Keep an eye on Dmitri Rogozin
Oil is up this morning as oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico shut down in anticipation of Tropical Storm Gustav regaining hurricane strength. Meanwhile, far-sighted traders are also keeping an eye the buildup to Cold War II. Or would it instead be a replay of World War I?
"The current atmosphere reminds me of the situation in Europe in 1914," says Moscow's envoy to NATO, Dmitri Rogozin.
An isolated instance of hyperbole? The Russo-Georgian war might well lead to a new Cold War, but could it knock down the dominoes toward another full-blown world war?
"There are two dates that have changed the world in recent years: Sept. 11, 2001, and Aug. 8, 2008," said Rogozin earlier this week. "Sept. 11 motivated the United States to behave really differently in the world. That is to say, Americans realized that even in their homes, they could not feel safe. They had to protect their interests, outside the boundaries of the U.S. For Russia, it is the same thing. We were sitting in our homes, the national discussion was internal. Now this Georgian attack is perceived as aggression, and made us realize that we cannot stay home. We have to go outside our homes to protect ourselves on new frontiers."
For a long time Rogozin operated on the fringes of Russian politics, a lot like the populist/nationalist blowhard Vladimir Zhrinovsky (who's still around — we just don't hear about him the way we did a dozen or so years ago). "Only a few months ago, the blustery Rogozin, 44, was regarded even in the Kremlin as more performance artist than diplomat," reports a New York Times profile. "Established officials sometimes rolled their eyes when he was mentioned, as if to acknowledge that Vladimir Putin had dispatched him to NATO to do a little trash talking to rattle the West."
No more. In fact, Rogozin's rhetoric seems to be rubbing off on more established Russian diplomats, judging by a smackdown yesterday at the UN Security Council.
U.S. Deputy Ambassador Alejandro Wolff told the meeting it was a violation of the U.N. charter for member states to use force against others, or threaten to use it, and suggested that Moscow's claims to be protecting Russian citizens in Georgia's South Ossetia region were a sham.
Russia's U.N. envoy, Vitaly Churkin, suggested Wolff's statement was hypocritical. "I would like to ask the distinguished representative of the United States — weapons of mass destruction. Have you found them yet in Iraq or are you still looking for them?"
Wolff accused Churkin of making false comparisons. "I'm not a psychologist and I don't know what brought on the free association we heard from Ambassador Churkin," he said.
It would be one thing if this were just about pipelines — desperate Western maneuvering to make Central Asian oil and gas flow to Europe through countries other than Russia or Iran. Russia's attack on Georgia pretty well exposed that plan, dating back to the Clinton era and heartily embraced by Team Bush, as a sham and a delusion. But that's not the most severe blowback we could see from 15 years of U.S. policy aimed at encircling Russia. Pat Buchanan warns, "The Russians will put anti-aircaft missiles in Iran and Syria. You watch."
$200 oil, anyone? Keep an eye on Dmitri Rogozin. His profile and his rhetoric will say a lot about where Western relations with Russia are going — and where the oil price might go with it.
Update: "While Russia did not seize control of the Baku-Tbilsi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline or approach the area proposed for the Nabucco pipeline further south," writes IPS Washington correspondent Jim Lobe, "its intervention made it abundantly clear that it could have done so if it had wished, a message that is certain to reverberate across gas-hungry Europe. Indeed, investors now may prove considerably less enthusiastic about financing the Nabucco project than before, dealing yet another blow to Washington's regional ambitions."
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The Russians are far from pure in either intent or action but it must be said that the foreign policy of this lapsed American Republic, like everything else the Administration of George W. Bush does…. makes about as much sense as a fart in a hailstorm.
This translates as being about a farthing more than senseless, but only by a hair.
Comment on August 29, 2008 @ 2:37 pm
America won’t give up the empire without a fight. Even if we’re too broke to fight. Both political parties seem to be in agreement on this.
Comment on August 29, 2008 @ 3:48 pm
Talk’s cheap.
Be assured, we can rely on nations to act and do in a manner that is considered to be in their best interests. And we should, as George Schultz said in 1984, “…expect our adversaries to do the same.”
Comment on August 29, 2008 @ 4:17 pm
Any chance now that people might start cutting down on oil consumption ???
Comment on August 30, 2008 @ 11:59 am
1. US oil consumption have been going down for the past year or two.
2. Acquiring oil by military means is multiple times more expensive than doing it by trade.
3. The American “elites” gave up the empire when they gave the American industry as a gift to Red China and then started paying to keep it there. They thought they could stay in their high towers and surreptitiously control the “finances” of the world. Anyone who knows a bit of history and politics can see the insanity of this. “Insanity” is not just talk, it’s the precise diagnosis.
Yes the lever has been pushed and the flushing sound is clear - the future is simply a case of traveling down the tubes.
Comment on August 31, 2008 @ 11:37 am
do you see how white Medvedev is. He looks like a nerdy American white boy in his suit and tie. You all rich investors played off black against black for so long. Now we are getting to enjoy watching Caucasians go after each other. Your addiction is oil
Obama 08
Comment on August 31, 2008 @ 4:51 pm
DWSabin writes:
“The Russians are far from pure in either intent or action…”
How true, but the years of our foreign policy BS of hypocrisy and action are no different (Panama, Kuweit/Irag, Sudan, Kosovo, Iraq II, etc).
Our pols try to hide their imperialist ambitions behind “democracy and freedom”.
As to justabrother:
How off point you are, sit down in back.
You don’t drive a car? But of course where your ancestors are from, they don’t use oil, there really are not that many cars. You can go watch them go after each other, for ex. in Zimbabwe or Nigeria–those conflicts are already in progress
Comment on August 31, 2008 @ 11:31 pm
A note too (about ?) justabrother.
I have been reading many of the comments for the past week on this site. I am suspecting that you are merely “poking at rattle snakes” (something some people, generally not so smart people, here in the west like to do when they stumble across one of these poisonous snakes) seeing if you can get everyone to buzz and not serious in your posts.
If you are being serious in your comments, then all I can say is too bad for you. From them I see a person consumed with, spending all of their time focused on hate. Yes, racism is still a problem, but it is not an insurmountable problem. The mere fact that Obama got where he is now - in strong position to become the next president proves this.
I am not a minority, so perhaps I have no right to comment on this issue. However, my wife is. Her parents even have gone through having everything they owned taken away from them because of their race at one point. That was a true set-back. Rather than focus on the loss, they focused on the future and what they could do to get back on their feet. They (at least from what I see) have no outward hate towards anybody. The results have been that they have become productive, friendly comfortable (not truly rich but certainly not poor) members of society and a benefit to their community.
My advice, for what little it is worth, is to try to GET OVER IT. Bad things were done in the past. But those things were done and finished long before most of us here today were alive. Focusing on them is of no use to you and your immediate future. Can more be done? Yes, but this will take time. Have patience. Yes, Obama may help your “poor me - give me money to make it better” cause, but be careful about making it a public policy for him. There are probably many people that are going to vote for him that may change their minds if they think that any substantial part of his platform is to “pay back the black man” (not that some reparations won’t be given, but this is a very open ended “debt” that likely scares most voters at this time).
My guess is that if you spent even a fraction of your time learning some valuable skills as you do flaming the hate within you, it would be a fairly short time before you found yourself in a good job position, maybe even managing a legion of “whitey” workers beneath you. Employers do not want to hire people that merely want to focus on the past, complain about things that have little meaning in the now and have few skills but outward hate and contempt. These “workers” tend to be those that accomplish little, create endless problems and always seem to blame “the past” or “the system” for their individual, personal short comings. In todays difficult business climate, there is little time for such things, and potential employers know it.
One final thing. Who are you going to blame when “whitey” is no longer in control? He is already a minority in many of the larger cities and will, if projections turn out correct, be a minority in the whole country in a couple decades or so.
Comment on September 1, 2008 @ 9:42 am
justabro,
It is not about, white vs. black, or even rich vs poor, anymore, it is about the elite vs the rest of us. They’ve gamed the system, to the point, where the system is imploding. When the collapse comes, find the guys with the nicest shoes, and throw a rope around ‘em.(They’ll be dressed poorly, but forgot the shoes…)
I’ll be there with you.
Those who don’t beleive we’re about to sucked into the long pipe to nowhere, will, then they to, will understand, globalization was Henry Ford in reverse. Benefiting a few at the expense of the many. Karl Marx was right, so was T. Jefferson.
60,000 factories exported, 1000’s of tariffs voided by a bought and paid for Congress.
Those who espouse globalization, have drank the koolade, and are idiots.
A former gainfully employed engineer, now watching it happen and can’t do a thing about it.
May the Elite rot in hell.
Comment on September 1, 2008 @ 1:29 pm
Brother is just killing time. He’s supposed to be looking for a job on that computer so he can “keep his benefits,” but saying stupid things to provoke a response from us is more interesting to him.
I suggest we just ignore him. He’ll eventually either say something worth hearing or he’ll go away. I’m beginning to think he doesn’t have anything to say that’s worth hearing, so I vote for the latter option.
Comment on September 2, 2008 @ 9:04 am
[...] Geogian conflict, meanwhile, hasn't gone away. Rhetoric from both sides is still raw, and Toronto Sun columnist Eric Margolis doesn't like where [...]
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