softly and carrying a big stick’

I more suspect, the stick is used so _rarely_ used, that it’s easy to disregard, esp. if the rewards are big. Regards…

Based on my conversations with a former Chevron executive in Moscow, there is no way Russia is going to run out of oil anytime soon, though whether it is “cheap” or not would depend on the appetite of foreign investors to lend billions to Rosneft and Gazprom for exploration in the frigid Yamal Peninsula (think the North Slope of Alaska) and for additional exploration in Eastern Siberia. The ex-Chevron exec though said there is plenty of oil left in the traditional Western Siberian fields as long as Russia remains open to Westerners coming in to develop it.

Hopefully, just as Russia developed the Stabilization Fund (which it is rapidly burning through) as a hedge against a 1998-style collapse in commodity prices, it can also learn from this current collapse that resource nationalism and at least winking and nodding at Iranian and Venezuelan attempts to artificially inflate the worldwide price of oil have their price too.

Just because Russia is justified in pressing for a higher price now that the contract has expired (and the other commenters never addressed the issue of Ukrainian oligarchs, perhaps with the connivance of politicians like Timoshenko, outright STEALING gas from the pipe) doesn’t mean Russia is entirely blameless in all of this. It’s just that the West needs to wake up and realize that Ukraine is a failed state with perpetually warring clans masquerading as a government and that the second a wildly unpopular regime in Kyev forces NATO membership down the throats of an unwilling population, the eastern half of the country and the Crimea will secede and form a defacto anschluss with Mother Russia. The idiots pushing for NATO membership, such as John McCain and his lobbyist/advisor Randy Scheunemann, never seemed to care about this scenario. Perhaps it would allow them to justify the “moral clarity” and New Cold War they’ve been dreaming of for sometime.

Just pay up, a******s!

Wretchard said:

“How exactly NATO would help was not explained.”

NATO will send diplomats.”"”"”"”"”

I disagree. I think they will get tough and send people in uniforms with binoculars.

“How exactly NATO would help was not explained.”

NATO will send diplomats.

That was actually a very interesting perspective that I myself had not thought of at all, but, when presented like that, actually makes perfect sense.

I thank you.

From what I’ve heard, you’re wrong, but I haven’t actually read the contract myself. Supposedly, the contract is current and the price Ukraine is supposed to pay on their contract isn’t negotiable until the end of 2009 at the earliest.

Russia claims the contract terms expired because “an inter-government accord” wasn’t “renewed” this year. Unfortunately, as I’ve been lead to believe, only Putin, and not the contract, requires this accord to be passed each year.

In other words, Russia says the contract has expired while the contract says it has not. Russia doesn’t even want the money. They want the pipeline. They’re jacking up the price so that Ukraine sells the pipeline to Russia. When/if Ukraine nationalizes the pipeline back, Russia will have their casus belli.

Methinks Ukraine is just a convent reason for dispute.