Monday, October 27, 2008

The Return

Of state power and the weakness of multi-national organizations from Stratfor.

In the end, only the hand holding the gun to our heads matters.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I liked the article. I think it was well thought out and pretty accurate from that point of view. I think it highlighted several possible conclusions.

The article did not underscore the most basic and plausible response.

Georgia took action using fledging sovereign power due to events unfolding in Ossetia. In their defense, Georgian action is justified. When Russia responded, not in a calculating fashion, rather a knee jerk reaction two things were expected. 1) A military build up and threat of NATO military action. 2) Paying a price for action – in some way and I am not educated enough to even describe that. If nothing else, Russia fully expected to be admonished.

That even could be as simple as that.

The return of Russian power did not originate in anything to do with Georgia. Russian power did not go anywhere prior to Georgia's sovereign action. Remember... there are 30,000 nuclear devices in this wonderful world. Please do not forget that all but 200 and change are controlled by the US and.... yup you guess it. Russian power economically and in terms of its grip on world politics has diminished. Nothing happened to Russian military power except downsizing. Nothing, of course, happened to its potential nuclear power. You cannot devolve nuclear power without a complete surrender. It is clear to me that nuclear power is sustained power.

What I think it truly interesting... the 200 and change not in the hands of the big boys is sufficient to end life on this planet as we know it.

PassTheChips said...

I think that the whole Georgian War was engineered by Russia from the very beginning. How else could it have known to have its troops ready at their jumping off points? Russia encouraged South Ossetia to provoke Georgia, Georgia predictably responded, Russia rolls in immediately.

The whole thing was calculated from the very beginning to cowe Russia's neighbors on its Western border. No credible threat from the U.S., Europe, or NATO existed, so why not.

Fortunately with falling energy prices, Russia's power also falls.

Bubba the Hutt said...

Sum(parts)"<"Whole

Having NATO is definately a good thing, but until there is an external threat to all of the NATO countries the nations therin will always resort what's in their best interest.