Russian Invasion of Georgia Tests Decadent NATO
All the glorious rhetoric about the achievements of the socialist revolution won’t put a Russian can opener on the shelves of Wal-Mart. Any hopes the former core of the Soviet Union and one time beacon of the world wide communist revolution would join the world economy with the reforms of Gorbachev and Yelstin have been dashed by the regressive rule of Vladimir Putin. For all practical purposes Russia is a resource rich third world country with nuclear weapons intent on reviving it’s expansionist aspirations using it’s energy resources to subdue Europe and expand it’s control of those resources by reasserting political control of any former republic that could supply energy to the West on it’s own.
While Russia possesses advanced technical capabilities, particularly those pertaining to military applications, most of the practical technologies of the former Soviet Union escaped their control with the liberation of Eastern Europe in the 1990’s. East Germany and the Czech Republic were the source of the skilled work force and advanced manufacturing technologies the Soviets depended on. The extremely wealthy Russian Oligarchy that has emerged with the development of energy resources and the rise of Vladamir Putin appears more like the elite of the Romanov Dynasty of Imperial Russia than the captains of industry in any industrial democracy.
Russia currently supplies about 25% of the oil and gas consumed by Western Europe. Russian oil output has increased from approximately 6 million barrels a day in 1998 to over 9 million earlier this year. But British Petroleum experts state that output at these levels will be short lived and the techniques involved will result in ever increasing production costs. Wresting control of the former Soviet State of Georgia would would give Moscow the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline which provides other former Soviet Republics, namely neighboring Kazakhstan with potential reserves as high as 100 billion barrels, an avenue to deliver their energy resources to Western markets without approval of their former master.
The former Soviet satellites of Georgia and the Ukraine have eagerly applied for NATO membership with tacit U.S. approval. Support from Western European members of the alliance have been less eager. However, The International Herald Tribune reports today that NATO ambassadors will, in fact, travel to Georgia to assess the situation there and review its path to membership ["War in Gerogia exposes NATO's fault lines"]. As reported in the article
“Russia is furious with NATO’s refusal to back down from its commitment to admit - one day - Georgia and Ukraine into the U.S.-led military alliance, a pledge made during its summit meeting last April … and repeated since Russia rolled into Georgia after the Georgians attacked South Ossetia.”
Anxiety over these recent Russian incursions into Georgia have increased public approval in Poland and the Czech Republic to implement a U.S. supplied antimissile shield on Polish soil which would include U.S. troops.
President Bush was at the Olympics sitting near Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin when reports of the Russian incursions into Georgian territory. While the exchange of words that appeared on television where not audible it was apparent President Bush was angered by the actions. It was French President Nicolas Sarkozy who first approached the Russians with and negotiated a cease fire agreement, something that would not have happened under the recent leftest regime of Jacques Chirac.
Jacques Chirac and the former Chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schroeder joined Putin in Bilking the U.N. Oil For Food program for billions of dollars. Germany, France and Russia earned additional billions from various construction and technology projects in Iraq while assuring Suddam Hussein the United States would never actually follow through with the 2003 invasion. There is no greater example of how greed and corruption can compromise the security of a nation than the collusion practiced by Chirac and Schroeder in cooperation with Putin.
In 2005 Chancellor Schroeder committed Germany to a deal with the Russian government controlled gas company, Gazprom, to build a $4.7 billion pipeline built in the Baltic Sea. Schroeder’s government even guaranteed a major portion of the loan to build the project. The much greater expense of this underwater project can only serve one purpose as noted in a Washington Post article:
“The only possible reason for doing so was political: the Baltic Sea pipeline could allow Russia, a country that has made political use of its energy resources, to cut off gas to Central Europe and the Baltic states while still delivering gas to Germany.”
Shortly after leaving office Schroeder became a board member of the North European Gas Pipeline Company [NEGP] which was formed by the venture he got approved. With knowledge of the project, the German electorate would choose the conservative Angela Merkel of the Christian Democratic Party to serve as the next chancellor.
The presence of Merkel and Sarkozy alone won’t guarantee a tough stand by NATO against Putin’s grand scheme of a revived Soviet style political domination of it’s neighbors. But it will go a long way to provide support for the dominant partner in the alliance, the United States, if in fact the U.S. elects an administration willing to stand up to it’s former nemasis in this coming November. As President Bush tried to remind us earlier this year appeasement in the face of aggression has a history of failure. We can only stave off the fate of Putin’s aggression if we do more to develop and secure our own energy resources as well as the independent states of the Caspian region in conjunction with NATO and help provide the Members and Partners of the alliance with the resources to maintain their national integrity.