
But the ultimate cost of the Russian campaign goes beyond even Eastern Europe. Russia's goal is to create an energy monopoly by controlling Baltic oil on the one hand further bulking up its already sizable energy base and building a coalition of socialist South American nations and Islamist Middle Eastern nations into a Mega-OPEC overseen by Russia with the aim of strangling America and the West.
Such talk might seem paranoid, but Russia has already made a great deal of political headway not only in the Middle East and Latin America, where it has brought together Iran's Ahmadinejad and Venezuela's Chavez as part of a larger Latin American slash Arab summit, but even in Western nations.
Germany's former President Gerhard Schroeder is today a Russian employee, in the US, Russia's Lukoil controls a sizable number of American gas stations, where it has acquired 1300 Getty stations and 800 Mobil locations in the Northeast. That doesn't simply translate into filling station profits, it translates into political influence as was manifest when New York Senator Charles Schumer penned a Wall Street Journal op ed asking that Russia be given a free hand in Eastern Europe. In Israel the situation is even worse with Russian government backed tycoon Arkady Gaydamak has his own political party that may wind up getting a significant number of seats in the Israeli Knesset.

Like Germany marching into the Rhineland to test Western resolve, followed by Czechoslovakia and then Poland, Russia is testing the West before embarking on a program of conquest that will take a great of blood and steel to turn back again.
If the West does nothing but bandy empty words when Russian troops are in Georgia, it will have to decide whether to speak up when those same troops are in the Ukraine or in Latvia or in Poland. Sooner or later the West must find its voice and by then the cost of speaking up will be much higher and it will take more than words or threats to turn back the Russian bear, it will take great sacrifices, sacrifices that the same West which shudders at a few thousand dead in Afghanistan and Iraq and thinks the cost of fighting Iran to be unthinkable, is hardly prepared for.

Comments
:O !
ReplyDeleteI already wondered which country or person would be the drive and got a profits by the testing the markets in high oil prices.
ReplyDeleteplyf
Great article Sultan. Things seem to be getting rather rough.
ReplyDeleteSeriously here. What is it with Russia and:
ReplyDelete1) it's desire to keep it's reputation of being hideously evil
2) it's desire to constantly take over every country it can get it's hands on
3) it's fondness for torturing and killing.
Not that America doesn't have that tendency itself to rule the universe (especially under the Shrub), but Russia still rules supreme on this one.
As I see it, what Russia is doing in Georgia is the equivalent of Hitler's invading the Sudetenland.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, most Americans have no clue as to what's going on or the significance thereof. They think that what's going on over there doesn't affect them.
yes sadly so
ReplyDelete"As I see it, what Russia is doing in Georgia is the equivalent of Hitler's invading the Sudetenland."
ReplyDeleteRabbi Yaakov Spivak talked the similarity on his radio program last night (08/11):
http://www.jewishradionetwork.net/indexmain.html
Check it out...
Seems to be a trade to me. Georgia for Russia's non-involvement when the US attacks Iran. Just my opinion.
ReplyDeleteagreed. now is the time to attack Iran's nuclear program with a devasting attack. Israel should launch first if the US will not.
ReplyDeletePirates attack British ship off Yemen's coast
ReplyDeletePublished: 08.13.08, 19:00 / Israel News
Yemeni authorities say pirates have attacked and possibly hijacked a British-flagged commercial ship off the Gulf of Aden.
A Yemeni naval official says Aden's port received a distress signal from the ship Wednesday after it came under heavy attack from armed pirates. After sounding an alarm, port officials lost radio contact with the ship, named ''Thorstar.'' Another Yemeni official who works at Aden port says the ship ''has clearly been taken over by the pirates.'' He also spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to talk to media. (AP)
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