Russia
18 July 2007, 06:34 PM
#5
Oh come on! We've just chucked out 4 of their diplomats because they refuse to extradite Lugovoy to us.
But they've been asking for Borosetzky for ages and we've refused.
SUDDENLY we point to a plot to kill him that we just happened to foil etc etc.
Yeah right. And pigs might fly
Alcazar
But they've been asking for Borosetzky for ages and we've refused.
SUDDENLY we point to a plot to kill him that we just happened to foil etc etc.
Yeah right. And pigs might fly
Alcazar
18 July 2007, 06:58 PM
#6
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18 July 2007, 07:20 PM
#7
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Russia has the largest remaining reserves of oil in the world (the 2nd largest is in Iraq). I don't think gas is as high on the priority list for natural resource plundering ....
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18 July 2007, 07:57 PM
#9
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Originally Posted by Frederick Forsyth
DO we now stand on the threshold of a second Cold War with Putin’s new Russia in place of‑Brezhnev’s old USSR?
As four Russian spies pack their bags after their expulsion and our diplomats in Moscow prepare for the same, it must be tempting to say yes.
But a word of caution. If another period of freezing *relationships between the West‑and the new Russian *dictatorship does beckon, the real *reasons will have nothing to do with the poisoning of a‑single defector called Alex*ander Litvinenko, nor Moscow’s refusal to send for trial the man we accuse of it,‑Andre Lugavoi. The real *reasons are deeper and older.
So first: why Litvinenko and Lugavoi are not nearly important enough to start a new Cold War. For 16 years, Russia has been in a state of‑utter turmoil and still is. But the West adopted a policy of concern, understanding and absolute non-aggression. For example, we have done nothing to assist Chechnya.
But in those 16 years since Mikhail Gorbachev finally terminated Soviet communism and dissolved the Soviet Union, we have witnessed two coups d’etat in Moscow, damn nearly a civil war, the rise and rise of the Russian Mafia, the wholesale stripping of Russian assets by Russians, the rule of a‑drunken sot and corruption, and finally the arrival on the seat of power of a former *lieutenant-colonel of the KGB. It has been a very bumpy ride but we have not interfered to take a quick advantage.
Any damage inflicted over these years has been inflicted by Russians on their own motherland. Some were asset strippers, others gangsters, employing assassins as a‑first recourse in business‑*dispute.
No one blames Vladimir Putin for seeking to put an end‑to the gangster years. The problem is that in re-imposing law and order the new dictator has also abolished democracy and the rule of any law but his own.
The reason one hears nothing of Russian gangsters any more is, quite simply, that they are all in office. They share *official power with another small army of ex-secret policemen whom Putin has picked to help him run the country.
Part of that “running the country” involves the murder of anyone who might have opposed or criticised the new‑master of the Kremlin. Litvinenko was merely one of these. He and those like him had to be taught a lesson and given a warning. That, at least, is Moscow’s *philosophy.
But one dead Russian in a London hospital does not affect the US or the rest of Nato. One murdered defector does not start a Cold War. The outrage over bilateral diplomat-chucking is just *ritualised sabre-rattling.
If a new Cold War is in the *offing it will stem from Russia’s obsessional lust to expunge the memory of the humiliating Nineties, become a major power again and then‑use that‑power as she always‑does – to bully smaller *neighbours. And her weapons will not be rockets and nuclear warheads alone but her new Doomsday Weapon – oil and gas. This is not good news for the West.
In the Nineties, when corrupt Russian bureaucrats were *virtually giving away Russia’s oil and gas deposits to opportunists who could rustle up the‑bribes, it was believed she had‑useful but not staggering deposits. Now we know *better.
Using Western technology, jaw-dropping deposits have been found in Siberia and as far‑as Sakhalin Island, just north of Japan.
Originally, joint-venture contracts were drawn up to exploit them: Russia’s Gazprom mono**poly and our gas/petrol giants in partnership, but Putin is *tearing up those contracts as he wants it‑all. Those deposits turn a quite poor country into a massively rich country and they serve two purposes: first, the money they provide can
re-arm Russia to something miles beyond the‑once fearsome Soviet Union. Already, Putin’s arms investment has exploded as tens of‑billions are spent developing undersea-launched ballistic missiles, nuclear overland rockets, fighters, bombers and tank armies.
The second purpose is even more threatening. The West has an inexhaustible appetite for energy. That is where Putin’s second weapon comes in. To supply or, far more dangerously, to *withhold that gas and oil, confers savage power. And he will use it, directly or via his coming domination of the Organ*isation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), to have the once-proud, even arrogant, West begging for it as a junkie begs for his fix. That is where the Cold War will brew.
The signs are already here. Two winters ago Putin brought Ukraine to its knees by cutting off its gas *supplies. Georgia was then brought to heel when a mysterious explosion ripped apart a major pipe bringing gas to her capital.
Our EU partners have already placed vast orders; Germany recently *doubled her requirement to 80 billion cubic metres.
Britain’s position is little *better. We are locked, thanks to Tony Blair, into a futile war in Iraq. We have to stabilise Afghanistan lest the Taliban take over again. In that *struggle our Nato allies are‑reduced to Americans, Canadians, Danes and some Dutch. Once again Franco-Germany, when the chips are down, are as much use as a chocolate fireguard. And we face global terrorism.
But what about our North Sea oil? We have had it for so long that people forget it is running out. In 10 years we will be 80 per cent dependent on imported energy.
In my boyhood, the danger was the Red Army and its 40,000 massed battle tanks. For a boy today, the danger will be a nation enslaved to its *suppliers of energy. That is why, to survive the coming Cold War rich and free, we must manufacture our own energy. New nuclear reactors are *simply unavoidable.
The Russian bear is rising again and the Russian bear does not take prisoners, nor lust for genuine friends. It seeks only to dominate.
As four Russian spies pack their bags after their expulsion and our diplomats in Moscow prepare for the same, it must be tempting to say yes.
But a word of caution. If another period of freezing *relationships between the West‑and the new Russian *dictatorship does beckon, the real *reasons will have nothing to do with the poisoning of a‑single defector called Alex*ander Litvinenko, nor Moscow’s refusal to send for trial the man we accuse of it,‑Andre Lugavoi. The real *reasons are deeper and older.
So first: why Litvinenko and Lugavoi are not nearly important enough to start a new Cold War. For 16 years, Russia has been in a state of‑utter turmoil and still is. But the West adopted a policy of concern, understanding and absolute non-aggression. For example, we have done nothing to assist Chechnya.
But in those 16 years since Mikhail Gorbachev finally terminated Soviet communism and dissolved the Soviet Union, we have witnessed two coups d’etat in Moscow, damn nearly a civil war, the rise and rise of the Russian Mafia, the wholesale stripping of Russian assets by Russians, the rule of a‑drunken sot and corruption, and finally the arrival on the seat of power of a former *lieutenant-colonel of the KGB. It has been a very bumpy ride but we have not interfered to take a quick advantage.
Any damage inflicted over these years has been inflicted by Russians on their own motherland. Some were asset strippers, others gangsters, employing assassins as a‑first recourse in business‑*dispute.
No one blames Vladimir Putin for seeking to put an end‑to the gangster years. The problem is that in re-imposing law and order the new dictator has also abolished democracy and the rule of any law but his own.
The reason one hears nothing of Russian gangsters any more is, quite simply, that they are all in office. They share *official power with another small army of ex-secret policemen whom Putin has picked to help him run the country.
Part of that “running the country” involves the murder of anyone who might have opposed or criticised the new‑master of the Kremlin. Litvinenko was merely one of these. He and those like him had to be taught a lesson and given a warning. That, at least, is Moscow’s *philosophy.
But one dead Russian in a London hospital does not affect the US or the rest of Nato. One murdered defector does not start a Cold War. The outrage over bilateral diplomat-chucking is just *ritualised sabre-rattling.
If a new Cold War is in the *offing it will stem from Russia’s obsessional lust to expunge the memory of the humiliating Nineties, become a major power again and then‑use that‑power as she always‑does – to bully smaller *neighbours. And her weapons will not be rockets and nuclear warheads alone but her new Doomsday Weapon – oil and gas. This is not good news for the West.
In the Nineties, when corrupt Russian bureaucrats were *virtually giving away Russia’s oil and gas deposits to opportunists who could rustle up the‑bribes, it was believed she had‑useful but not staggering deposits. Now we know *better.
Using Western technology, jaw-dropping deposits have been found in Siberia and as far‑as Sakhalin Island, just north of Japan.
Originally, joint-venture contracts were drawn up to exploit them: Russia’s Gazprom mono**poly and our gas/petrol giants in partnership, but Putin is *tearing up those contracts as he wants it‑all. Those deposits turn a quite poor country into a massively rich country and they serve two purposes: first, the money they provide can
re-arm Russia to something miles beyond the‑once fearsome Soviet Union. Already, Putin’s arms investment has exploded as tens of‑billions are spent developing undersea-launched ballistic missiles, nuclear overland rockets, fighters, bombers and tank armies.
The second purpose is even more threatening. The West has an inexhaustible appetite for energy. That is where Putin’s second weapon comes in. To supply or, far more dangerously, to *withhold that gas and oil, confers savage power. And he will use it, directly or via his coming domination of the Organ*isation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), to have the once-proud, even arrogant, West begging for it as a junkie begs for his fix. That is where the Cold War will brew.
The signs are already here. Two winters ago Putin brought Ukraine to its knees by cutting off its gas *supplies. Georgia was then brought to heel when a mysterious explosion ripped apart a major pipe bringing gas to her capital.
Our EU partners have already placed vast orders; Germany recently *doubled her requirement to 80 billion cubic metres.
Britain’s position is little *better. We are locked, thanks to Tony Blair, into a futile war in Iraq. We have to stabilise Afghanistan lest the Taliban take over again. In that *struggle our Nato allies are‑reduced to Americans, Canadians, Danes and some Dutch. Once again Franco-Germany, when the chips are down, are as much use as a chocolate fireguard. And we face global terrorism.
But what about our North Sea oil? We have had it for so long that people forget it is running out. In 10 years we will be 80 per cent dependent on imported energy.
In my boyhood, the danger was the Red Army and its 40,000 massed battle tanks. For a boy today, the danger will be a nation enslaved to its *suppliers of energy. That is why, to survive the coming Cold War rich and free, we must manufacture our own energy. New nuclear reactors are *simply unavoidable.
The Russian bear is rising again and the Russian bear does not take prisoners, nor lust for genuine friends. It seeks only to dominate.
guess what i did Jamie
19 July 2007, 04:40 AM
#15
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19 July 2007, 08:13 AM
#16
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Oh come on! We've just chucked out 4 of their diplomats because they refuse to extradite Lugovoy to us.
But they've been asking for Borosetzky for ages and we've refused.
SUDDENLY we point to a plot to kill him that we just happened to foil etc etc.
Yeah right. And pigs might fly
Alcazar
But they've been asking for Borosetzky for ages and we've refused.
SUDDENLY we point to a plot to kill him that we just happened to foil etc etc.
Yeah right. And pigs might fly
Alcazar
