Gates and Rice on the Russian-Georgian conflict

Talking Points Memo is, hands-down, the best politics blog on the web. One useful thing they do is to aggregate the teevee appearances of political figures on particular themes. Check out what Robert Gates (Defense) and Condi Rice (State) have to say about a misbehaving Russia. (Rice and Gates are both professional Russianists, not that it's apparent from these interviews.)

Georgia conflict: Screams of the injured rise from residential streets - Telegraph

I don't know what "tacit support" means, but if Saakashvilli said, "We're going to assault Ossetia" and someone in the Bush department replied, "OK, you know the score"... If that really happened, then our State Department is even more inept and criminally incompetent than I'd thought... And I've thought pretty poorly of it.

Georgia conflict: Screams of the injured rise from residential streets - Telegraph: Mr Saakashvilli may also have banked on support from his closest ally, US president George W Bush, whose administration is said to have given tacit support for a Georgian assault on South Ossetia in the believe that the territory could be recaptured within 48 hours.

This article in the Telegraph is one of the better that I've seen. It correctly conveys the importance of Ossetia (not at all important, no one wants it, a mountainous, land-locked den of thieves and instability) and Abkhazia (much more important as a port and wealthier). It also correctly points out that NATO will be all the more willing to accept Georgia into the alliance if 1) there are no further territorial disputes between Russia and Georgia; 2) Russia proves itself to be resurgent, aggressive and imperialistic.

I don't see how anyone comes out of this a winner.

Georgia Fight Spreads, Moscow Issues Ultimatum

The Times has this mostly right...

Georgia Fight Spreads, Moscow Issues Ultimatum - NYTimes.com: "The fighting raised tensions between Russia and its former cold war foes to their highest level in decades. President Bush has promoted Georgia as a bastion of democracy, helped strengthen its military and urged that NATO grant the country to membership. Georgia serves as a major conduit for oil flowing from Russia and Central Asia to the West.

But Russia, emboldened by windfall profits from oil exports, is showing a resolve to reassert its dominance in a region it has always considered its “near abroad.”

The military action, which has involved air, naval and missile attacks, is the largest engagement by Russian forces outside its borders since the collapse of the Soviet Union."

What's missing is the obvious elephant in the corner: Iraq and Afghanistan (but mostly Iraq). Russia's petro-wealth has emboldened it, but even more enabling has been the deep rifts in traditional alliances caused by our misadventures in the Middle East, not to mention the fact that Russia can act with complete impunity, knowing that the United States cannot possibly engage militarily on another front. In fact, do not doubt for one moment that Russia's misbehaving spree (North Korea, Iran, Ukraine, now Georgia) can be directly tied to our own spree in Iraq.

Although I don't see what Russia has to gain from it--nowadays, who wants to support a puppet government, especially one in a nation that loathes Russia?--given the "incommensurately aggressive" response to Georgia's gambit in South Ossetia, it's entirely possible that Russia will march on to Tbilisi.

Really, why stop now?

Georgia and Russia Nearing All-Out War

Remember when we were all just going to be one, big, happy family... making fortunes selling services on the Internet?

Most of my students this year were born in, what, 1980 or 1981? They don't even REMEMBER the Cold War! Well, fortunately, it's in re-runs...

Georgia and Russia Nearing All-Out War - NYTimes.com: "The fighting, and the Kremlin’s confidence in the face of Western outcry, had wide international implications, as both Russian and Georgian officials placed it squarely in the context of renewed cold war-style tensions and an East-West struggle for influence on Russia’s borders. The East and West were stuck in diplomatic impasse, even as reports from both sides of heavy civilian casualties indicated that the humanitarian toll was climbing."

Because crop circles are so passé...

Apparently, circles of ice have been showing up around Russia. According to englishrussia.com, people aren't quite sure what causes them, but there is some interesting banter in the comment portion on the site about currents and bubbles and ice melting and all that jazz. My vote is still for the aliens. ;-)



Check out the site for more pictures!

A Tale of Woe...

Now the biggest gang I know they call the government...

Kremlin Rules - An Investment in Russia Gets Trapped in Kremlin’s Vise - Series - NYTimes.com: "Mr. Browder does not know exactly why the Kremlin turned against him. But the Kremlin was consolidating control over prized companies like Gazprom and appeared to be chafing at criticism from outside shareholders.

Once things went bad, Mr. Browder had no recourse. The police confiscated vital documents from his lawyer’s office in Moscow. He discovered that his holding companies had been stolen from him and re-registered in the name of a convicted murderer in a provincial city.

Whoever was behind the scheme took over much of Mr. Browder’s corporate structure in Russia, but failed to get at his investors’ money. Even so, in recent weeks, Mr. Browder said he had learned that his former holding companies had been used to embezzle $230 million from the Russian treasury."

In particular I like the fact that the Russian government used a Western companies' holding documents to embezzle hundreds of millions of dollars from... the Russian government. Back in the spring of 2007, Grant Felgenhauer, Investment Director and General Counsel at Hermitage, gave an excellent lecture here at Stetson on Russian business prospects and the legal environment. He was guardedly optimistic at the time...

CEOs Portray a Dismal Forecast for the U.S. | Articles | Chief Executive - A Magazine for Chief Executive Officer (CEO)

CEOs Portray a Dismal Forecast for the U.S.

Future of the U.S. Economy will Depend on Lower Taxes, Lower Regulation Privatized Education and Free Trade

"With the economy overtaking Iraq as one of the main issues this election year, Chief Executive magazine conducted a survey among CEOs between June 13 and June 27 in an effort to gauge CEO sentiment on the direction of the U.S. economy. CEOs were asked which policy position they think the U.S. should take to increase or maintain American competitiveness as well as questions on which countries will generate the highest number of jobs and where the top paying jobs will be in the future."

OK, leaving aside the perfectly reasonable and supportable objection that lower taxes, lower regulation, and the drive to privatize everything has gotten us into this abominable economic miasma (what, twenty-eight years of Reaganism haven't exorcised the demons of high taxes and regulation???), what's really interesting about this survey is this graph:

A little over 3% of surveyed CEOs believe that Russia will be the greatest job creator. That's nominally behind the US and Brazil, and just a tick below Vietnam, one of the new Asian Tigers. The idea that Russia was on anyone's short list even five years ago is laughable.

Listen, this might be perceived as boosterism for Russian Studies, but I'm skeptical about any such claims about the future economy. I remember as an undergraduate in Political Science at Indiana Bloomington asking my professors in Poli Sci (a highly regarded program, mind you) where they thought the future jobs would be. Very clearly, I recall them intoning: Germany and Japan. Could they have been more wrong? This was at the beginning of the 1990s, right before Japan's "lost decade." I never, ever, recall the importance of China and the Middle East being discussed, though my college career intersected the first Persian Gulf War.

The Great Game, Part II

The New New Great Game. Same rules, different players, different pieces.

Gazprom Offers to Buy All Libya's Oil and Gas Exports (Update1)

By Lucian Kim

July 9 (Bloomberg) -- OAO Gazprom offered to buy all of Libya's oil and natural gas destined for export as Russia's largest energy producer strives to expand on global markets.

Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Qaddafi ``positively received'' the proposal during a visit by Gazprom Chief Executive Officer Alexei Miller, the Moscow-based company said in an e-mailed statement today.

Russia, the world's largest producer of natural gas, is seeking to lead closer coordination among nations that produce the fuel. Moscow will host a meeting of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum later this year.

Libya, Africa's third-largest oil producer, wants to build new energy partnerships after nearly two decades of international sanctions. Gazprom today received a proposal to help build ``new gas transportation capacity'' from Libya to Europe, the state-run Russian company said.

The two sides agreed to start talks on Gazprom buying ``available volumes of Libyan hydrocarbons,'' according to the statement. They also agreed to set up a joint venture to modernize existing oil refineries and build new plants.

Gazprom considers the country its priority partner in North Africa and has registered a unit called Gazprom Libya in Tripoli, the company said. Less than a month ago Gazprom opened its first African office in neighboring Algeria.

Free and Flush, Russians Eager to Roam Abroad - NYTimes.com

Free and Flush, Russians Eager to Roam Abroad - NYTimes.com: "The biggest struggle now for the Turkish hotels is to find enough staff members who speak Russian. Those in the tourism industry who had mastered German and English are returning to language school.

“Everybody is studying Russian now,” said Suat Esenli, a worker at the Kremlin Palace Hotel, which has more than 800 rooms and opened in 2003, just as Russian tourism began to soar. Typically, about 60 percent of the hotel’s patrons are from the former Soviet Union, with the rest from elsewhere in Europe."

Nashe kino: Mongol

Tell me THIS doesn't look like a great flick...