If this was part of a grand bargain between the US and Russia, I’d feel dirty about screwing the Poles and the Cheks (sp?) but I’d see the advantages. A Washington-Moscow pact would belt the northern hemisphere in a zone of mutual security, prosperity and energy. The West’s oil and gas problems would be solved. Deprived of their oil revenues, the Islamic world would rot away forgotten in their 7th century. It would buy Russia time to fill its maternity wards and China would have to expand elsewhere than into the Russian far-east. Moscow and Washington have much to talk about. Putin probably can see it but needs somebody of his calibre in the White House to see it too. Fat chance.

And Obama? An empty fool. I think his grand vision is to go down in history as the Great Liberator of Mankind from the Fear of Nuclear Extinction. Scrapping the missiles in Eastern Europe is a gesture to make the Russians get all sentimental and huggy so they’ll sign some grandiloquent arms treaty with him. They’ll cheat of course, and well they should. If Chinese and Moslem demographics is a strategic weapon, then for Russia nukes are a defensive weapon.

Meanwhile all the US has accomplished here is to show once again that it is shifty and clownish. More capitals than Warsaw and Prague are taking note.