NightBlogger

Guardian.co.uk
Syria’s President Bashar Assad has publicly stepped up his outreach to old ally Russia in recent days, seeking aid to build up Syrian military forces and offering Moscow help in return - in an apparent effort to exploit a new Russian-American rift. U.S. officials have noticed: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Mideast leaders this week that they should worry about Syria’s efforts to gain more sophisticated weapons. Syria’s long-term aim, however, remains unclear, in part because Assad also continues to pursue peace efforts with Israel - a key U.S. and European goal - even as he makes overtures to Russia that are sure to antagonize the West. Syria has a long history of apparently contradictory diplomatic moves as it maneuvers to find options and balance its interests. More

Source: Stuff.co
Russia’s flagship cruiser has re-entered the Black Sea for weapons tests hours after the Russian military complained about the presence of US and other Nato naval ships near the Georgian coast. The ‘Moskva’ had led a battle group of Russian naval vessels stationed off the coastline of Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia during Russia’s recent conflict with Georgia and sank smaller Georgian craft. The assistant to the Russian Navy’s commander-in-chief told Russian news agencies the cruiser had put to sea again two days after returning to its base at the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol.

“‘Moskva’ has today departed toward the Black Sea Fleet’s naval training range to check its radio-controlled weapons and onboard communications systems,” Captain Igor Dygalo was quoted as saying by Interfax. The Russian navy’s press office was unable to confirm his comments when contacted by Reuters. The presence of so many ships from Nato countries earlier drew the ire of a Russian military spokesman during a daily media briefing on the conflict. “The fact that there are nine Western warships in the Black Sea cannot but be a cause for concern. They include two US warships, one each from Spain and Poland, and four from Turkey,” Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the deputy chief of the Russian military’s General Staff said.

On Sunday, the US guided missile destroyer USS McFaul arrived with aid including camp beds, bedding, tents and mobile kitchen units, the US Defence Department spokesman Bryan. Whitman said. Separately, the US Coast Guard cutter Dallas has been dispatched with aid, while a third vessel, the Navy command ship USS Mount Whitney, is being loaded in Italy with humanitarian supplies for Georgia, he said. The Nato ships in the Black Sea are carrying more than 100 ‘Tomahawk’ cruise missiles, with more than 50 onboard the USS McFaul alone that could hit ground targets, reported RIA news agency, quoting unnamed sources in Russian military intelligence.

Shaun Walker in Tblisi
Russia’s relations with the West have plunged to a new low after President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree officially recognising two breakaway territories in Georgia as independent states. “We are not afraid of anything, including the prospect of a new Cold War,” said Mr Medvedev, after signing the decree in defiance of the US and Europe. The decision, marking a U-turn for Russian policy, was swiftly condemned by Western leaders who urged Russia to reverse the “highly provocative” decree which violates international law.

The foreign secretary, David Miliband, who is flying to Kiev today (wed) to demonstrate the West’s solidarity with Ukraine – which like Georgia has been invited to become an eventual Nato member – said he was consulting partners to ensure “the widest possible coalition against Russian aggression on Georgia.” Although aides would not speculate on possible sanctions against Moscow, Mr Miliband is expected to argue in a speech today that Russia will be judged by its actions and “there will be consequences,” said one.

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, described the decision as “regrettable” and warned that it would be “dead on arrival” at the UN. The decree accused Georgia of “genocide” in South Ossetia and said that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s actions had left Russia with no other option but to recognise the independence of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia. “This is a difficult choice, but it is the only chance to save peoples’ lives,” it read. Both houses of the Russian parliament on Monday voted unanimously in favour of recognising independence for Georgia’s two breakaway states, but Mr Medvedev was urged by the West to refrain from officially recognising them. More

Russian lawmakers have voted unanimously to ask the president to recognise the independence of Georgia’s two rebel provinces, a move likely to anger the United States, the European Union and other Georgian allies. Russia has raised the stakes in the political fallout over its war with Georgia, as both houses of the Russian parliament voted unanimously to recognise the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The final decision on whether to recognise Georgia’s two breakaway regions as independent countries will be taken by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. The vote on a resolution came as the last Russian soldiers still inside Georgia proper showed no sign of pulling out, and a military spokesman in Moscow said that Russian peacekeepers would from now on check all cargo unloaded at Georgia’s Black Sea port of Poti. More

Bloomberg
Russia’s parliament unanimously called on President Dmitry Medvedev to recognize the independence of two breakaway Georgian regions that sparked Russia’s first foreign military incursion since the Soviet era. Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the State Duma, the lower house, told reporters in Moscow today that he expects Medvedev to respond to the lawmakers’ appeal regarding South Ossetia and Abkhazia in a very short time,” the Interfax news service reported.

Medvedev, who has final say on the matter, has said Russia supports the regions’ aspirations, though he has stopped short of formally recognizing them. U.S. President George W. Bush, who has insisted they remain part of Georgia, is dispatching Vice President Dick Cheney next week to visit the country as part of a trip to the region. The regions, which broke away from Georgia in wars in the early 1990s, have cited Kosovo’s Feb. 17 declaration of independence from Serbia as a precedent. Russia opposed Kosovo’s independence, arguing that it violated Serbian sovereignty. This could come back to haunt Moscow if Medvedev endorses Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s right to self-determination. The U.S. views recognition of the two regions as “unacceptable.” More

Mr Mortgage
The smell of ‘bailout’ is in the air. Like Pavlov’s dog, stocks are keying off the potential collapse of the nation’s two largest mortgage players who control about 75% of the market currently, looking for a bailout and subsequent rally. At any other time in history, this sort of event would have caused ripples through the financial markets. But in this new age of ‘moral hazard’ brought about by Heli-Ben’s easy checkbook in which bailouts are great for stocks, anything goes and is a buying opportunity.

What will Paulson do? That is the question. Does he throw the US Government, tax payer and Treasury Bond yields under the bus with an open-ended, retroactive bailout? A bailout designed to save the debt holders and/or the MBS holders such as China, Russia, Bill Gross and other rich investors who knew what they were buying? Does he throw the investors under the bus in favor of the US Government’s and tax payer’s balance sheets? Or, does he do a combination of both?

It is of little question whether Fannie and Freddie will have to be bailed out. But, how do they do it? Many, including myself, think that nationalizing these firms and running them like FHA going forward is the least painful for everyone.

Arguably, the Agencies are making some of the best loans ever that should actually be profitable. Therefore, an ‘explicit’ guaranty going FORWARD would not be a horrible thing. With an explicit guaranty going forward and likely higher mortgage rates and spreads over Treasuries, investors should have no problem buying up the issues. They would be in such hot demand that it could conceivably make actual mortgage rates cheaper on the front end than they are today. This sounds great, right! Not so fast. The foreigners and rich investors want their bailout too.

It is not about how this will operate going forward so much as it is about the $5.2 TRILLION in debt and mortgage-backed debt outstanding that has everyone in a tizzy. The majority of outstanding Agency RMBS’s are owned by foreign governments such as China and Russia, investors such as PIMCO (Bill Gross), mutual funds, banks and pension funds. These are the smartest guys in the room and if they would have even glanced the way of an Agency RMBS prospectus, they would have seen it said this security is not backed by the US Government but rather the full faith and credit of two run-away, over-leveraged, quasi-Government, failing hedge funds.

Without an explicit RETROACTIVE bailout that saddles the US tax payer with $5.2 TRILLION in liability, people are worried that these players, especially foreigners, will quit buying US Treasuries. Well, that’s the risk you take. But at this point in time that is just speculation. Many of these investors have already significantly lightened their US Treasury exposure. Strangely enough, even more so around the time the news began to broke that the Government was considering retroactively backing $5.2 Trillion in Agency debt and RMBS’s.

What do you think happens to Treasuries if you do put the US at that great of a risk? US Treasuries will still get hit but by a much larger pupulation of owners and for a much longer period of time. If you saddle the US with an open ended, retroactive bailout of the Agencies for some of the worst loans ever made from 2002-2007, a disaster will ensue. We already know that GSE’s have significant subprime and Alt-A holding and much of their Prime paper is closer to Alt-A. Defaults are soaring across all paper types. Foreclosures could continue for years.

Just think about it for a minute. If we back all of this, much of it toxic, there is the chance that every time a negative piece of housing data comes out in the future, Treasuries could actually sell off vs. rally because that’s more bad paper that the US Gov’t must make good, guaranteeing payments to these investors. If we are in the early innings of this housing meltdown like many including myself think we are, then get ready for sky-high Bond yields because the only way to cover all of investors around the world will be through the sale of new Bonds.

We are in a ‘damned if we do and damned if we don’t’ situation. But, I see signs of hope. Take the New FHA Bailout law for example. It requires banks to significantly write down the value of their mortgage notes to 90% of the new value and get nothing in return. That is the investor sharing the responsibility.

The same thing should happen here. These wealthy, global investors knew what they were buying and taking a haircut on their Agency MBS holdings is not the end of the world. The US Gov’t and tax payer retroactively backing mortgage paper that never had a guaranty in the first place without any idea of when this housing and credit crisis will be over would do much long-term damage and force higher mortgage rates in the US and interest rates across the globe.

If we leave older vintage Agency securities to trade without a guaranty, investors would take losses because all older mortgage-backed debt has fallen in value given what has happened to the housing and credit markets over the past year and a half. But, these losses would not be massive and could be mitigated with ownership or warrants in the new and improved Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that would be very valuable in the future, as the companies did well.

Activist hedge fund manager Bill Ackman talked about the bailout and a plan he has for the GSE’s. I like it. Below are the links. -Best, Mr Mortgage

Russia has informed Norway that it plans to suspend all military ties with NATO, Norway’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday. The report comes a day after NATO foreign ministers said they would make further ties with Russia dependent on Moscow making good on a pledge to pull its troops back to pre-conflict positions in Georgia. However, they stopped short of calling an immediate halt to all cooperation. More

Russian forces blocked the only land entrance to Georgia’s main port city on Thursday, a day before Russia promised to complete a troop pullout from its ex-Soviet neighbor. Armored personnel carriers and troop trucks blocked the bridge to the Black Sea port city of Poti, and Russian forces excavated trenches and set up mortars facing the city. Another group of APCs and trucks were positioned in a nearby wooded area. More

Syria raised the prospect yesterday of having Russian missiles on its soil, sparking fears of a new Cold War in the Middle East. President Assad said as he arrived in Moscow to clinch a series of military agreements: “We are ready to co-operate with Russia in any project that can strengthen its security.” The Syrian leader told Russian newspapers: “I think Russia really has to think of the response it will make when it finds itself closed in a circle.” Mr Assad said that he would be discussing the deployment of Russian missiles on his territory. The Syrians are also interested in buying Russian weapons. More

New York Times
The Russian military deployed several SS-21 missile launchers and supply vehicles to South Ossetia on Friday, according to American officials familiar with intelligence reports. From the new launching positions north of Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, the missiles can reach much of Georgia, including Tbilisi, the capital. More

Russia’s envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, has called off a meeting of the Russia-NATO council due to follow today’s Brussels meeting of the foreign ministers of the 26 members of the alliance to discuss the situation in Georgia. Rogozin also warned of Russia possibly reconsidering its relations with NATO if its members take a biased stand on the Georgia-South Ossetia conflict. He specifically emphasised that if NATO chooses to take such a position, Russia will not be able to maintain the high level and quality of Russia-NATO relations, and the blame for the collapse of the current global security system would fall on Washington and its allies. More

Georgian ministers reported that there was no evidence that the Russian military had started to move back for forward positions deep in Georgian territory. “Unfortunately, we see no signs that the Russians are starting to pull out or even preparing to withdraw from Georgia,” said the interior ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France had apparently secured a firm pullback pledge from his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev on Sunday, but the commitment did not translate through to the ground. The Russian president warned today that any new aggression against Russian citizens would be met with a “crushing response.” “If anyone thinks that they can kill our citizens and escape unpunished, we will never allow this. If anyone tries this again, we will come out with a crushing response,” Mr Medvedev told World War Two veterans in the Russian city of Kursk. More

The United States is in a huge foreign policy muddle in the Middle East. It wants to dominate and control Iran but requires the support of the world community to accomplish its aims. Diplomacy and sanctions require only a low level of support. On the other hand, to launch a military attack or green-light one by Israel, the United States needs far more backing. This support does not appear to exist, and recent U.S. foreign policy actions are eroding that support even further. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on August 13 that the United States refused to give the go-ahead to Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities in talks between Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Could it be that the Bush administration finally knows when it is licked?

Israeli officials acknowledge that it would be difficult to launch such an attack without approval from Russia, China, and India, something that the United States would have to lobby those nations to achieve. The chances at present are extremely slim that any of the three will acquiesce. U.S. condemnation of Russia’s military action to defend the breakaway region of South Ossetia, combined with the determination of the Bush administration to install missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, virtually guarantee that Russia will not do anything to help the United States foment more violence in its neighborhood.

Beijing owns much of the U.S. debt, continues to be one of Tehran’s largest trade partners, and is not about to be dictated to by Washington. India has defied the United States by entering into a pipeline deal with Iran. Exhaustive three-year nuclear treaty negotiations between the United States and India are utterly stalled. If the treaty is not presented to Congress in September, it will be dead. More

Itamar Rabinovitch
Now that the fighting in Georgia has died down, policy shapers and pundits in the West are free to analyze the maneuvers and results, and draw lessons. The picture that emerges is a dismal one. Vladimir Putin’s Russia exercised brutal force with the object of bringing a rebellious neighbor to its knees. The United States, which encouraged Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to defy Moscow, did not give him any real support. Former Soviet republics and satellites will now think twice before confronting Russia, or will be tempted to seek shelter beneath the cover of the U.S., NATO or the European Union. Oil is now much less likely to reach the Caspian Sea without Russia’s involvement.

The Georgian crisis will have specific repercussions on the Middle East. There is less of a chance that the United States and Russia will be cooperating to stop Iran’s nuclear program. There is a greater chance that Russia will wage a more ambitious and aggressive policy, including selling advanced weapons systems to Iran and Syria. There will also be a host of indirect repercussions. In this context, there is a striking similarity between the Russian move in the Caucasus, and Iran and Syria’s move in Lebanon. More

Debkafile
Military sources report Moscow’s planned retaliation for America’s missile interceptors in Poland and US-Israeli military aid to Georgia may come in the form of installing Iskandar surface missiles in Syria and its Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad. Russian Baltic and Middle East warships, submarines and long-range bombers may be armed with nuclear warheads, according to Sunday newspapers in Europe. More

Russian army bases in Cuba may still become a reality. Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov, the president of the Academy of Geopolitical Sciences, stated Monday that the retrieval of the Russian military presence in Cuba may become a real response to the ongoing increase of the US military and political pressure on Russia. “It is an open secret that the West has been establishing a buffer zone around Russia during the recent years, getting European, Baltic states, Ukraine and the Caucasus involved in the process. The expansion of the Russian military presence abroad, particularly in Cuba, could become a response to US-led activities,” RIA Novosti quoted Ivashov as saying. More

Russia may arm its Baltic fleet with nuclear warheads in response to a US plan to build a missile shield in Poland, Sunday Times reports. The London-based newspaper quoted senior military sources as saying that the Russian nuclear warheads could be supplied to submarines, cruisers and fighter bombers of the Baltic fleet based in Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania. “In view of America’s determination to set up a missile defense shield in Europe, the military is reviewing all its plans to give Washington an adequate response,” a senior military source in Moscow told the Sunday Times. More

The Russian occupation of the Georgian city of Gori appeared to be more entrenched today, despite claims by President Medvedev that his troops were planning to withdraw. As international pressure increased on Mr Medvedev to implement a French-brokered ceasefire pledge which he and Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili signed last week, the Kremlin declared today that Russian forces would start pulling back from the occupied territory tomorrow. More

Mark Ames
The Nation
Five days after Georgia invaded and seized the breakaway separatist region of South Ossetia, sparking a larger-scale Russian invasion to drive Georgian forces back and punish their leaders, Russia surprised its Western detractors by calling a halt to the country’s offensive. After all, the mainstream media, egged on by hawkish neocon pundits and their candidate John McCain, had everyone believing that Russia was hellbent on the full-scale annihilation and annexation of democratic Georgia.

But then came Tuesday’s cease-fire announcement-and we’re now forced to ask ourselves serious questions about the recent conflict: what really started it, how dangerous was it and what, with serious careful consideration, could be done to prevent it from turning into a worst-case scenario?

Up until now, this war was framed as a simple tale of Good Helpless Democratic Guy Georgia versus Bad Savage Fascist Guy Russia. In fact, it is far more complex than this, morally and historically. Then there are two concentric David and Goliath narratives here. The initial war pitted the Goliath Georgia-a nation of 4.4 million, with vastly superior numbers, equipment and training thanks to US and Israeli advisers-against David-Ossetia, with a population of between 50,000-70,000 and a local militia force that is barely battalion strength. Reports coming out of South Ossetia tell of Georgian rockets and artillery leveling every building in the capital city, Tskhinvali, and of Georgian troops lobbing grenades into bomb shelters and basements sheltering women and children. Although true casualty figures are hard to come by, reports that up to 2,000 Ossetians, mostly civilians, were killed are certainly believable, given the intensity of the initial Georgian bombardment, the wanton destruction of the city and surrounding regions and the generally savage nature of Caucasus warfare, a very personal game where old rules apply.

But you don’t hear about this story from the Western media. Indeed, you hear little if anything about the Ossetians, who seem to hardly exist in the West’s eyes, even though their grievance is the root cause of this war.

While Russia and America see the conflict in abstract terms about spheres of influence and protecting allies, for Ossetians, who still recall the centuries of massacres Georgians committed against them, it is highly personal. They will still recall the Georgian massacres in the early 1920s, when Georgia was briefly independent, which exterminated up to 8 percent of the Ossetian population. In 1990, when Georgia was again moving towards independence, the ultranationalist leader Zviad Gamsakhurdia abolished Ossetia’s limited autonomy, leading to another Ossetian rebellion that was only quelled by a peace agreement signed by Georgia, Russia and the Ossetians. Gamsakhurdia was subsequently deposed, and Georgia’s ethnic chauvinism was shelved until the rise of current president Mikhail Saakashvili in 2003.

Ossetians have traditionally relied on their powerful northern neighbor Russia for protection against Georgia. The Georgians, in turn, have tried to counter Russian hegemony, for which they are no match, by aligning closely with the United States, finding friendly ears among old cold warriors and Bush-era neocons.

When he first rose to prominence, the American-educated Saakashvili was often referred to as “Georgia’s Vladimir Zhirinovsky”-the Russian ultranationalist firebrand who once promised to retake Alaska. Although Saakashvili was subsequently rebranded as a Euro-democrat, he promised to reunite Georgia and bring his separatist regions to heel, by force if necessary, whether the aggrieved ethnic groups liked it or not.

At the root of this conflict is a clash of two twentieth-century guiding principles in international relations. Georgia, backed by the West, is claiming its right as a sovereign nation to control the territory within its borders, a guiding principle since World War II. The Ossetians are claiming their right to self-determination, a guiding principle since World War I.

These two guiding concepts for international relations-national sovereignty and the right to self-determination-are locked in a zero-sum battle in Georgia. Sometimes, the West takes the side of national sovereignty, as it is in the current war; other times, it sides with self-determination and redrawing of national borders, such as with Kosovo. More

CRAWFORD, Texas - President Bush sent a stern warning to Russia on Saturday that it cannot lay claim to two breakaway provinces in neighboring Georgia, a U.S. ally, and said there was no room for debate on that point. The Russian foreign minister said Thursday that Georgia could “forget about” getting back the two separatist regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Medvedev also met with their leaders in Kremlin this past week, raising the prospect that Moscow could absorb the regions even though the territory is internationally recognized as being within Georgia’s borders. Bush disputed the claim that two areas may not be part of Georgia’s future. They are of Georgia now, he said at the ranch, and reaffirmed that they are within recognized borders. There is “no room for debate on this,” the president said. More

Russian investigators have launched a criminal case on charges of genocide in connection with the events in South Ossetia. Russia’s Interfax news agency reports that the Russian General Prosecutor’s Office has said Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili may also be put on trial. More

Michael Klare
In commenting on the war in the Caucasus, most American analysts have tended to see it as a throwback to the past: as a continuation of a centuries-old blood feud between Russians and Georgians, or, at best, as part of the unfinished business of the Cold War. Many have spoken of Russia’s desire to erase the national “humiliation” it experienced with the collapse of the Soviet Union 16 years ago, or to restore its historic “sphere of influence” over the lands to its South. But the conflict is more about the future than the past. It stems from an intense geopolitical contest over the flow of Caspian Sea energy to markets in the West. More

Reuters) - Russia said on Friday its forces had seized U.S.-made weapons from a Georgian military base near the town of Senaki, but added there had been no gunfire in Georgia in the past 24 hours. “Our forces have seized 1,728 arms in Senaki,” Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy head of Russia’s General Staff, told a news conference. More

“The unipolar world refers to a world in which there is one master, one sovereign—- one center of authority, one center of force, one center of decision-making. At the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.… What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed because at its basis there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilization.

Unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any problems. Moreover, they have caused new human tragedies and created new centers of tension. Judge for yourselves—wars as well as local and regional conflicts have not diminished. More are dying than before. Significantly more, significantly more!

Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper-use of force – military force – in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts.

We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?

In international relations we increasingly see the desire to resolve a given question according to so-called issues of political expediency, based on the current political climate. And of course this is extremely dangerous. It results in the fact that no one feels safe. I want to emphasize this – no one feels safe! Because no one can feel that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them. Of course such a policy stimulates an arms race.

I am convinced that we have reached that decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security.”

Every word Putin spoke was true which is why it was not reprinted in the western media. More

WARSAW, Poland
An agreement that will allow the United States to install a missile defense battery in Poland exposes the ex-communist nation to an attack, a Russian general said Friday. Poland and the United States struck a deal on Thursday to deepen military ties and place a missile interceptor base in Poland. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the Russian general staff told reporters Friday that the agreement exacerbates U.S.-Russian relations that are already tense because of fighting between Georgian and Russian forces. He said the deal “cannot go unpunished.” And in the strongest threat Russia has issued in reaction to plans to put elements of a missile defense system in former Soviet satellite nations, the Interfax news agency quoted Nogovitsyn as saying Poland was risking attack. “Poland, by deploying (the system) is exposing itself to a strike — 100 percent,” Interfax quoted Nogovitsyn as saying. More

Russia is making it abundantly clear that the US and NATO had both been warned to not push this NATO membership and arming of Georgia. What was the US response? Israel just kept pouring in weapons and preparing the Georgian military (and mercs and advisors) for this war, along with the US. You can bet that is why the KGB (FSB) was in Georgia to see what these greedy Zionist zhids and the US were up to. More

What’s at stake is what former National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski described in his 1997 book “The Grand Chessboard.” He called Eurasia the “center of world power extending from Germany and Poland in the East through Russia and China to the Pacific and including the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent.” He continued: “The most immediate (US) task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role.” Dominating that part of the world and its vast energy and other resources is Washington’s goal with NATO and Israel its principal tools to do it: More

Russia’s invasion of neighboring Georgia has raised doubts about the security of oil and gas pipelines that cross through the former Soviet republic and the wisdom of further investment in the transport lines. The foray also put an emphatic stamp on Russia’s growing influence over the region’s natural resources and, by proxy, over Europe. The pipelines, supplying about 1% of the world’s daily oil needs, have not been damaged by the fighting, but the prospect of that led pipeline part-owner BP to shut down one of the oil lines as a precaution Tuesday. A second oil export line has been out of commission since last week because of a fire in Turkey.

“The Russians have clearly demonstrated their military capability of getting very close to the pipelines,” said Edward Chow, an energy expert at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies. “And they also sent the Black Sea fleet off the Georgian coast, so they also have demonstrated that they can blockade Georgia anytime they want.” The pipelines begin in Azerbaijan and pass through Georgian territory en route to ports on the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, where tankers take the crude mostly to Western Europe.

Chow worries about whether transit lines through Georgia will remain secure in the long run and whether additional foreign investment would be safe. Russia is an energy giant on two continents through the state-controlled Gazprom, its largest company. Gazprom produces 85% of the nation’s natural gas, controls 17% of the world’s reserves and is a major supplier to countries across Central Asia and Europe. More

War in the Caucasus is as much the product of an American imperial drive as local conflicts. It’s likely to be a taste of things to come

Seumas Milne
The outcome of six grim days of bloodshed in the Caucasus has triggered an outpouring of the most nauseating hypocrisy from western politicians and their captive media. As talking heads thundered against Russian imperialism and brutal disproportionality, US vice-president Dick Cheney, faithfully echoed by Gordon Brown and David Miliband, declared that “Russian aggression must not go unanswered”. George Bush denounced Russia for having “invaded a sovereign neighbouring state” and threatening “a democratic government”. Such an action, he insisted, “is unacceptable in the 21st century”. Could these by any chance be the leaders of the same governments that in 2003 invaded and occupied - along with Georgia, as luck would have it - the sovereign state of Iraq on a false pretext at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives? Or even the two governments that blocked a ceasefire in the summer of 2006 as Israel pulverised Lebanon’s infrastructure and killed more than a thousand civilians in retaliation for the capture or killing of five soldiers? More

(Reuters) - Russian troops and armor moved in or around at least three Georgian towns on Thursday, ignoring demands by Washington that Moscow respect Georgia’s territorial integrity. Reuters witnesses saw Russian troops in the key central Georgian town of Gori and outside the western town of Zugdidi. Residents in the Black Sea port of Poti saw a Russian incursion. In Moscow, the Russian General Staff said it was legitimate for “Russian peacekeepers” to be in Poti and for what it termed “reconnaissance parties” to be in Gori, two days after Russia signed up to a French-led peace plan to stop the fighting. More

US presidential runoff John McCain said that Russia should not interfere in the conflict in South Ossetia. The pro-Georgian propaganda in the US media testifies to the same opinion. It brings up the idea that the Georgian aggression against the unrecognized republic of South Ossetia has been coordinated with the US administration. Nevertheless, all arguments of US politicians and experts (Pravda.ru interviewed some of them) do not withstand any criticism.

“We must immediately call a meeting of the NATO Council to estimate Georgia’s security and consider the measures, which NATO may take to stabilize the highly dangerous situation,” John McCain said.

“The international community needs to deploy independent and neutral peacemaking forces in South Ossetia. Russia must immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw troops from the sovereign territory of Georgia,” McCain believes.

Ariel Cohen, a well-known US specialist on the Soviet Union, a Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, stated that Russia was planning the incursion for months and that it was intended to demonstrate its hegemony over Eastern Europe, push Mr. Saakashvili from power in Georgia and not to let Georgia become a NATO member. More

Moscow News,№03 2008
Russia underlined its right to a “preventive” nuclear strike this week in what military analysts interpreted as a move to introduce more clarity into the nation’s defense doctrine. The statements, made by Chief of General Staff Yuri Baluyevsky on Saturday, were followed by naval exercises in the northern Atlantic that will feature over 40 aircraft of the Air Force. Though unrelated, the developments pointed to a Russia not so much on the offensive as a one that was eager to bring its defense doctrine in line with that of the Western world and make it more up to date with contemporary military demands. More

The hypocrisy of Bush and the American media is beyond measure. Russia’s actions are dwarfed by the US invasion and ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Simon Jenkins
Putin would die laughing if he read this week’s American newspapers. The president, George Bush, declared the Russian invasion of Georgia “disproportionate and unacceptable”. This is taken as a put-down to the vice-president, Dick Cheney, who declared the invasion “will not go unanswered”, apparently something quite different. Bush says that great powers should not go about “toppling governments in the 21st century”, as if he had never done such a thing. Cheney says that the invasion has “damaged Russia’s standing in the world”, as if Cheney gave a damn. The lobby for sanctions against Russia is reduced to threatening to boycott the winter Olympics. Big deal.

Every student of the Caucasus has known since the fall of the Soviet empire that this part of the world was an explosion waiting to happen. The crisscrossing fault lines of ethnicity, religion and nationalism, fuelled by gas and oil, would not long survive the removal of the Red Army and communist discipline. There were too many old scores to settle, too much territory in dispute and too much wealth at stake - rivalries brilliantly portrayed in Kurban Said’s classic novel of Edwardian Azerbaijan, Ali & Nino. More

US attempts to get Georgia into NATO, coupled with its desire to erect an anti-missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech republic would give it first strike capability towards Russia. Moscow sees this as a national security threat against the sovereignty of Russia. Political economist F William Engdahl believes this is the geopolitical endgame being played out in Georgia. See Video

Russia will Use Nuclear Weapons

Russia has promised to “Use Tactical Nuclear Weapons Against the United States if United States Attacks Russia”…” This is a written document. It is now part of “Russian Doctrine.”

A cluster of major pipelines pass through Georgia, some of them within a few kilometres of positions occupied by Russian forces before Moscow declared its own ceasefire on 12 August. At present, the existing Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline (BTE) carries some six billion cubic metres of gas a year (bcm/y) to Turkey, some of which is then forwarded to Greece. As Azerbaijani gas output grows, the line should reach its full 20 bcm/y capacity. There are plans in hand to raise throughput to the line’s full 20 bcm/y capacity by about 2014, while the European Union is backing proposals for development of essentially parallel lines to carry as much as a further 30 bcm/y of gas from Turkmenistan, and perhaps Kazakhstan. More
Also See: Broader Russia-US Military Confrontation

(CNN) — The Russian and French presidents on Tuesday announced a six-point plan of principles for settling the immediate conflict in Georgia but stopped short of tackling the issues that sparked the violence. “We have not achieved peace yet but we have achieved a provisional cease-fire of hostilities,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy said. The points include Russian agreements to conclude all military operations, return Russian armed forces to the line preceding the beginning of operations, and not use force again in Georgia. In return Georgia would return its armed forces to their normal and permanent locations. Both sides would provide free access for humanitarian assistance; and international consideration of the issues of South Ossetia and Abkhazia would be undertaken. More

Source: Think Progress
Today the New York Times reports that Russia is escalating its war with Georgia, “moving tanks and troops through the separatist enclave of South Ossetia and advancing toward the city of Gori in central Georgia” and even bombing parts of Tibilisi, the Georgian captial.

Russia’s increasing aggression is putting a spark into American neoconservatives. Today on the Times op-ed page, one of their leaders, William Kristol, claims the U.S. must “defend” Georgia’s sovereignty as a reward for its participation in Iraq, while the conservative Washington Times is calling for “maximum pressure” on Russia:

Bill Kristol: [Georgia] has had the third-largest military presence — about 2,000 troops — fighting along with U.S. soldiers and marines in Iraq. For this reason alone, we owe Georgia a serious effort to defend its sovereignty. Surely we cannot simply stand by as an autocratic aggressor gobbles up part of — and perhaps destabilizes all of — a friendly democratic nation.

Washington Times: It is in America�