anvor

The New Energy Cold War: The Warsaw-Tehran Connection

Dear Mr. Litle:

Congratulations for your three-part article. As a Russian-Canadian and former Visiting Professor of one of American Schools of Diplomacy, I find your analysis somewhat simplistic, but it is WAY better than most professional analysts, journalists and politicians offered to the American and European public.

Few understood that Russia defended its own citizens in a break-away region from the haphazardly planned by Saakashvili ethnic cleansing, Croatia-style. You may not remember, but in the late nineties ethnic Serbs were ethnically cleansed from two break-away Krayina and Vucovar Serb-majority regions of Croatia by Croatian regular military which was armed and trained by the U.S.

Milosevic, who at that time still ruled Serbia, didn't respond. However, Putin clearly remembered the case, knew that the conflict with belligerent Georgia was coming and had a clear pretext to get involved given that a dozen of Russian peace-keepers were killed by Georgians. The simple indignation that the peaceful city of Tzhinvali was carpet-bombed like it was a military field (and from the horrendous losses they suffered during the WWII the Russians viscerally know what that is like), Russian public firmly stood by his side.

After so much bizarre analysis by the Western news media circuits, as American taxpayer I was grudgingly expecting our government to start wasting our money on Georgian re-building and on further alienating Russia. Well, today it happened, and a billion of my and your dollars will go to build new Georgian roads and military bases, despite the fact that New Orleans has not yet recovered from Katrina…

In the long run, the end of the 15-year South-Ossetia and Abkhazia stalemate and the unexpectedly easy Russian victory will prove to be the event that has fleshed up the realities of an emerging multi-polar world. It is up to our leaders to choose how much we will lose in pretending that Russia is intrinsically “bad” and that it needs to be “taught a lesson” of obeying our will...

I find it difficult to imagine that Russians will lose here. After all, this time they have all the strong cards, and we have mostly the misplaced disgust and pathetic indignation. But those are the usual feeling of losers.

Again, thanks for your article.

Hedge Fund Manager's Notebook: Blood on the Streets - Buy Russia

The thought here is: the current Russian government will slowly try to wrestle the natural resources from the "oligarchs" who, in essence, stole them from the Russian people in the nineties.

It will be a VERY slow process, but you'd never know who among oligarchs will be next. If you invest in Russia, try to invest in services, construction, food, perhaps utilities, etc., the sectors that do not depend on WHO owns the natural resources. Besides, they will be the ones on the upswing more than the commodities, anyway.

The good thing - the government there is stable and VERY popular with the electorate (in part for its attempts to sideline the power of the oligarchs). Condi Rice may say Russian gov-t is not as "democratic" as, say, Georgian (Medvedev/Putin never got less than 65% of the vote, Saakashvili in January - 53%) but a smart investor isn't spooked by China's Communist gov-t, right?