The Russian invasion of Georgia is giving me the creeps. I can’t help but wonder if we are back in 1936, when Nazi Germany invaded the Rhineland. The big powers decided to mostly look the other way. Don’t worry, Hitler won’t go any further, he has a legitimate gripe. Yea, right. <\/p>\n
This Georgia thing is really bad news. And given that oil and gas prices probably aren’t going drop significantly, Russia will only get stronger in the coming years. Stronger and bolder. I hope that whoever is elected President this fall is ready for some nasty weather. Only good thing about it: it will put us back into a triangulation with China. I’m sure that they’re going to be doing some militarizing on their northern boarder in the near future. Hopefully that will take the pressure off Taiwan.<\/p>\n
PS, I’ve read the articles saying that the USA has no right to criticize Russia after what it did in Iraq and Kosovo. OK, the USA is not without its sins, especially in Iraq. But two wrongs don’t make a right, and the Russian wrong of trying to crush a legitimate democracy so as to reestablish a vassal state is in a different league.<\/span><\/p>\n PPS, I also don’t buy the argument that the USA has ‘taunted the bear’ by allowing former Soviet block nations to join the European Union and NATO. Hey, if Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, and now the Ukraine and Georgia want to be part of the west, what right do we have to say ‘oh no, you have to go back to your former slavemaster, we don’t want to get him angry’. Also, I understand that until recently, we have shown restraint by not stationing US and British battalions and warplanes along the Russian border. Now we are going to put US military personnel and equipment in Poland, as part of Bush’s anti-missile system. I don’t completely agree with the anti-missile system, but I don’t feel sorry for the Russians after their recent conduct in Georgia.<\/span><\/p>\n PPPS, the thing to watch now is Cuba. Will the Russians re-kindle the old friendship with the new Castro regime, through promises of cheap oil and gas (like back in the Cold War days)? And also re-establish a Russian military presence there, e.g. Russian warships using Cuban ports, or Russian radar and electronic listening posts on the island? Stay tuned for the next exciting episode!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Russian invasion of Georgia is giving me the creeps. I can’t help but wonder if we are back in 1936, when Nazi Germany invaded the Rhineland. The big powers decided to mostly look the other way. Don’t worry, Hitler won’t go any further, he has a legitimate gripe. Yea, right. This Georgia thing is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5597,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions\/5597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}