Posted by
Don Stevens on Sunday, September 07, 2008 8:42:44 PM
In my opinion, Russia needs some allies. The USA is going into the Ukraine, Romania, Poland, Georgia et al. Russia is cllecting a few questionable relationships with an assortment of pariahs : Nicaragua, Venezuela, Iran, and the like. Hell, they Braziil and India. They have been behaving like unreliable suppliers of natural gas to Ukraine and Germany. Not smart. Japan is probably the most relaible supplier of products in the world----unfettered and unmolested by domestic politics, economic crises, or simply bad attitude. Russia has to learn to be that kind of supplier if it going to commence on a Cold War----or if the USA is going to to initiate a Cold War with Russia. Any way you slice it, Russia's stange collection of friends is the kind of thing that makes it in a simply scripted and too predictable grade B movie----not in the international arena where the competition is the USA allied with the EU and tied to India and Japan. S Korea, Canada, Australia too.
Russia cd pick a country with a horrible present and turn it around ------by spending $1.2 B per month there for 5 to ten years : like the Congo : right in the center of Africa and large enough to pull other African nations into its orbit : Angola, Congolese Republic, Rwanda, Cameroon. That sort of thing : nuclear power, public schools, roads, judicial system. But let's get real : Russia is not going to get very far by threatening to cut off Germany and Holland and Poland and the Ukraine from its gas supply. There are too many engineers and bio-tech professors in those countries to get away with that,
Brazil is a country with a future. India maybe---but its potential for a bright future is tied to a potential for a dismal future as well. India has 1000 languages and a million cultures. Seriously. There are about one million different tribal entities in India. If a ten-way civil war ever breaks out the govt will have to go in and shoot people almost at random to ESTABLISH SOVEREIGNTY. Brutal yes. But brutality beats cruelty every time. Football coaches are brutal. Child molesters are cruel. Either country could be well served by an alliance with Russia, but Russia ani't gonna make the grade by fighting for South Ossetia. Really now. It's a bit like the President of the USA making Juarez (or a quarter of Juarez) the key to his foreign politicy. World trade; yes; nuclear weapons probably; energy maybe; the openness of the Atlantic, yes. But a town the size of Mobile< Al, with less money than Aberdeen, SD its centerpiece?
Alex II, where are you when your country really needs you?