Reminders that life goes on

While we conservatives are having a well deserved moment of pleasure basking in Palin euphoria Ralph Peters is giving us a badly needed reminder that the world is still out there and still dangerous. For anyone still looking for a reason to do all in their power to see that one Mr. Barack Obama is not allowed any closer to the White House than the guided tour I offer this:

IN the wake of Russia's ruthless invasion of Georgia, the United States sent relief supplies on military aircraft and ships. Our vice president went to Tbilisi. And we promised a billion dollars in reconstruction aid.

The European Union sent a get-well card. With no return address.

Washington asked that Georgia and Ukraine be put on the fast track to NATO membership to deter further Russian aggression. The EU suggested sending unarmed civilian observers, instead.

The Bush administration begged for a unified front against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's barbarism. Rejecting any penalties for Russia, the EU took the bold step of postponing talks on a trade deal.

Within the EU, Britain and Poland insisted that Russia needed a good slap for its latest strategic tantrum. Other Europeans found that ill mannered.

As I'd predicted, the Europeans found the rape of Georgia an embarrassment, nothing more. The odious former German chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, even took Russia's side. (Of course, Schroeder also took a highly paid job with Russian energy interests, so he may not have been entirely impartial.)

Back when the United States went ahead with the liberation of Iraq over protests from France and Germany - whose corporations made money off Saddam - Washington was damned for going it "alone." Now, as we try to build a consensus to respond to brutal aggression, the same countries want no part of it. (Financial interests are involved again - this time, it's gas, not oil.)

Russians are not by nature disposed to much happiness, but Putin and his paladins must be downright gleeful.

The tragedy is that the West could have made Putin pay. And we didn't need a military confrontation. We needed unity.

Together, the Euro-American democracies had the power to inflict serious economic and political pain on the Putin regime. But Europe lacks a conscience - and, without Europe, we lack the clout.

This is all going to end badly. Putin's feeling invincible now, and, just to keep in practice, he's gone back to killing journalists who criticize the czar. Last week saw the murder of two more Russian-citizen media figures.

Magomed Yevloyev, a Web-site publisher from Ingushetia, was abducted from a commercial airliner by the police. The cops shot him and dumped his body.

Two days later, TV reporter Abdulla Alishayev was shot and killed in the nearby "republic" of Daghestan. Russian government sources blame "Wahhabis."

Plus, a reporter and editor, Milosla Bitokov, from the Karbardino-Balkar "republic," was beaten so badly he had to be hospitalized. But, given all the journalists Putin has murdered since he came to power, a few broken bones or a fractured skull hardly count.

This recent violence suggests an effective response to resurgent Russian imperialism: Each of those journalist critics of the Putin regime came from a different, but equally restive, province on the northern slopes of the Caucasus. (Historically, Daghestan was a tougher nut for czarist troops to crack than Chechnya.)

The dominant Muslim populations - and some Christians - in the region view today's ethnic-Russian presence as an unbroken extension of Soviet and czarist tyranny. And the locals are tough customers - even Stalin couldn't break their will completely.

Given Putin's brutality and the belligerent threats from his gang (including Flunky, the eighth dwarf, a k a President Dmitri Medvedev), it may be time to dust off our anti-Soviet strategy from Afghanistan: Arm and fund militant separatist movements in the Russian-occupied Caucasus.

Yes, there are risks. Some of those local nationalists are also Islamists. Well, just don't give them another batch of stingers until they can prove they've expended the previous lot.

Sometimes, the best way to take down Lucifer is to back Beelzebub.

Let's face it: We've got Islamist extremism on the defensive. That's one thing the Bush administration got right. The Muslim-terrorist problem will be with us to some degree for years to come, but it's not remotely as great a threat as a resurgent militarist Russia bristling with missiles and led by a reincarnation of Ivan the Terrible.

The Russians chose to play hardball with Georgia, a democracy allied to the United States. They won the first inning. Now it's time to dust off our Louisville Sluggers.

Here's the deal. Remember how the EU would not ever - under any conceivable circumstances - back our invasion of Iraq? That was because the EU politicians and business interests were on Saddam Hussein's payroll. The same is true with regard to the EU and Russia.

As long as the European Union depends upon Russia for a significant amount of its energy they will serve as Putin's lapdogs.

America has the largest energy reserves when you add up our oil, oil shale, natural gas and coal. If we were to develop those resources and the technologies to fully exploit them we could make up for Europe's losses in the event of a Russian or Middle Eastern embargo.

For now I like Mr. Peters idea of arming and training some of the restive populations within the Russian sphere. One of the chief motivators of the Russian leadership is to recover the Russian national pride. Rodina was not, after all, a Soviet concept.

Russia still in Georgia

When I first posted about the Russian invasion of Georgia a reader left this in the comments:

What makes you think we haven't been sufficiently tough? I don't think that you have really watched Bush very closely since 2001.

Remember when Pakistan had an epiphany - the Taliban, which they founded, trained and supplied, were really not such nice people and henceforth Pakistan stands foursquare with the US? That followed a personal visit from Darth Cheney.

It is the Bush way to let the other guy save face - anyway he chooses - as long as he cooperates. When Bush said he demanded that the Russians withdraw many said that it was not sufficiently strong. Bush chooses his words very carefully. World leaders know that he is a most serious hombre. The real message, as he announced by having a very public heated but inaudible discussion with Putin at the Olympics, is that Russia really crossed the line and he was not going to put up with it.

Bush has a reputation of being an astute poker player. He is more than willing to give the other guy bragging rights. As long as he puts the chips in his own pocket.

I didn't respond at the time because I knew that the next few days would provide all the proof of whose take on the events was correct.

Well the results are in:

POTI, Georgia (AP) - Russian troops held their position in the key town of Gori and were digging in deeper in other strategic areas of Georgia on Friday, the day that Russia's president said a pullback would be complete.

In Igoeti, a major checkpoint on the road from the capital Tbilisi to Gori, Russian troops were allowing aid organizations and local traffic through on Friday.

Red Cross vehicles, mine-clearing jeeps and trucks carrying peaches were seen heading into Gori early Friday. Russian military helicopters buzzed overhead as military trucks shuttled in and out of Gori past the checkpoint, where Russian flags were flapping in the wind.

Further west, near a base at the key Black Sea port of Poti, Russian troops were seen digging large trenches near a bridge that provides the only access to the city. Five trucks, several armored personnel carriers and a helicopter were parked nearby. Another Russian position was seen in a wooded area outside the city.

It would seem that Mr. Bush needs to brush up some on his poker playing.

The Russian Empire is back. It took a brief vacation after the Tsar was overthrown and Russia was governed by an elected Duma then it came back a few months later when the communists staged a counterrevolution and sized power. The Russian Empire took another little vacation unter Yeltsin but now Putin is busy rebuilding it.

The Russian's goal is to reassert control over all the territory that was once part of the Soviet Union. Georgia is the first but it will not be the last. If the United States does not want this to happen we need to do something about it - if we have the resolution and the courage.

Russia shows its true colors

From The Daily Mail:

Georgian officials tonight claimed the country had been 'overrun' by Russian troops after a full-scale ground invasion.

Amid reports that Moscow forces had taken the town of Gori - and were marching on the capital Tsblisi - Georgian soldiers appeared to be in full retreat.

Troops were apparently in complete chaos as a full-scale rout pushed them back through the countryside.

Meanwhile, the civilian crisis intensified with thousands of refugees fleeing the seemingly unstoppable advance of the Russian army.

Around 9,000 soldiers and 350 tanks had been massing at a base in the border region of Abkhazia throughout the day.

But the huge force has now moved into Georgia proper, demolishing hopes of a rapid solution to an increasingly bitter conflict.

[. . .]

Earlier in the day, Russian premier Vladimir Putin raised the stakes over the conflict by lashing out at the U.S. as the fighting continued to escalate in the region.

The Russian prime minister rejected calls from Georgia for a ceasefire and declared that his country would pursue its mission to its 'logical conclusion'.

A day after a face-to-face meeting with President George W. Bush in Beijing who expressed 'grave concern', Mr Putin accused the U.S. of siding with Georgia by ferrying Georgian troops from Iraq to the battle zone.

'It is a shame that some of our partners are not helping us but, essentially, are hindering us,' said Mr Putin. 'The very scale of this cynicism is astonishing.'

If you want my opinion I think we should show Mr. Putin exactly what US intervention on the side of Georgia really looks like.

What it really behind this is the fact that Georgia was in the process of joining NATO. The Russian imperialists don't like the idea of their former slaves being able to stand against them by joining the alliance which contained and ultimately broke the Soviet Union.

I say treat Georgia like it was already a member and bring the entire weight of NATO down on Putin's head. Crush the Russian army, sink the entire Russian navy and capture and destroy its nuclear weapons. Deliver Putin and his henchmen to the Georgian government to stand trial (and face execution) for their crimes against the Georgian people.

Does any of this have any hope of coming to pass?

Hell no. There isn't anyone in Washington with the guts to even think this way any more.

But a man can dream, can't he?



UPDATE:

The Washington Post tells us that the Russians have stated that they are stopping their military incursion into Georgia. We can wait and see if they are telling the truth.

If you want to rattle your saber you first need to have a saber

MOSCOW (AP) - In a tense start to talks on a range of thorny issues, President Vladimir Putin on Friday warned U.S. officials to back off a plan to install missile defenses in eastern Europe or risk harming relations with Moscow.

Addressing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the Russian president appeared to mock the U.S. missile defense plan, which is at the center of a tangle of arms control and diplomatic disputes between the former Cold War adversaries.

"Of course we can sometime in the future decide that some anti-missile defense system should be established somewhere on the moon," Putin said, according to an English translation. "But before we reach such arrangements we will lose the opportunity for fixing some particular arrangements between us."

Putin also said Russia might feel compelled to pull out of a 20-year-old arms control deal unless it is expanded.

Probably the number one resentment felt by the Russian ruling elite since the end of the Cold War has been the speed and desperation with which the USSR's former satellites have attached themselves to the West. Every time that any of their former slaves joins the Western military alliance it causes the Russian dream of rebuilding the Soviet Union in all its malignant glory to become that much more unattainable, and they know it.

There is literally no other explanation for Putin's attitude. A limited missile defense system in Eastern Europe will not threaten Moscow, but it will reduce Moscow's ability to threaten Eastern Europe.

Well, there is one other explanation. The missile defense system in Eastern Europe is intended to protect Europe from as missile fired by a rogue Islamic regime in the Middle East (are there any other kind?). Iran being the primary example of such. It is possible that Putin has made a deal with the Iranians to do what he can to keep Europe vulnerable to nuclear blackmail. What he may be getting back from Iran should not too hard to guess.

Russia really doesn't need oil since they produce more than they use but hard currency and influence in the region are two things that Putin will prize. This doesn't work entirely to the disadvantage of the US either. As long as Russia is selling them the finest military hardware they have Iran will be guaranteed to remain at least 40 years behind the US. This will make them much easier to slaughter like hogs on the day we finally adopt a sane Iraq policy.

Begging for a missile up the tailpipe

From The BBC:

The UK's Royal Air Force has launched fighter jets to intercept eight Russian military planes flying in airspace patrolled by Nato, UK officials say.
Four RAF F3 Tornado aircraft were scrambled in response to the Russian action, the UK's defence ministry said.

The Russian planes - long-range bombers - had earlier been followed by Norwegian F16 jets.

Russia recently revived a Cold War-era practice of flying bombers on long-range patrols.

In a statement the MoD said the eight Russian Tupolev Tu-95 Bear aircraft, flying in loose formation of four pairs, were initially intercepted by the Norwegian air force.

Radar tracking

They were tracked by the Norwegian aircraft until entering the Nato area for which the UK has responsibility in the early hours of Thursday morning.

Under established Nato procedures the MoD said it launched quick reaction alert aircraft in order to identify the bombers, as is routine.

Four F3 Tornados were launched in two waves from RAF Leeming, in North Yorkshire.

A Boeing E-3D airborne warning and control aircraft and a VC-10 refuelling tanker supported the operation, the MoD said.

The Russian bombers eventually altered course to leave the Nato zone, being tracked by UK aircraft and the radar station at RAF Boulmer, Northumberland.

The Russian military technology of today is the Soviet military technology of yesterday and is just as much garbage today as it was then.

Remember how the highlight of the Paris airshow used to be watching the Soviet aircraft disintegrate in midair?

I say that we should shoot a few of them down next time they invade NATO airspace. Let the whole world see how second rate Russian hardware is.

They're baaaack

From The New York Times:

MOSCOW, Saturday, Aug. 18 — President Vladimir V. Putin said Friday that the Russian Air Force would begin regular, long-range patrols by nuclear-capable bombers over the world’s oceans, resuming the practice after a 15-year hiatus in another sign of Russia’s growing assertiveness.

In the first flight, 14 bombers and six supporting airplanes took off at midnight on Friday, Mr. Putin said, in remarks carried on state television. Mr. Putin said such patrols would continue “from this day on.”

The sortie on Friday included Tu-160 and Tu-95 airplanes, known by their NATO appellations as Blackjacks and Bears, according to a statement posted on the Russian Defense Ministry Web site.

The Russian bombers were flying Friday over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the North Pole, and were being escorted by NATO fighter jets, the site said, recalling the standoffs of the cold war.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia would periodically send its aging bomber fleet on missions, but only during major military training exercises; the country was too poor to fly the planes often.

That is no longer the case. Now the bombers will regularly fly missions far from Russian soil separately from scheduled training exercises. Mr. Putin suggested Friday that the decision was a response to military threats to Russia.

This month, Russian bombers flew near the American military base on the Pacific island of Guam. Gen. Pavel V. Androsov, the commander of long-range aviation, boasted that the sortie prompted the United States to scramble fighter jets that flew so close to the Russians that the pilots “smiled at each other and then peacefully went their separate ways.”

The Pentagon confirmed that Russian airplanes had been spotted but said that no fighter jets had been sent to intercept them.

In July, Russian Tu-95 bombers flew toward Scotland but turned back before entering British airspace. In that case, the Royal Air Force confirmed that it had scrambled fighter jets in response.

The Cold War didn't end, it just took a brief vacation.

The Clinton administration's decision to wring a "peace dividend" out of the implosion of the Soviet Union by making draconian cuts in the US armed services will be seen by historians as the most monumental blunder by any president in US history.

Everything that has happened since Soviet communism made its final journey to that unmarked graveyard of discarded lies has shown that as long as human nature remains unchanged the world will be a dangerous place. As the unfortunate Dr. Petit found out those who have something which might be desired by evil men will not have it for long unless steps are taken to protect it.

The rise of Islamism which seeks to bring the entire world into a medieval caliphate and is willing to shed an ocean of innocent blood to do so. The emergence of China as a nuclear armed economic superpower whose ambition is to become a military superpower as well. And then kick the US out of Asia and challenge us across the entire globe. The return of dictatorial government to Russia. A Russia whose abandonment of communist economics gives them the hope of actually being able to finance their aggression with real money. All of these things tell us that America is a nation at risk in a dangerous world.

America needs to find a balance between the small highly trained professional military optimized for short-duration deployments like the first Gulf War and the massive leviathan set up to wage long term total war like we had in WWII.

America does not need to keep 16 million men under arms as we did in the Second World War, but we do need a large enough military that we can handle the occupation of Iraq without the men having to do two tours in rapid succession and without having to extend the deployments of people already over there again and again.

Since we are already smacking Putin around

MOSCOW -- With two new manuals for high school history and social studies teachers, written in part by Kremlin political consultants, Russian authorities are attempting to imbue classroom debate with a nationalist outlook.

The history guide contains a laudatory review of President Vladimir Putin's years in power. "We see that practically every significant deed is connected with the name and activity of President V.V. Putin," declares its last chapter. The social studies guide is marked by intense hostility to the United States.

Both books reflect the themes dominating official political discourse here: that Putin restored Russian strength and built what the Kremlin calls a "sovereign democracy" despite American efforts to isolate the country.

I expect that new Russian history book to be on sale through LewRockwell.com any day now. I also expect it to provide a great deal of useful information to ass-clown Ron Paul in his comical campaign to convince gullible losers to send him a portion of their allowance money.

Seriously, you will see talking points from this book being parroted on Kos, DU and the Huffington Post before the end of September.

Sad, just sad

Here is an interesting editorial from The Washington Post:

MIKHAIL Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, is now one of Russia's best-known political prisoners. Having committed the unpardonable sin of considering a political challenge to President Vladimir Putin, Mr. Khodorkovsky has languished in a Siberian prison camp since 2005, and Russian authorities want to keep him there. With a diminished but nevertheless sizable fortune, not to mention moral capital because of his refusal to bend to Kremlin pressure, the former oil baron might still hope to have some influence after his release, particularly if he is freed before the uncertain 2008 presidential contest. That is one likely reason that he and a business associate face additional charges -- just months before they would be eligible for parole. If convicted, he would have to wait out the next presidential election and a lot more.

The charges are magnificently implausible. Mr. Khodorkovsky is alleged to have embezzled and then laundered $32 billion through affiliates of his oil company, Yukos. Inconveniently for the government, PricewaterhouseCoopers was vouching for Yukos's books throughout the period in question.

More convenient for the Kremlin, the auditor last month suddenly disowned and withdrew a decade's worth of Yukos audits, helping to neuter Mr. Khodorkovsky's defense. Before the announcement, the firm had insisted that its work was sound. After the announcement -- surprise, surprise -- a Moscow court ordered new hearings on a $9 million tax case against PricewaterhouseCoopers that, until then, had not been going the company's way.

A spokesman for PricewaterhouseCoopers insisted that its decision to withdraw the audits had nothing to do with the months of harassment it received from Russian authorities -- including a police raid, the tax lawsuit and threats that its license to operate in Russia could be revoked. At the same time, the company declined to publicly detail its reasons for withdrawing the audits.

It's just one more tawdry example of the difference between rule by law and rule by Mr. Putin.

That Vladimir Putin is corrupt and evil should not come as a surprise to anyone around here. He is after all a former officer of the KGB. What should be at least somewhat shocking is the corruption of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Anyone out there who might ever be thinking of hiring an accounting firm needs to keep in mind that this one can be intimidated or bribed into selling out their clients. Even to the point of perjuring themselves in a court proceeding.

Just as Arthur Andersen went down because of its role in the Enron blowup I think Pricewaterhouse just doomed itself. As a rule corporations which do not enjoy the trust of their clients simply do not survive this is especially true for an accounting firm.

Germany backs US missile shield

Reuters - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday she does not oppose U.S. plans for an anti-missile shield to counter any future attack by Iran, a project that has strained ties between Russia and the West.

"I am not against Mr Putin but also not against the idea," Merkel said at a semi-annual news conference in response to a question about the U.S. shield plan. "I have always said that one cannot say there's no threat coming from Iran."

While her Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung has explicitly backed the U.S. plan, Merkel has been cautious when speaking about it and had not previously linked the shield to what the West perceives as the future threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Iran says its nuclear programme is peaceful and will only be used to generate electricity, not to produce atom bomb fuel.

Washington wants to place 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar facility in the Czech Republic to protect the United States and its allies against potential missile attacks from what it calls "rogue states" such as Iran and North Korea.

Isn't it amazing how the European elites will sneer at the US, talk down to the US, scold the US and seek political and economic arrangements to "counter" the US - yet the instant they feel threatened they will run to the US for protection, and act as though they are doing us a favor by it?

The article notes that the general public in the nations in which components of the anti-missile system will be based are against it.

This is the same thing that happened during the Reagan administration. We announced our plan to base cruise and Pershing missiles in NATO member states in Europe and the European common folk hit the streets in protest and the European politicians publicly denounced the plan - while privately asking us to hurry up with the deployment. At least now the politicians are openly supporting US actions.

Another similarity between now and the Cold War days is that the Russians had a cow when they found out what we were doing. In those days the reason for the Russian reaction was logical. Their entire war fighting strategy as far as NATO was concerned was built around the idea of a massive Blitzkrieg type assault built around an opening bombardment with theater nuclear weapons and followed up with immense formations of tanks and armored personnel carriers.

Their willingness to use tactical nukes in the opening stages of a war against NATO was predicated on the belief that the US would not retaliate with nuclear weapons fired from US soil to an attack on Europe for fear of drawing a Soviet retaliation against targets in the United States. The presence of US battlefield and theater nuclear weapons in Europe gave NATO the ability to respond to a Soviet nuclear strike on Europe from Europe and the proximity of the Soviet heartland to any European theater of operations made the USSR vulnerable in a way that the United States would not be.

When you add the enhanced radiation weapon (the neutron bomb) to the equation things went rapidly downhill form the Soviet perspective. The neutron bomb would destroy the massed formations of tanks and APC's around which Russian combat doctrine was built (and do it without ruining the countryside and scattering large clouds of deadly fallout). And they would do it without NATO even having to commit its own numerically smaller armored forces to the effort. If the Soviets dispersed its armor it invited defeat in detail by the technologically superior Western military.

Of course Soviet plans did not actually involve an invasion of Western Europe. Their strategic planning was built around the idea of intimidation. Their purpose in menacing Europe with such massive forces was to frighten the Europeans into adopting a posture of appeasement toward the USSR and chipping away at the Atlantic Alliance. It also had the side-effect which was at first probably unanticipated, but later heavily exploited, of scaring the European general public into a kind of national Stockholm Syndrome where they began to identify with the Soviets and turn against the US.

America which had already shown itself willing to spend its blood and treasure to defend Europe twice in the 20th century and was willing to do so again became the bad guy in the European mind. America which was willing to risk calling down nuclear destruction upon its own cities to keep Europe from being absorbed into the Soviet empire came to be seen as the imperialist aggressor. That attitude of seeing the United States as the "real" threat is never far from the European mind.

But what explain the Russian determination to have a cow over this. If the Soviet Union is dead and the new Russian Federation is ready to join the civilized world why are they acting as though Brezhnev has returned from the dead and taken back the reigns of power? Why is Putin afraid for the US and Europe to deploy a purely defensive weapons system close to its borders? Why is he desperate for Europe to leave itself open to a nuclear attack? Why is he willing to begin a new arms race (which Russia can no more win today than the USSR could have won in the 1980's) and restart the Cold War?

Is it injured Slavic pride? Is Putin upset and stung by the fact that once mighty Russia is now separated from the Third World only by its large nuclear arsenal? Does he resent any development in Europe which diminishes the last thing Russia has that keeps it relevant? Or is there something else going on.

We now know why France worked so hard to keep the United States from invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein. They were in bed with Saddam and French government leaders were pocketing millions of dollars in bribe money from the Iraqi regime. The US actions in Iraq not only shut off the money spigot to Europe it exposed the corruption of many European politicians (not that anyone in Europe seemed to care).

Could there be something like this going on with Russia today? What could the Iranians be giving Russia in general, or Putin specifically, that could cause him to risk a confrontation with the US that he could not possibly win?

Iran has two things that Russia might possibly value. One is oil and the other is control of large and dangerous terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. Russia has its own oil so the question is why would Putin want influence with terrorist organizations which are centered in the "Shi'ite Crescent" and have as their primary goal the destruction of Israel?

If you think I'm going to tie everything together and explain it all to your satisfaction I'm going to have to disappoint you. I'm frankly puzzled by Russia's behavior, but I believe that their relationship with Iran is the thing to watch. Time will reveal something going on there which will not be to the advantage of the US or its allies.

This is supposed to scare us?

From The Financial Times:

Russia could site cruise missiles in Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania, if the US goes ahead with plans for a missile defence shield in central Europe, Russia’s first deputy prime minister warned on Wednesday.

The televised comments by Sergei Ivanov – a possible successor to President Vladimir Putin – came two days after Mr Putin proposed using a new radar station being built in southern Russia in place of a planned US radar in the Czech Republic. The proposal was made during informal talks with US president George W. Bush in Kennebunkport, Maine.

“If our proposal is accepted, then the need will disappear for us to place ... new weapons, including missiles, in the European part of the country, including Kaliningrad, to counter those threats that ... will appear if the decision is taken to place the missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic,” Mr Ivanov said.

His comments, during a visit to Uzbekistan, appeared calculated to reinforce Mr Putin’s repeated warnings of a new arms race in Europe if the central European missile shield plan is implemented.

It is eating the Russians alive that they have lost their empire. As far as pretty much every Russian, from the highest to the lowest, is concerned any place which a Russian soldier has ever set his foot is the eternal possession of Holy Mother Russia.

The fact that former possessions like Poland and the Czech Republic are not only out of their control, but beyond any realistic hope of reconquest due to their membership in NATO is a bone in the Russian throat. The fact that the USSR was the focus of evil in the world of its day and that any nation which has once escaped its domination will do anything to avoid falling back into slavery is utterly lost on the Russian mind.

The fact is that all those who once suffered under the iron boot heel of communism have absolutely no faith in Russia's ability to avoid slipping back into one form of totalitarianism or another and most are surprised that they have managed to remain semi-free for as long as they have.

So I say let the Russians start a new arms race. But before they do they might recall that it was that very thing which cut the heart out of the old Soviet Union. So if Putin wants to get into a fight that can only be won by spending large amounts of money on new weapons systems and the research and development costs that go into them then let him.

Bring it on Ivan. We'll hand you your heads this time just like we did last time.

The Soviet Union didn't die, it just changed its name

I once had the opportunity to speak to Vladimir Posner. I told him that if Russia didn't go through a decommunization process like the deNazification that Germany was put through that it would return to totalitarianism.

He did not agree.

It has taken over ten years, but I think I've been proven right.

If you were planning to visit Northern Europe in the future you might want to go now, while it is still there

From The Scotsman:

SUSPENDED from the ceiling, they are covered in deadly radioactive material that drops off them in lumps to the wet floor beneath. The 20,000 fuel rods contained in three tanks at the Andreeva Bay storage site once held enough nuclear energy to power Russia's entire submarine fleet.

Now, cracks in the concrete walls of the dilapidated tanks have allowed seawater and rainwater to seep in and corrode the lethal contents.

The situation is so bad Russia's nuclear agency has warned rods at the site could explode in an "uncontrolled chain reaction", according to a Norwegian environmental group, which says it has a leaked copy of a report.

Experts say that could set off an explosion scattering radioactive material across northern Europe, reaching even as far as Britain, in an environmental catastrophe worse than the Chernobyl disaster.

"We are sitting on a powder keg with a fuse that is burning, but we don't know how long that fuse is," said Alexander Nikitin, a former Russian navy officer and Bellona environmental activist who first revealed the existence of the dump at Andreeva Bay, on the Kola peninsula of north-western Russia.

The nightmare scenario, identified by Russia's Federal Nuclear Agency, raises new fears that Moscow is failing to properly manage the potentially deadly nuclear legacy of the Cold War, which has left the country with tonnes of plutonium and uranium and millions of tonnes of nuclear waste to deal with.

This is what happens when you let totalitarian leftists play with dangerous toys.

I know, it was Col. Mustard in the dining room with the lead pipe!

From The New York Times:

MOSCOW, May 31 — The suspect in the fatal poisoning of Alexander V. Litvinenko, the former K.G.B. officer and Kremlin critic who died last year in Britain, said Thursday that Britain’s foreign intelligence agency and a self-exiled Russian tycoon had organized the killing and framed him to create a political scandal.

The suspect, the Russian businessman Andrei K. Lugovoi, also contended that British intelligence officers had tried to recruit him to collect compromising material about President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

“The poisoning of Litvinenko could not have been but under the control of the British special service,” Mr. Lugovoi said at a packed news conference here, during which he gave sensational but unverifiable descriptions of the supposed actions of spies and their agents among Russians living in London.

He said he had evidence supporting “this dark political story in which British special services play the main role.” He refused to disclose it, saying he would provide his information only to the Russian government.

The British government and Boris A. Berezovsky, the tycoon, promptly denied plotting the killing. “This is a criminal not an intelligence matter,” said a British official who spoke on condition of anonymity under civil service rules. Mr. Berezovsky, a bitter enemy of Mr. Putin, described Mr. Lugovoi’s appearance as a publicity stunt organized by the Kremlin.

The conflicting allegations exploited and underscored the deepening suspicions between Russia and the West, even as they brought new twists to a case that has fascinated the public on each side of the old cold war divide. They also elevated the case to a new level of public theater, combining elements of a bungled espionage thriller with claims of innocence reminiscent of the O. J. Simpson case.

One of the more amusing things about the old Soviet Union was the way in which a Communist Party or Red Army or KGB or Soviet Academy of Science spokesman would come out and issue statements so weird, bizarre and obviously untrue that that they could only be believed by an American college campus Marxist.

Of course this was not limited to the USSR. Remember the Red Chinese general who appeared before the international press after the Tiananmen Square massacre (images of which went out to the world in real time via satellite TV) and kept repeating, "It never happened, it never happened"?

Well, since Russia isn't going to become either a free or prosperous country and is going to continue to be an adversary to the United States I'm at least glad to see that they will retain some of their entertainment value.

The only downside is that Rosie isn't on The View any more. It would have been nice to hear her expand Lugovio's conspiracy theories to create a role for George W Bush and Dick Cheney.

Oh well, one can't have everything.

Putin rattles his saber

From The Washington Post:

MOSCOW, April 26 -- President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that he was suspending Russia's obligations under the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, ratcheting up a tense standoff with the NATO alliance over U.S. plans to build a missile defense system in Eastern Europe.

The CFE Treaty dates from the last days of the Cold War and limits the deployment of conventional arms, including tanks and other heavy weapons, on either side of the old Iron Curtain. Putin linked his decision, which he said could lead to full withdrawal from the treaty, to the U.S. missile plan.

NATO countries are "building up military bases on our borders and, more than that, they are also planning to station elements of anti-missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic," said Putin, delivering his annual state of the nation address to both houses of parliament, the cabinet and regional leaders. "In this connection, I consider it expedient to declare a moratorium on Russia's implementation of this treaty."

Western governments have contended for years that Russia has not fully complied with the treaty and amendments to it, pointing to force levels it keeps in the Chechnya region and the continuing presence of its troops in the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Moldova. The missile defense plan has raised disputes over the treaty to a new level of intensity.

The Kremlin has expressed deep hostility to the American system despite repeated assurances by the Bush administration that the planned 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and radar station in the Czech Republic would pose no threat to Russia.

I am tempted to think that Putin is simply politically tone deaf. That he just doesn't realize that nations that slaved for decades under the iron bootheel of the USSR have the deep fear that the Russians will come back and abuse them some more. For nations like Poland and the Czech Republic as well as Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia NATO membership is a guarantee of their continued existence as free and independent nations.

The Russians, however, seem incapable of seeing things that way. There is a streak of paranoia and xenophobia in the soul of the Russian nation which dates back to the time they suffered under the Tarter Yoke (and was not helped Hitler's invasion of the USSR either).

There is also the fear, natural to any oppressor, that a people which were once brutalized will seek vengeance when the opportunity presents itself. Putin, as a former KGB officer, knows all too well what life was like for the Soviet Union's formerly captive peoples.

However as reasonable as Russia's leaders might think they are being all men need to realize that they live in the world as it is, not as they might prefer it to be. Or as the maggot said to the king of France, "we live not as we wish to, but as we can". Putin and whatever puppet he installs to be his front-man while he runs the country from the shadows need to realize that the Soviet Union was the focus of evil in the world during all the years of its existence and that all the peoples who were enslaved by it or menaced by it have every right to take steps to ensure that it will never come back in some mutated form to harm them again.

Putin should just be grateful that Poland and Hungary and the other former Warsaw Pact nations aren't building nuclear weapons and targeting them at Russian cities.