The end of times

McClatchy headlines:

Kremlin-watchers warn of direct U.S.-Russia clash

and then:

McCain's history of hot temper raises concerns

As McCain has promised us, there will be other wars...



I just didn't expect one of them to be Russia....

The Georgia war had Cheney's fingerprints on it?

What was a top national security aide to Vice President Dick Cheney doing in Georgia shortly before Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's troops engaged in what became a disastrous fight with South Ossetian rebels -- and then Russian troops?

[snip]

And yes, Joseph R. Wood, Cheney's deputy assistant for national security affairs, was in Georgia shortly before the war began.

But, the vice president's office says, he was there as part of a team setting up the vice president's just-announced visit to Georgia. (It is common for the White House to send security, policy, communications and press aides to each site the president and vice president will visit ahead of the trip, to begin making arrangements and planning the agenda.)

The White House disclosed on Monday that Cheney would hurry over to Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine and Italy next week, almost immediately after addressing the Republican National Convention on Labor Day.

And so it was that a team from the vice president's office, U.S. security officials and others were in Georgia several days before the war began.

It had nothing to do, the vice president's office said, with a military operation that some have said suggests a renewal of the Cold War.

Uh huh. Right. And we should believe you exactly why? After all this time where nothing out of the Vice President's office has been the truth?

I don't think so.

At least we're not talking about Georgie's quagmires anymore

Mutual assured destruction

Isn't it interesting that we haven't heard this term being used recently? The actual reason why the Cold War didn't devolve into a real World War? The fact that it actually worked?

Besides discussing the horrific and mind-boggling numbers of how many people would actually die if Israel and Iran had a nuclear war, Julian Delasantellis at Asia Times reminds us: (my bold)

The success of deterrence is intimately related to the nature of politics and politicians. From their days in short pants, the world's leaders have dreamt of possessing power and dominion over millions of their fellow citizens; whether they do so through democratic or other means is only a question related to the random chance of what nation they were born in.

After they assume ultimate national power, after a lifetime of political striving and ambition, those who say that deterrence does not work are, in essence, saying that these leaders will put some abstract hatred or ideology above the lives and interests of their fellow citizens who put them into power. The countering argument to this is that you can't rule a country if there's no country to rule.

Reading the article, it is clear that Iran and especially Tehran would suffer the worst from any kind of nuclear attack on Israel or any other neighbor.

And as Bush has shown these last horrible eight years, he ignores, insults, maligns those countries he calls allies; he threatens, strong-arms, smears those countries he calls evil; and ... he negotiates with those who are armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons.

So any tinpot dictator has quickly put two and two together, and has proceeded to move heaven and earth and a few centrifuges to develop nuclear weapons.

Iran has been in the cross-hairs of the Bush cabal (and it makes me wonder if they had been aiming for Iran all along if the Iraq War had taken Rumsfeld's projected six weeks...) So it's natural that Iran would do the logical thing and get nukes. Especially after being called one of the axis of evil. Especially because of the ever louder saber-rattling that this White House has been doing.

It's also interesting to note Cheney and Wolfowitz were involved in an earlier deal:

President Gerald R. Ford signs a presidential directive giving the Iranian government the opportunity to purchase a US-built nuclear reprocessing facility...

[snip] (my bold)

The shah has argued that Iran needs a nuclear energy program in order to meet Iran’s growing energy demand. Iran is known to have massive oil and gas reserves, but the shah considers these finite reserves too valuable to be spent satisfying daily energy needs. In a 1975 strategy paper, the Ford administration supported this view saying that “introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran’s economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals.” Top officials in the Ford administration—including Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Chief of Staff Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz, who is responsible for nonproliferation issues at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency—are strong supporters of Iran’s ambitions.

Interesting that the very people involved in the control of nonproliferation then are the ones now so very anxious to break the taboo and actually use nukes.

When you have grown up in a Cold War

You long for the good old days, when bad guys were bad guys and good guys were always right:

Russia Plans ICBM to Counter US Missile Shield

The Russian navy plans on producing a new submarine-based missile system in 2008. It is part of a big increase in the country's spending on research, development and procurement of weaponry, prompting fears of a new cold war.

The Russian navy plans on producing a new submarine-based missile system capable of carrying nuclear warheads in 2008 as part of a big increase in the country's spending on research, development and procurement of weaponry.

The navy will commission the new missile system, the planned core of a seaborne nuclear arsenal in the coming years, even though three consecutive test launches of the missile last year ended in failure. But a successful test in June has prompted officials to approve the start of production of the missile's components, according to comments made Sunday by Admiral Vladimir Masorin and reported by Russian media.

Is this what you saw in Putin's eyes, Georgie?

Oh, this should be good....

Headline: Putin proposes alternate site for US missile shield.

Merkel: I don't care where he told you to stick it, you will not bomb his mother's house!


(pic stolen from watertiger)

The new Cold Wars

China and the U.S. position themselves for a power grab in Africa. Can you guess where? Can you guess why? Look where people are dying and territory is being fought over.

Darfur.

It has oil.

That's a death sentence nowadays, isn't it?

The case of Darfur, a forbidding piece of sun-parched real estate in the southern part of Sudan, illustrates the new Cold War over oil, where the dramatic rise in China's oil demand to fuel its booming growth has led Beijing to embark on an aggressive policy of - ironically - dollar diplomacy. With its more than US$1.2 trillion in mainly US dollar reserves at the Peoples' National Bank of China, Beijing is engaging in active petroleum geopolitics. Africa is a major focus, and in Africa, the central region between Sudan and Chad is a priority.

This is defining a major new front in what, since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, is a new Cold War between Washington and Beijing over control of major oil sources. So far Beijing has played its cards a bit more cleverly than Washington. Darfur is a major battleground in this high-stakes contest for oil control.

And for those hardliners who missed the days of the Cold War and the Soviet Union:

Moscow, Russia (AHN) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday defended the test-launch of his country's new intercontinental ballistic missile, saying the move was in response to the United States' plans to deploy components of a missile shield system in central Europe. During an address to a joint news conference with Greek President Carolos Papoulias, the Russian leader also accused the U.S. government of dictatorship and initiating a new arms race.

"Our partners are filling eastern Europe with new weapons. What are we supposed to do? We cannot just observe all this. In our opinion, it is nothing different from 'diktat,' nothing different from imperialism," Putin said referring to U.S. plans to build anti-ballistic missile sites in the Czech Republic and Poland.

The White House has denied the allegations by Moscow saying the planned anti-missile systems are not aimed at gaining any strategic advantage over Russia but are a defensive measure against countries like Iran which Washington believes may a pose threat to the U.S. and its European allies.

The comments come just two days after Russia test-fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile which it says can be armed with up to 10 different warheads.

And:

Russian President Vladimir Putin's Cold War-style speech in Munich in February and its combative follow-up, the State of the Nation speech in April, are being matched by Russia's stiffening, and its mounting assertiveness, in opposition to any bolstering or reconsolidating of ailing US-led unipolarity.
[snip]

Since US overreach after the Iraq invasion of 2003, and the subsequent decline of the US and the unrelenting rise of Russia, China and India, in concert with the globe's key resource-exporting regimes, have become ever more strident, even brazen, in opposition to US global hegemony. The US can no longer ride roughshod over, nor bully, nor simply ignore resurgent Russia, rising China, or the globe's regimes that supply the vital oil that fuels the US economy.

In the face of such developments, the US isn't finished in its attempt to stand unipolarity back on both its feet. It has by no means conceded the game. Instead, belatedly recognizing the damage done by its distraction in Iraq, a desperate and determined US is refocusing and getting started on the geopolitical project of restoring its lost global might.

A day late and a dollar short, Georgie. And this time you failed the final, you can't pay off the teacher, and the grades are set.

You fucked up and this time there is no one who can clean it up.

Things that make you go hmmm... or aaaarrrggghhh depending

This article:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has marked the 28th anniversary of Iran's revolution by pledging to maintain the country's nuclear programme, but adding that he wanted to remain within international rules.

"We are ready for talks, but will not suspend our activities," he said in a speech broadcast on state television on Sunday.

Along with this article:

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has arrived in Saudi Arabia on the first leg of a three-day tour of the Middle East aimed at building energy and military ties with traditional US allies.

The tour began a day after Iran asked Putin to block any UN resolutions passed against it when a deadline to halt nuclear work expires on February 21.

Along with this article:

MUNICH, Feb. 10 -- Russian President Vladimir Putin, in some of his harshest criticism of the United States since he took office seven years ago, said Saturday that Washington's unilateral, militaristic approach had made the world a more dangerous place than at any time during the Cold War.

"The United States has overstepped its national borders in every way," he said in an address at an annual international security conference here. "Nobody feels secure anymore, because nobody can take safety behind the stone wall of international law."

Although the US brushed off the criticism:

But Washington has clearly decided to politely brush aside Mr Putin's remarks rather than to escalate tensions with Russia.

Making his first appearance at the conference as the new US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates tried to deflate President Putin's attack by poking a bit of fun at their past careers as spies.

"As an old Cold Warrior," he said, "one of yesterday's speakers almost filled me with nostalgia for a less complex time. Almost.

" Many of you have backgrounds in diplomacy or politics. I have, like your second speaker yesterday, a starkly different background - a career in the spy business.

"And, I guess, old spies have a habit of blunt speaking"

Mr Gates bluntly said there was no new Cold War and that the US certainly did not want one.

We know that the PNAC neocons remember fondly the good old days when the USSR was the evil empire, defense spending unquestioned, and the world chess board game was easier to play than fighting stateless terrorism. Condi's 'strength' was purportedly the Soviet Union. Could they thinking 'wouldn't it be nice to go back to the 1960s'?

Or are they still working on the old plan to piss everyone in the world off?

Update: This is interesting: (my bold)

It is seldom that the Russian president is publicly contradicted by officials in Moscow. But in the Russian reaction to Tehran's proposal for formal cooperation among the major gas-producing countries, it happened.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei conveyed the Iranian suggestion to the visiting secretary general of Russia's National Security Council, Igor Ivanov, in Tehran on January 28. The next day, Russia's Gazprom reacted in Moscow that "establishing a gas OPEC [Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries] is impossible because of different structuring of the oil and gas business".

A spokesman of the Russian Economic Development and Trade Ministry also reacted sharply: "I do not understand why Russia would need to create a gas cartel - I do not see any sense in it. The more so as Iran is now coming under serious external pressure." The official asked: "Why should we undertake commitments to synchronize our actions, why force ourselves into regulatory frameworks which could boil down to setting quotas?"

Then came a structured Russian position when Ivanov put the Iranian proposal in perspective at a press briefing in Moscow this Tuesday. He said the Iranian side mentioned the idea "not as a question or proposal for discussion, but as a general idea that natural-gas producers should seek such forms of cooperation, which fully supports their interests. As far as I know, no talks on setting up a cartel are under way."

But two days later, at a press conference in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin took a giant leap forward. He said, "A gas OPEC is an interesting idea, and we will think about it. In this initial stage we will agree with the Iranian specialists, with our Iranian partners and with some of the other countries that are large suppliers of fossil fuels, above all gas, to world markets, and we are already trying to coordinate our activities on the markets of third countries. We plan to continue doing so in future."

Putin added, "We have no plans to create some kind of a cartel, but I think it would be a good idea to coordinate our activities, especially in the context of achieving our main aim of ensuring a certain and reliable supply of energy resources for our main consumers."
However, five days later, Russian Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko was still at Square 1. "Fantasies about cartels and 'gas OPECs' are products of a sick imagination," he said.

So what's the problem? First, Moscow wanted to see that alarm bells didn't ring in Western capitals, especially when a top-level European Union delegation was due to visit Moscow. In the West, sweat breaks out at the very mention of "cartel", invoking images of production quotas, price rigging, and so on. Second, Moscow knows that a "gas OPEC" is still a decade away from realization, given the regional structure of the market, absence of a floating gas price (gas is mostly price-indexed to petroleum), double dependency resulting from the transportation through pipelines (gas-carrier ships are nowhere near meeting the needs of transportation) and the prevalence of long-term contracts between the supplier and the consumer, and, of course, the absence of a developed gas-liquefaction infrastructure.

Third, a masterly stroke in ambiguity doesn't do Russian interests any harm. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has visualized that it is a matter of time before a "gas OPEC" takes shape. On the sidelines of the last NATO summit, in Latvia in November, there were calls for the formation of a "gas NATO" that is geared to safeguarding the energy security of Western consumer countries.

Thanks to Russian ingenuity, between the illusion and the reality of a "gas OPEC" a gray zone has appeared, with no certainty that this zone will not incrementally become the reality itself.

[snip]

Clearly, Tehran has sized up the growing assertiveness in Russian regional policies and is keen to harness it geopolitically. But more important, Tehran has signaled to European capitals that they may have to pay a heavy price for any further identification with the US policy toward Iran. The fact that the

Iranian proposal on the "gas OPEC" as made by spiritual leader Khamenei should leave Western capitals in no doubt that Tehran is not scoring a propaganda point. They must now rethink before imposing unilateral sanctions on Iran.

Iran is the "last frontier" for European countries seeking to access natural gas from the Middle East. By 2015-20, Europe will face serious gas shortages, even if Russia augments its supplies via the Northern European pipeline. Tehran knows it is a "special case" for European countries. Tehran was hoping all along that it could normalize relations with the European Union, and that it would receive serious economic and political carte blanche.

NTodd at Dohiyi Mir notes the similarities between Bush and Putin, both of them 'vile, anti-democratic creatures'.