Nelson – I’m inclined not to interpret the shutting down of the fuel flow to Russia’s near abroad in the dead of winter as anything except a pretty transparent form of coercion with implications beyond economics. Your insinuation that a Kremlin-controlled jackass in the Ukraine ought to be given some sympathy strikes me as proof of your idiocy, in fact. Forgive my abandonment of civility, but the suggestion that KGB Colonel Vladimir Putin has forgotten how the Cheka controlled its near abroad since roughly 1920 is preposterous and should be foisted on some other audience.
What is clear is that Russia intends to regain its prestige – if it ever lost it. What about the Shanghai Cooperation Organization? What about China’s 10 year, $100 billion investment in Iranian fuel? What about Russia’s provision of nuclear and missile technology, to say nothing of Iranian-designed or -made weapons and equipment that happen to be exact models of Russian gear? What about Russia’s diplomatic cover for Iran, (1) ostensibly on the basis of a bad faith interpretation of Iran’s energy rights under the NPT and (2) the supposedly decisive argument that Iran, afloat on a sea of oil and natural gas, requires nuclear energy for its fuel needs?
What about the recent political annexation by Hezbollah of Lebanon, a goal it’s pursued since the 1970s?
It strikes me that what Syria and Iran in fact have most in common is Russian sponsorship, not the flimsy Alawite claim to Shia Islam. Moreover, what really is the nature of Iran’s anti-Israel campaign, beyond the religious argument? Iran is not bordering Israel, Iran is not Arab. Might it not be indication of participation in a Russian information offensive, one of Soviet Russia’s goals having long been to deprive the USA of its main ally in the region? Particularly since Sadat agreed to abandon the USSR and thus deprive it of a major Arab colony?
The key here, I think, is to resist the temptation to see Russian/Soviet strategy as though it were divided or in any way substantially affected by the periodicity imposed by presidential administrations.
