As the Goth turns..

[Chris Rapier]

On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 3:01 PM, gwen <gwenix at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, I also saw an article in one of the papers in the last couple
> days (drat, forget which one at this point, got distracted by election
> news) about how Russia is beefing up its missile defenses again, "For

Well, mostly what they are doing is pushing short and intermediate
range nuclear capable tactical missiles back to the frontier as a
counter to the missile defense system we've been pushing into central
europe. Russia, as always, desperately wants to maintain its influence
it what it sees as it's backyard.

> fear of attack from the USA."  I've heard in a few other places that
> there might be a resurge of the Cold War with them again.

A lot of this is going to depend on oil prices. The Russian economy is
heavily based on oil revenues. This was an intentional, and likely
smart, move on their part even if it did scare a hell of a lot of
people a few years ago. The run up in oil prices generated a huge
amount of revenue for them and they plowed a lot of this back into
their armed forces. This is allowing them to be a lot more muscular on
the world stage. They still haven't modernized their hardware as
reports from Georgia pointed out. However, they had enough money to
actually keep their troops fed and armed for the first time in a
decade. Medeved, I think it was around 6 months ago, announced that
they were going to do a full hardware overhaul for all of their
forces. However, the plunging oil prices makes this a *lot* more
difficult for them to do. On the other hand, oil prices are going to
go up again and this will provide them with the resources they need to
do this. Its also possible (I'd say likely) that Putin will retake the
leadership position (not that he actually left it) in the next year or
two once Medeved gets the constitutional 'reforms' pushed through. So
there seems to be every possibility that Russia will once again take
up a muscular stance under an authoritarian figure. Back to the future
baby. I guess Fukuyama was wrong again.

So when someone says oil independence and alternative energy is a
national security matter its true on multiple levels. Keeping oil
prices depressed will do more to curtail the influence of Iran and
Russia than much anything else. One might even be tempted to argue
that a US led worldwide recession could have been an intentional move
in a larger strategic game. I wouldn't argue that though - the people
who would have been responsible for that really aren't subtle enough.

Hi ya.