CPT Charles — no, use of strategic bombers and scuds has just the opposite effect.

It provokes surrender among all of Russia’s neighbors. If they’ll do that, with impunity, to Georgia, imagine what they’ll do to say, Poland or the Baltics.

We won’t do squat because most people in America are still wedded to the lunatic notion that if we are just nice to our enemies they’ll cease being our enemies.

Yes it was stupid to provoke Russia over Kosovo, which gained the US nothing other than the ephemeral thanks of the Saudis. Which is worth less than one cent.

But fundamentally, Russia like Iran and Saddam’s Iraq will be in conflict with the West. Russia and those failed states can only survive with their regimes intact with HIGH HIGH HIGH oil prices. Probably $145 a barrel is the minimum required for Putin to pay off his patronage network and survive. Same for Ahmadinejad.

That means, unless the West wants to live in poverty that will attend permanent oil prices at that range or likely higher, we WILL have war of some sort with those nations over what the global price of oil will be.

This war fundamentally is all about the price of oil.