by a frigate Admiral Chabanenko, a tanker, and a sea tug. At the same time, Russian long-range bombers will be temporarily based in Venezuela. Moscow announced that the planned deployment of Russian naval and air forces in the Caribbean was planned a year in advance and that the joint exercises were agreed upon with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez during his visit to Moscow last July. Foreign ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko announced that the exercises were "not in any way connected to the current situation in the Caucasus" and were "not aimed at any third country." Kremlin insiders and retired admirals, however, have told journalists that in fact the exercises in the Caribbean are indeed in retaliation for the United States sending warships to deliver aid to Georgia following its conflict with Russia (Interfax, September .

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently blasted the United States for sending humanitarian aid to Georgia on board armed naval ships and promised a "response" (www.government.ru, September 2). President Dmitry Medvedev announced last Saturday that "Russia is a nation to be reckoned with" and added, "It [would be] interesting how those, who are rearming Georgia under the flag of humanitarian aid... would feel if we were now to send humanitarian aid using our navy to the countries of the Caribbean Sea, which recently suffered from a destructive hurricane" (RIA-Novosti, September 6).

Russian leaders want to send a clear and immediate response to what is seen in Moscow as a Western challenge in the Black Sea, but it will take time for the ships to take to sea and reach Venezuela in November. In an apparent attempt to speed up the "response" Putin had promised, two supersonic Tu-160 strategic bombers, known in the West as Blackjacks, arrived in Venezuela on Wednesday for "training flights" after a 13-hour flight from the Engels airbase in Saratov Oblast on the Volga River. The planes arrived at the El Libertador airbase in the northern town of Aragua. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the bombers will stay in Venezuela "several days" and return home (ITAR-TASS, September 10). Chavez has announced that he hopes to pilot one of the Tu-160s while they are visiting (AFP, September 10).

The Tu-160 has a crew of four; and in the past Putin, as well as Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, has gone aboard the Blackjack in the copilot's seat. It is to be hoped that Chavez does not push the wrong button while in flight, as Russia has only 16 Tu-160s, its biggest and most modern bomber, which can carry 12 KH-55 long-range, nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.

If the current tension between the West and Russia develops into a full-blown military standoff, the deployment of Russian strategic bombers in Venezuela, even on a temporary basis, could make some military sense. The Tu-160’s KH-55 cruise missiles are designed to carry a 200-kiloton warhead and have a range of up to 1,900 miles. From Venezuela, the Tu-160s could threaten the southern United States with a surprise nuclear attack by low-flying, long-range cruise missiles. Today, of course, under the 1991-1992 mutual U.S.-Russian unilateral nuclear disarmament initiatives, strategic bombers have been taken off combat duty and are not permitted to carry nuclear weapons (see EDM, September 12, 2007). The commander of Russia’s strategic bomber force General Pavel Androsov announced last year that on long-distance patrols Russian planes did not have any nuclear or conventional weapons on board, "only training weapons" (Interfax, August 27); but the 1991-1992 agreement in not a treaty, and there are no verification procedures to know if it is indeed being fully observed.

There is no land infrastructure to maintain Russia's strategic bombers or their weapons in Venezuela, so they will indeed surely soon return to Engels. In a real military standoff the big bombers would require defense cover to prevent them from being destroyed by U.S. forces before they could release their weapons. The Pyotr Velikii, when it arrives, could provide such cover, since it is armed with long-range, anti-ship supersonic Granit cruise missiles and 12 long-range, anti-aircraft S-300F missile launchers with a stockpile of 96 missiles. The Pyotr Velikii has the capability of defending strategic bombers, while they release their cruise missiles over the Caribbean.

Compared with Russia's present force of land and submarine based intercontinental ballistic missiles, which can carry some 3,500 nuclear warheads, the possible additional threat to the United States from one lonely nuclear cruiser and a couple of bombers in the Caribbean is not that serious; but their deployment signals another step in the confrontation with the West that by November may be getting fully out of control.

RUSSIA’S CENTRAL ASIAN EXERCISES WITH KAZAKHSTAN FOCUS ON DEFENDING ENERGY ASSETS
Roger McDermott

On September 4 joint Russian-Kazakh military exercises began at the Chebarkul training range near Chelyabinsk, Russia. The exercises, long planned in the framework of the deepening military cooperation between the two countries, involved around 2,000 servicemen, more than 100 units of armored vehicles, and 30 planes and helicopters (MiG-31, Su-24, Su-27, Il-76 aircraft and the Mi-24 and Mi-8 helicopters). Russian commanders were satisfied with the preparatory work carried out with their Kazakh counterparts before the exercises started. “The training of the tank regiment of the 34th Motorized Rifle Division of the Volga-Ural Military District of Russia and the Fourth Mechanized Brigade of the Kazakh Armed Forces, organized as part of the large-scale joint exercise, ended successfully,” explained Colonel Igor Konashenkov, an aide of the Russian Army commander. He noted the use of 80 T-72 tanks, more than 30 infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), battalions of Grad multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) and Gvozdika and Nona SP howitzers, Tunguska AD units, military engineers, and NBC (using special protective equipment) and other support units. (Interfax, Moscow, September 4).

However, “Center 2008” was more than just an impressive show for the generals and defense officials from both countries; it was in practical terms the largest joint military exercise conducted between Russia and Kazakhstan since the collapse of the Soviet Union. What was unusual about the exercise was the scenario: the Russian and Kazakh armies were rehearsing how to repel an attack on Kazakhstan by an adjacent state. This not only contradicts Kazakhstan’s new military doctrine, passed in March 2007, according to which the principal threat to the state stems from international terrorism; it also begs the question about which potential aggressor state either country imagines as the justification for the exercise. “Center 2008” unfolded around an attempt by an “aggressor state” to seize control of Kazakhstan’s energy assets. Russian military intervention in the exercise saw the use of precision-guided munitions (PGMs), unlike the real Russian military operation in Georgia in August. Kazakhstan contributed to the exercise, by providing reinforcement in the form of Soviet-made infantry fighting vehicles (BMPs) and armored personnel carriers (BTRs). A Russian infantry company from the Ulyanovsk airborne division assault force was finally inserted into the “conflict zone” using two IL-76 transport aircraft, resulting in the rapid disruption of enemy forces, destruction of hardware, and the inevitable fleeing of the enemy from the battlefield. Moreover, the allied response to the aggressive military intervention in Kazakhstan ended with forcing a whole military bloc to “make peace” (ITAR-TASS, Kazakhstan Today, September 4).

Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov highlighted the significance of the exercise and promised more such exercises in the future: “We [will] assign ever more complicated missions. We [will] redeploy quite large numbers of troops. And this year we also plan more exercises, at the end of September, on Kazakh soil” (Zvezda TV, September 4).

While the exercise was long planned, there were signs of nervousness on the part of some Russian officers. On September 1 Lieutenant-General Valeriy Yevnevich, deputy commander in chief of Russia's ground troops, described the exercise as a “peacekeeping operation.” “Cooperation between the two countries when carrying out a peacekeeping operation in an area of armed conflict will be developed during these exercises,” he affirmed. Yevnevich stressed that no modifications were made to the purpose of the exercises in connection with the events in Georgia and South Ossetia. “We have made no changes. The plan for the exercises was drawn up by the two headquarters long ago. We did not imagine that they would be operating in that way there (in South Ossetia),” Yevnevich said (Interfax, September 2).

The Kazakh military personnel left the Chebarkul range on September 5, while Russian servicemen from the Volga-Urals Military District continued with drills on military ranges in Chelyabinsk and Kurgan Regions. Kazakh Defense Minster Daniyal Akhmetov commented on the joint military exercises without dwelling on the nature of the scenario or the political signal it sent within Central Asia and beyond. “For Kazakhstan, it is highly important, since we tackle interaction issues, issues to do with forces teamwork, so it goes without saying that in the final analysis it makes a contribution to our state security” (Zvezda TV, September 4).

At a political level, allowing for the forward planning of the military exercises, the message seemed clear: Russia will play the leading role in resolving any serious security crisis within Central Asia, while the local military (in this case Kazakh) will play a supportive or even subordinate role. Following the military intervention in Georgia, Russia may be using such military exercises to send out the message that it is re-emerging as the guarantor of security in Central Asia. At a military level, despite the claims from Kazakh defense officials that the exercises were an important way of improving skills and fostering greater coordination between these forces, there is no escaping the wider implications of such exercises: Kazakhstan’s “peacekeeping” formations will be in great demand not only from Russia but also in the context of achieving NATO interoperability in such units, which is anticipated as an outcome of the “Steppe Eagle” exercise in Kazakhstan (alongside U.S. and U.K. military personnel) later in September. Finally, while Western militaries are downsizing and working on counter-terrorist capabilities, it is peculiar to witness the re-emergence of a scenario based on interstate conflict in Central Asia. As these exercises become more commonplace, the underlying message appears: “Russia is back.”

[Skanda]

International Poll: No Consensus On Who Was Behind 9/11

A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 17 nations finds that majorities in only nine of them believe that al Qaeda was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

In no country does a majority agree on another possible perpetrator, but in most countries significant minorities cite the US government itself and, in a few countries, Israel. These responses were given spontaneously to an open-ended question that did not offer response options.

On average, 46 percent say that al Qaeda was behind the attacks while 15 percent say the US government, seven percent Israel, and seven percent some other perpetrator. One in four say they do not know.

Given the extraordinary impact the 9/11 attacks have had on world affairs, it is remarkable that seven years later there is no international consensus about who was behind them," comments Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org.

Even in European countries, the majorities that say al Qaeda was behind 9/11 are not overwhelming. Fifty-seven percent of Britons, 56 percent of Italians, 63 percent of French and 64 percent of Germans cite al Qaeda." However, significant portions of Britons (26%), French (23%), and Italians (21%) say they do not know who was behind 9/11. Remarkably, 23 percent of Germans cite the US government, as do 15 percent of Italians.

Publics in the Middle East are especially likely to name a perpetrator other than al Qaeda. In Egypt 43 percent say that Israel was behind the attacks, as do 31 percent in Jordan and 19 percent in the Palestinian Territories. The US government is named by 36 percent of Turks and 27 percent of Palestinians. The numbers who say al Qaeda was behind the attacks range from 11 percent in Jordan to 42 percent in the Palestinian Territories.

The only countries with overwhelming majorities citing al Qaeda are the African countries: Kenya (77%) and Nigeria (71%). In Nigeria, a large majority of Muslims (64%) also say that al Qaeda was behind the attacks (compared to 79% of Nigerian Christians).

[Philip]

After British Foreign Sec.David Milliband who rushed in haste to defend Georgian bufoon Saakashvili's "honour" and was soundly ticked off in style by his Russian counterpart Lavrov,who allegedly used the "F" word several times ,comes another lambasting of the US by Hugo Chavez,who in support of his Bolivian friend and president Evo Morales whose govt. is allegedly being subverted clandestionely by the US,kicked out unceremoniously the US ambassador to Venezuela also using the "F" word!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/se ... ezuela.usa
Venezuela: Hugo Chávez expels US ambassador amid claims of coup plot

Expulsions and aggressive language raise stakes in long-running diplomatic battle between US and Venezuela

Rory Carroll in Caracas guardian.co.uk, Friday September 12 2008

President Hugo Chávez last night ordered the US ambassador to leave Venezuela within 72 hours and accused Washington of fomenting a coup attempt against his socialist revolution.

Chávez also ordered Venezuela's ambassador to Washington to return home and threatened to cut oil supplies, plunging relations between the countries to a new low. "Go to hell a hundred times, ****** Yankees," he told a televised rally thronged with supporters clad in red.

The move came a day after Venezuela's ally Bolivia expelled its US ambassador for allegedly backing opposition groups engaged in bloody clashes with police and government supporters; turmoil which claimed eight lives and split the country in two.

The expulsions and aggressive language dramatically raised the stakes in a long-running diplomatic battle between South America's most radical leftist governments and the superpower they term the "empire".

The US retaliated by expelling Bolivia's envoy to Washington and would probably have done the same to Venezuela's envoy, Bernardo Alvarez, had Chávez not recalled him to Caracas first.

In a day of intrigue and brinkmanship, Chávez announced that Venezuelan military officers had plotted to assassinate him with US complicity. "They're trying to do here what they were doing in Bolivia. That's enough shit from you Yankees," he said.

Ties would be restored when the US had a new government that "respected" Latin America, he added.

Coincidental or not, his accusation fell on the 35th anniversary of the CIA-backed coup which replaced Chile's leftist president, Salvador Allende, with the dictator Augusto Pinochet.

The US denied Chávez's claims. The Venezuelan president did not offer evidence of wrongdoing by the ambassador, Patrick Duddy, or other US officials, but he said several Venezuelan military officers had been detained following an investigation by his intelligence services. During his televised address he played a recording of purported conversations between the alleged conspirators.

Earlier, the defence minister, General Gustavo Rangel Briceño, and a pro-Chávez TV host, Mario Silva, named several senior officers from the navy, air force and national guard as suspects.

None appeared to have been charged and details of the alleged plot were scant. Venezuela's president has made previous claims about other alleged conspiracies, which were never substantiated.

He has also made repeated threats to cut oil shipments to the US, a warning he revived yesterday. Such a move would disrupt the US economy but devastate Venezuela's - which may explain why Chávez has never followed through. The markets tend to shrug off the threat as bluster.

The timing of yesterday's rhetoric prompted some to suspect political theatre designed to distract voters. Chavez faces important municipal and regional elections in November with inflation at 30%, Latin America's highest, and a spate of damaging headlines about violent crime and crumbling hospitals.

He has also been embarrassed by a trial in Miami linked to a suitcase with $800,000 (£450,000) discovered in Buenos Aires, allegedly a clandestine payment from Caracas to help Argentina's president, Cristina Kirchner, win an election last year. The US also accused Chávez of turning a blind eye to cocaine trafficking in Venezuela.

Those stories were eclipsed this week by two Russian bombers that visited Venezuela at Chávez's invitation, a foray in advance of the Russian navy squadron which is due to dock in November to underline deepening ties between Caracas and Moscow.

In contrast to the heated but bloodless events in Venezuela the other leading member of Latin America's "pink tide" of leftist governments, Bolivia, has been reeling from violent riots.

Opposition groups opposed to President Evo Morales, a Chávez ally and the Andean country's first indigenous leader, attacked government offices, cut gas pipelines and clashed with police and government supporters. Fighting in the remote northern province of Pando reportedly left eight dead and at least 20 injured.

Morales expelled the US ambassador, Philip Goldberg, after accusing him of supporting the opposition, a claim the envoy denied. In response, the Bush administration ordered Bolivia's envoy, Gustavo Guzman, to leave the US.

[renukb]

Russia's Opec bearhug is something to worry about

Richard Wachman The Observer, Sunday September 14 2008 Article historyAs if the prospect of a global recession isn't enough, consider the latest threat to world economic stability: an alliance between Russia and Opec, the oil-producing cartel dominated by Saudi Arabia.

That's a scary possibility, as Russia supplies one third of Europe's energy needs, while Opec accounts for nearly 40 per cent of global oil production. Together they produce half the world's oil, so any pact that paves the way for Russia to become a full member of the cartel would present a threat to countries such as Britain, which is becoming increasingly dependent on foreign imports as supplies of North Sea oil dry up.

Don't be under any illusion that an Opec-Russia tie-up would act responsibly by striking a fair balance between the amount charged by producers and the price paid by consumer nations in Europe, America and Asia.

Take Russia's behaviour, for example. Three months ago, Gazprom chairman Alexei Miller, in a display of naked self-interest, suggested that the price of oil could soar to $250 a barrel, at a time when the price had already leapt 39 per cent in 2008 to almost $140.

But is such a merger really on the cards? The Russians would clearly like one: last week, it sent its energy minister Igor Sechin to attend Opec's meeting in Vienna and proposed 'extensive co-operation' with the cartel. A memorandum of understanding is being prepared for signature in the coming months.

An alliance would be a boon for the Kremlin, which has already demonstrated in Ukraine and elsewhere that it is prepared to use oil as a political weapon in order to re-establish its influence over the former Soviet empire.

Oil is Russia's biggest bargaining chip, as the soaraway price has done more than anything else to give it the confidence and clout to re-assert itself on the world stage. A pact with Opec would strengthen Moscow at a time when it has lost friends in the West following its invasion of Georgia and its harassment of foreign companies, such as BP, which have business interests in Russia.

An extension of the oil cartel to include Russia, however, will be hard to pull off. Saudi Arabia, by far the most important Opec member, is a conservative state supposedly aligned with the United States, and may be reluctant to alienate such a powerful ally. But it is not impossible: Opec already comprises countries hostile to the US, notably Iran and Venezuela. So why not add Russia?

Hidden from the debate, however, is the fact that Saudi Arabia is a cartel within a cartel. With 21 per cent of all Middle Eastern proven oil reserves, it is the only country with significant surplus capacity. That means it can cushion itself from price falls by bumping up volume in a way that other countries can't. No doubt that was one reason why Russia has been frantically lobbying behind the scenes for Opec to cut production to keep prices high, as it faces capacity restraints and stands to lose billions in foreign reserves.

Even without the Russians, Opec, under the sway of the powerful Saudis, is hardly a benign force that is seeking to make things easy for the West as recession looms.

Last week, the cartel said it would cut production by around 500,000 barrels, bringing a rebuke from the International Energy Agency, which claimed the move would undermine the price relief that consumers have enjoyed in the last month.

But Opec may have overreached itself: by trying keep the price of oil at around $100 a barrel, it has stoked fears that a recession will be deeper than anticipated and will lead to a slump in demand. As a consequence, oil closed on Friday at just under $100 a barrel and could slide further.

But it will take a long time before Opec's influence diminishes: despite all the talk in the US about green technologies that will help the world reduce its dependence on oil, it will be decades before that happens. Opec will remain a force to be reckoned with for the foreseeable future. The Russians know this, as their action last week demonstrated all too clearly.

[renukb]

ANALYSIS: One-time deterrents, nuclear weapons pose threat

As long as superpowers held the monopoly on nuclear technology, the perils associated with nuclear weapons were minimal, despite the Cold War and one or two crises when the nuclear codes were almost activated.

But now we are entering a new era of post-nuclear exclusivity, where non-nation entities are seeking to obtain weapons of mass destruction, not for the purpose of deterrence, but rather with specific intent to cause maximum damage and casualties.

Since the Soviet Union acquired the atomic bomb shortly after the United States at the end of World War II, a number of other countries strived to join that exclusive club. The belief was - and partially remains - that possessing a nuclear arsenal is enough of a deterrent. No mad dictator would be adventurous enough to attack another country armed with nuclear weapons.

In other words, nuclear bombs acted as a very effective defensive tool. At least in theory.

That was the view adopted by other nuclear countries - China, France and Britain. India and Pakistan, eternal enemies in southwestern Asia, also developed nuclear-strike capabilities. Again, the intent was not to use them against each other, rather to hope they would serve as a deterrence.

The Islamic Republic of Iran realized this fact only too well during the eight-year war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1980s, but that realization came only after nearly 500,000 Iranian soldiers were killed in conventional fighting. Iraq lost an equal number of soldiers.

Other countries followed suit: North Korea spent money and resources that it didn't have to develop nuclear technology, fearful that the United States and South Korea would try to overthrow the reclusive and over-paranoid regime in Pyongyang.

Libya admitted to having invested in trying to develop a bomb with North Korean help. But spooked by the U.S. invasion of Iraq and nudged on by Moammar Gadhafi's son, Saif al-Islam, Libya turned over its bomb-making kit to the U.S. in exchange for better relations with Washington. It worked. Libya has stopped trying to blow planes out of the sky, and just this month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew to Tripoli to meet with Col. Gadhafi.

And finally, Israel and South Africa have never officially admitted to being in possession of nuclear bombs, but the fact is hardly a secret to anyone. South Africa voluntarily dismantled its program under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency after apartheid was ended, getting rid of two evils in the same decade. Israel, the only nuclear country in the Middle East, continues to stay silent about its program based in Dimona, in the southern part of the country.

But would any country in possession of nuclear arms today truly be in danger of attack if it were to get rid of its nuclear weapons? This is the question George Perkovich and James M. Acton ask in the latest issue of the Adelphi Paper, published by the London International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Mr. Perkovich is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and director of its nonproliferation program. Mr. Acton is a physicist by training and lectures at the Department of War Studies at King's College London.

The authors point out that, indeed, "none of today's nuclear-armed states would fall prey to major aggression if they all eliminated their nuclear arsenals."

True, chances of any of the three NATO nuclear countries - the U.S., Britain and France - coming under attack from another state is highly improbable.

The same can be said of Russia and China. And if India and Pakistan manage to retain cool heads despite their differences and their border disputes, that part of the world would certainly be safer. As for North Korea, no one is seriously going to attack it.

When it comes to nuclear weapons today, the real danger stems not from the countries possessing them and (the next part of this sentence is bound to raise a storm of protest) not even from "rogue" countries such as Iran and other would-be members of the "axis of evil."

Assuming for a moment that Iran were to develop nuclear weapons and assuming that the ayatollahs were mad enough to use them - which they are not - the rulers of Tehran know full well that they would not be around long enough to watch the fireball on their television sets, as Iran would cease to exist.

The real concern today lies in efforts by terrorist groups to acquire weapons of mass destruction: chemical, biological and, mostly, nuclear.

Brian Michael Jenkins, who has just released a book titled "Will Terrorists Go Nuclear?" writes, "There is no doubt that the idea of nuclear weapons may appeal to terrorists."

Alas, it is that new threat that ultimately will prevent the abolishment of nuclear weapons, at least not until the threat of nuclear terrorism dissipates. And that may be a few years yet.

The nuclear genie has been let out of the bottle; the difficult task is how to entice it back in and forever seal it tight.

[renukb]

The World Isn’t So Dark
Ever since WWII, America has tended to make its strategic missteps by exaggerating dangers.


http://www.newsweek.com/id/158764

[renukb]

Want to know why US wants wars ? it's to boost their economy...


WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is pushing through a broad array of foreign weapons deals as it seeks to rearm Iraq and Afghanistan, contain North Korea and Iran, and solidify ties with onetime Russian allies.

U.S. Weapons Abroad From tanks, helicopters and fighter jets to missiles, remotely piloted aircraft and even warships, the Department of Defense has agreed so far this fiscal year to sell or transfer more than $32 billion in weapons and other military equipment to foreign governments, compared with $12 billion in 2005.

The trend, which started in 2006, is most pronounced in the Middle East, but it reaches into northern Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe and even Canada, through dozens of deals that senior Bush administration officials say they are confident will both tighten military alliances and combat terrorism.

“This is not about being gunrunners,” said Bruce S. Lemkin, the Air Force deputy under secretary who is helping to coordinate many of the biggest sales. “This is about building a more secure world.”

The surging American arms sales reflect the foreign policy tides, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the broader campaign against international terrorism, that have dominated the Bush administration. Deliveries on orders now being placed will continue for several years, perhaps as one of President Bush’s most lasting legacies.

The United States is far from the only country pushing sophisticated weapons systems: it is facing intense competition from Russia and elsewhere in Europe, including continuing contests for multibillion-dollar deals to sell fighter jets to India and Brazil.


In that booming market, American military contractors are working closely with the Pentagon, which acts as a broker and procures arms for foreign customers through its Foreign Military Sales program.

Less sophisticated weapons, and services to maintain these weapons systems, are often bought directly by foreign governments. That category of direct commercial sales has seen an enormous surge as well, as measured by export licenses issued this fiscal year covering an estimated $96 billion, up from $58 billion in 2005, according to the State Department, which must approve the licenses.

About 60 countries get annual military aid from the United States, $4.5 billion a year, to help them buy American weapons. Israel and Egypt receive more than 80 percent of that aid. The United States has also recently given Iraq and Afghanistan large amounts of weapons and other equipment and has begun to train fledgling military units at no charge; this assistance is included in the tally of foreign sales. But most arms exports are paid for by the purchasers without United States financing.

The growing tally of international weapon deals, which started to surge in 2006, is now provoking questions among some advocates of arms control and some members of Congress.

“Sure, this is a quick and easy way to cement alliances,” said William D. Hartung, an arms control specialist at the New America Foundation, a public policy institute. “But this is getting out of hand.”

Congress is notified before major arms sales deals are completed between foreign governments and the Pentagon. While lawmakers have the power to object formally and block any individual sale, they rarely use it.

Representative Howard L. Berman of California, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said he supported many of the individual weapons sales, like helping Iraq build the capacity to defend itself, but he worried that the sales blitz could have some negative effects. “This could turn into a spiraling arms race that in the end could decrease stability,” he said.

The United States has long been the top arms supplier to the world. In the past several years, however, the list of nations that rely on the United States as a primary source of major weapons systems has greatly expanded. Among the recent additions are Argentina, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Georgia, India, Iraq, Morocco and Pakistan, according to sales data through the end of last month provided by the Department of Defense. Cumulatively, these countries signed $870 million worth of arms deals with the United States from 2001 to 2004. For the past four fiscal years, that total has been $13.8 billion.

In many cases, these sales represent a cultural shift, as nations like Romania, Poland and Morocco, which have long relied on Russian-made MIG-17 fighter jets, are now buying new F-16s, built by Lockheed Martin.

...more...
With White House Push, U.S. Arms Sales Jump

[renukb]

Not like the first Cold War
By Adar Primor

Tags: Cold War, Medvedev

SOCHI AND MOSCOW - Three and a half hours with Putin, three hours with Medvedev, and one bonus hour with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. That's what the members of the Valdai Discussion Club received from the Russian leadership over the weekend in Sochi, a Russian resort city sprawled along the shores of the Black Sea.

The forum of opinion-shapers, senior officials, researchers, diplomats and journalists convenes annually since 2004 to discuss Russian policy-related issues with the Kremlin heads.

This year's get-together received new and even dramatic overtones because of the power shift in Moscow, which left a unique, two-headed beast at the top. But above all, the international crisis created by the war in the Caucasus served to make this year's event particularly interesting.
Advertisement

Has a new Cold War era dawned? Will Ukraine be the next item on the Russians' list after Georgia? How will Russia react to the deployment of the American missile and radar systems in Poland and the Czech Republic? How will the rift between the two superpowers affect the Middle East and other parts of the world? And who really controls Moscow today? These were just some of the questions discussed in Sochi.

The first meeting took place at the estate of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch considered to be Russia's wealthiest man and owner of Rusal, an international aluminum industry giant. Putin, who had to part with the presidential Dacha after the power shift, chose the venue, which usually serves as a sanatorium for Rusal employees.

The Russian prime minister, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, presided over the discussion for more than three hours, introducing the participants to a charismatic leader capable of conveying warmth and reserve, menacing and charming gestures, challenging and defensive speech.

He intermittently inveighed against the West and implored it to understand Russia's position. He blushed with rage when speaking about some issues, only to induce his listeners to laugh out loud when joking about other matters.

The general message that emerged after he was done talking was that the Cold War era had ended. Unlike yesteryear, there are no ideological disputes between Russia and the West. Moscow possesses no imperialistic ambitions and if the West treats it as its equal, it will find a ready partner on all the issues currently on the table, from terrorism to nuclear proliferation.

Putin surprised his listeners when he drew parallels between enemy-surrounded Israel and Russia, which is being closed in by "the hostile West." He lauded U.S. President George W. Bush as being a man of "honor and integrity," jokingly adding that he had more appreciation for Bush than most Americans.

At the same time, he expressed bitter disappointment with Bush. When the attack on Georgia began, both leaders were in Beijing for the Olympic Games. Putin said he warned Bush about the "plot" being contrived against Russia, and Bush replied - according to Putin - that "no one wants war." But then the Americans, Putin complained, egged the Georgians on, leaving Russia no choice but to strike at the enemy.

Putin sought to present a view which his guests could arguably never have heard from the Western media: a world in which the West is the aggressor and Russia defends itself while demonstrating restraint. "Our forces stopped 15 kilometers from Tbilisi," he said. "We could have overrun it and taken control of Georgia in four hours, but we opted not to."

The U.S., by contrast, is doing the exact opposite, according to Putin. Let us drop the charade, he said. The missile system that the Americans are planning to deploy in Poland and the Czech Republic is aimed at Moscow, he said.

Maintaining good relations with the European Union is also a Russian goal, Puttin said, including the former Soviet states of eastern Europe. However, the deployment of the American missile system would necessitate Russia to immediately deploy missiles aimed at Poland and the Czech Republic.

Talk about the need for defense from dangerous countries like Iran is senseless, he said. Iran, Putin elaborated, does not possess the necessary technology to pose a threat to the West.

As for Iran's nuclear plan, Putin informed listeners that he has had occasion to talk at some length with the country's spiritual leader, Ali Khamenei, who preferred, according to Putin, to ignore the Russian position. During another address, Putin's foreign minister, Lavrov, said that according to the information that Moscow has received, Iran is cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Putin added that he attributes much importance to Russia's presence in the Middle East, and that Russia intends to make general use of Syria's naval facilities. Over the weekend, news agencies reported that the Russian authorities announced that renovation work is underway at the Syrian port Tartus, which is meant to serve as a permanent port for Russian vessels.

At the end of the meeting, some of the participants seemed exhausted. Putin, meanwhile, had about him the air of a man whose day had just begun.

In a conversation with Haaertz, Oleg Tsatsourine, an advisor to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, said that Russia "will not take any action that might alter the balance of power in the Middle East or compromise Russia's excellent relations with Israel."

The meeting with Medvedev took place the following day, in Moscow. In sharp contrast with the countryside villa, the meeting with the president was held at the luxurious Gum department store, inside a showroom that is a preferred venue for fashion shows.

As with Putin, the guests were not required to submit their questions in advance, and Medvedev replied at length to each and every inquiry. Medvedev seems younger than his 43 years. Brimming with self confidence, he seems well on the way to becoming another Putin.

Although his voice is softer and less assertive, the content of his replies was often tougher than what Putin had to say. For example, in describing Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, Medvedev launched a withering assault, condemning him as "somebody utterly unpredictable, a person totally burdened by pathological traits, a totally unbalanced person who takes narcotic drugs."

In replying to Haaretz's question on whether the follow-up conference to the Annapolis peace summit that the U.S. hosted last year constitutes a return to Russian involvement in the Middle East along similar lines as during the Soviet era, Medvedev said: "Unfortunately, Russia is perceived not only as the legal heiress of the USSR, but also as its ideological reincarnation. It is not. Russia has a completely different value system. When Russia offers its brokerage services in the Middle East, its sole intention is to assist with bringing peace that will benefit both Jews and Arabs."

The formal meeting ended unexpectedly after the president finished speaking, when he was mobbed by forum members who wanted to have their photographs taken with him and receive his autograph. The Cold War, it seems, has never been more bizarre.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1020698.html