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?

Oh, left out Bush's Sec of Labor---Chow---married to Mitch McConnell. Now, not very many Senators are going to vote against Mitch McConnell's wife, if only for personal reasons. Mitch is a nice guy. A very polite and pleasant man. He's got to have more than a few fishing buddies in the Senate. You don't vote against Ms Chow if you want another bridge for your state. If that's not enough : MitcBushh was chairman of Senate re-election comm (GOP), controlling about $60m each election. He could always throw another $2m at you if vote against Ms Chow.   Point is : Bush cabinet was fairly moderate and designed to avoid conflict  and to be approved without much notice.

It was not really that far right. It could have left Sec of Education empty for 2 yrs and it could have brought Richard Perl into State or Defense, but didn't.   Bush let Powell bring Richard Armatage to State as number two man---and no person close to Bush.

Robert Gates, an old Bush friend has served Bush much better than Rumsfeld. I think Cheney has served Bush well. What has hurt Bush is not explaining himself hardly at all    :   on terrorism (i.e. mapping out strategy) on prisoners of war---not sending his Solicitor General around the country to explain the administrations position. They relied on Scalia to do it. OK, Scalia is a brilliant man, but when you wait for the court on issues like that you've waited too long. Who made those decisions? I think Karl Rove is Superman among precinct captains and a dudd on governing.

My conclusion on Bush is that he does not know when to pick his fights. Nixon was a master at that. People didn't like Nixon, but Nixon knew something at age 29 that I just learned   : SOMETIMES A FIGHT OVER A TOOTHBRUSH IS TWO TEENAGERS IN A BATHROOM, BUT SOMETIMES ITS A FIGHT FOR PROCTOR  &  GAMBLE.   Nixon could tell a from b on that score.   Bush can't.

Re Klare---says Bush "cdn't fight a Cold War if he wanted to". The reason he is short of troops for Iraq is because he is doing just that.  The USA has 50 to 200 soldier in about 110 countries throughout the world : training, guarding, laying the ground for support of USA as a great power in a COLD War. Mr Klare treats the phrase Cold War as if it's not-----not a cold war. That is stupid. Why doesn't he just lay out carefully what a Cold War is and how it's fought.

It is a war of ideology, of newspapers, of diplomacy, of foreign aide, of spying, of training, of sending sizable military missions to various countries, of military aide. The war in Iraq is suffering because Bush is beginning a new Cold War. Klare just wants coverage and readers so badly that he is arguing as if the USA has 450,000 in its military. Why doesn't he do the math?

He's right about some things but so blinded by hatred of Bush that he doesn't bother with numbers of minor deployments---Romania to Columbia to Macedonia to Bosnia to major deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama can't admit the surge is successful and it will probably cost him the election.  Were the core of Bush people Cold Warriors? Probably.   But does that include Powell, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Rice?

And they didn't come into office in 2000. It was 2001.

Bush's cabinet was designed to avoid conflict : to get approved quietly and quickly : Powell, whom everybody in the Senate loved and admired; Ashcroft, who had been a member of the Senate for about 10 years; Rumsfeld who had held the job before; Rice, a black woman and maybe the smartest of the lot (at Nat Sec Ad). Is is accurate to call Rice a Cold Warrior? I don't think so.

OK, then there are another set Amb to UN : Vacant for 1 1/2 yrs; CIA, the Clinton appointee; Dpt of Ag, a woman from the most populous state; Sec of Trans, another Clinton holdover, who was clearly left there as an impotent space filler for the status quo on energy; Sec of Energy : I don't even recall who that was. An Arab from Detroit Ebrahim, I think, another guy guy to fill the chair and not bring change (former member of the Senate from Michigan).

Global grand master? Who is that?

Well the USA went into Iraq for 5 reasons, one of which was to guarantee  Saudi oil for Japan. Now one cd argue that is an illegitimate use or a legitimate unwise use of Am soldiers and I respect that. But to argue that Bush and Cheney are amateurs and Bush is stupid is childish. Really, just childish. The geo=political situation looks like this : Japan has wealth but no oil and doesn't want and army (more or less).  The USA needs Japanese capital and Japanese trade. It needs Japanese banks to buy its bonds. Now if Klare wants to argue that  it is sending troops to the  gulf to keep the engines of the bond market running, I won't argue. But to always retreat to the point where Bush is dumb and backward and Cheney is greedy and evil and Rumsfeld is power hungry and arrogant;  well, that is very immature. Just take things as they are : the USA operates a larger army than Russia and spends more on its military than Russia and has military missions in several countries which are old Russian allies. That is realty. REALTY> Go with that. Just for one goddamned day! Realty.


Romania, Georgia, Ukraine, Lithuania : they are all more anti-Russian than Aschcroft and Cheney. Cheney may be a calculating opportunist. Cheney maybe an elitist. Cheney may be serving oil companies while on the job, but Cheney is not an amateur , not a child emotionally. He is what he is and he is not going to be defeated by being portrayed as less than he is----OK, maybe 20% less , maybe as 80% of what he is-----but not 5%.
Not 15%
The war in Iraq is working out well for the USA. The conflict in Georgia playing to American hands----in Vilnius, in Rega, in Bucharest, in Kiev. But Putin is the grand master?  Hey, I like Putin. I even find him amusing. But let's recognize that the USA is moving into Poland and Ukraine while Russia is not moving into Mexico and Haiti.

For Christ's sake, I think the USA shd develop alternative fuels. I want people to spend one week contemplating the effects of a USA which imports 14 barrels of petro each year. The reason I say 14 and not zero ; because in some equations we might want to divide by the amt of barrels imported and you can't divide by zero! Just take that one week and do the math : commodities brokers do that----that's why they can make us much as a relief pitcher still have an arm like a waitress : because they calculate not fulminate. Klare has no sense of this. Klare needs to look at the issue from various perspectives.


Klare needs to look at the numbers for fuel consumption.

Bush and Cheney will be amateurs at best when Russian schools replace English schools in Mexico City. Spanish is growing in the poor schools in Colorado but losing in the rich schools in Mx City. Again : REALTY.

The question of 2008 is really this---Did the USA have the energy (meaning : strength + power + stamina + influence) to make China capitalist, Russia democratic, India prosperous, and Latin America free and Africa stable all at the same time?  Indeed  did / would some of those goals work against others? Certainly the USA tried to isolate Russia. It neglected Latin America; had little clear policy on Africa----not that one was possible. I suppose "stability". It turned to India fairly late---mainly in the form of Microsoft, which employs the most people outside USA in Ireland ----but that will soon change to India. And will probably exceed numbers in USA in about 10-12 years. Question comes back to Russia : Steven Cohen said in letter to me that Strobe Talbot led a campaign to isolate Russia. In general it was successful. But Russia is neither N Korea nor Iran.   [Mr Talbot was Clinton's roommate at Georgetown and Under Sec of State].

The USA was quite successful in moving Poland and the Ukraine and Romania and Bulagria and the 3 Baltic states away from Russia, followed by Georgia. The result of an isolated Russia is not good. While 100% of the recent Russian invasion of Georgia cannot be laid at the feet of the last 2 US administrations, much of it can.

It is as if the task of democracy in Russia was too much for the USA. Instead, it chose a step by step approach : Romania, Poland, the Ukraine, Lithuania, Georgia. Where it overstepped was in Kosovo. That shd have been left to Serbia. Ossetia is "Kosovo East". Georgia is the west's Serbia. Russia is determined to take revenge  : Ossetia for Kosovo. Symbolic, yes, but in Moscow strong symbolism.

Biggest loser in the invasion of Georgia is Iran. The crisis makes Iran a secondary player to Russo-West relations, pushing Iran down the ladder one step, making a Russian veto of sanctions against Iran and moot point, thereby opening the door to bomb Iran. Iran needs Russia on "almost good terms with USA/EU", not on bad terms. Iran needs Russia to be just one step away from good terms with the west. When it is 8 or 9 or 12 steps away---"what the hell! let them veto any sanctions". Sanctions then become fairly hopeless and the time for negotiations are over---Move the fleet. Move it into place and let the Russians protest in the UN. And the nuclear projects are checked for another 8 to 12 years. If Iran strikes back in any way, take out the one or two or three oil refineries in Iran---and their economy becomes about as primitive as their politics. [Hey, I like that phrase.]

Put another way, Iran is finding out that Russia has its own interests---interests which far exceed creating problems for the USA in the gulf. Soon Iran will be jealous of the attention that Georgia is getting ----and frightened by the silence over its nuclear ambitions.