Cold Cash, Not Cold War

How Russia's new economic ties to the West diminish the possibility of a violent confrontation with the U.S.

By Daniel Gross | Newsweek Web Exclusive

Aug 21, 2008 | Updated: 3:03 p.m. ET Aug 21, 2008

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Discuss

Posted By: lovejusticepeace @ 08/22/2008 12:37:53 PM

Comment: Poland-US shield is an enigama.
Shield against whom?
Russia ? China ? India ? Iran ?Pakistan ?
Whom is it going to shield ? Poland ? Former Soviet republics ? All of Europe ?
If these questions are not answered , then it will result in Russia having a shield in SouthAmerica to protect its allies there.
China will have a shield in NorthKorea to protect NorthKorea,China,Vietnam,Tibet,Hongkong,Macau.
India can have a shield in the Himalayas to protect SouthAsia.
Iran will erect a shield in the North to protect Iran, Iraq.
Pakistan will have a shield at NWFP to protect Pakistan.
Posted By: morbie5 @ 08/22/2008 11:51:10 AM

Comment: We are going to need Russia on our side when one day in the future China decides to throw around its weight.
Posted By: jblackwell88 @ 08/22/2008 9:47:01 AM

Comment: Basically you're not going to hear anyone on OUR side use words like "genocide" or talk about "freedom" for Ossetians, but it doesn't suit our purpose for being there. This crisis is an embarrassment to the US, and it should be, because here we are meddling again - a classic case of blow-back. It blew up in our faces, and now thousands are dead. When is the US going to learn that it doesn't serve our purpose to arm one side or another in a dozen conflicts around the globe? We created the Muhajadeen to counter the Soviets in Afghanistan and what we got was Bin Laden. We installed the Shah in Iran and we got the Islamic Revolution and a hostage crisis. We installed Saddam to counter Iran, and we can all see how that went. Now here's the kicker : we're going broke! Our dollar is going down the toilet, oil through the roof, everyone is onto our crap and they hate us now. How in the world was this supposed to be good for the American people? But then again, if anyone up there was actually representing Americans, we probably wouldn't have an open border either. Howbout them apples.
- Posted By: Braes @ 08/22/2008 11:19:52 AM
  
  Comment: My contention, is that since 1998, the only thing Ivan has wanted in red is a Ferrari. We have undertaken measures hostile to his interests since. While his people were freezing in the winter as pensions stopped, we ran amok in his backyard and built pipelines around him. Free-trade isn't free if it comes with staggering consequences. The fascists have tried to steal all of the worlds oil. They have tried to make old Ivan a strategic cripple and now are threatening his nuclear stockpile.
  As for debt, Warren Buffett today estimated ours at 58 trillion, counting all projections in Medicaid and Medicare, etc. Ivan has learned, in the Cold War we spent them into oblivion on defense. This time around it is we who have made exceptionally extraordinary expenditures with little long gain. Much of our nations armor is in disrepair or deployed, most of our army is in cycle for the same, our Air Force can't find all of it's nukes or buy systems without open cheating and graft... staggering.
  McCain's top boy is a Georgian operative/lobbyist/politico with ties to Achmed Chalabi and the Iraq (2003) war. He sells wars. Unless we put people like him in GITMO, someone is going to come along and do it to all of us.
  - Posted By: jblackwell88 @ 08/22/2008 12:04:02 PM
    
    Comment: I agree with your entire assessment, only I don't exactly categorize Neoconservatives as "fascists" ( illegal aliens anyone? ), nor do I think Obama will answer to a different master. Obama has put on the yarmulke, just like Bush and Clinton. I am far enough to right of either red or blue that they both look blue, and both promote policies that are destructive to the health of a nation. 30 years from now we will NOT be a superpower, and it has everything to with whats different now from 50 years ago. Some things you might want to label "progress", and I won't debate on that, but it is what it is. Our country today is exactly the product of its own design.
Posted By: hestia_m @ 08/22/2008 9:28:08 AM

Comment: Mr. Gross' article purports to explain why a new cold war is unlikely. What he (perhaps unwittingly) did is explain why it *IS* likely. Russia no longer has a credible military threat, but they don't need it. They can threaten the west with economics sanctions. Without oil and gas, and the loans to buy them, the west is screwed. Yikes.
- Posted By: Braes @ 08/22/2008 11:06:22 AM
  
  Comment: Ivan has lots of "soft-power." The Generally on Pills party has cast this aside in order to spend blood and treasure with abandon.
Posted By: jblackwell88 @ 08/22/2008 9:23:49 AM

Comment: Gee you would never think by reading this that Georgia had shelled civilians in their sleep with heavy artillery. What about those "freedom loving" Ossetians that declared independence right after Georgia did?
Posted By: jsmith13 @ 08/21/2008 5:26:52 PM

Comment: While the world is much changed place since the spring of 1939 the rhetoric and actions of recent weeks between the west and Russia over the situation in Georgia is eerily similar to the steps that played out 69 years ago in Europe that led directly to world war. On March 31st 1939, then prime minister Neville Chamberlain of Great Britain made a war guarantee to Poland that if Germany attacked Britain (and France) would come to its aid against Hitler. Britain was foolish to make such pact that it could never make good on. Hitler knew this and played the allies like a fiddle. Change the names of the players and you have just a little bit of history repeating. America is Britain, Western Europe NATO countries are the loose coalition of countries that Hitler faced in undermining the Versailles Treaty. Georgia is Poland and South Ossetia looks like Czechoslovakia did to Hitler in 1937. With the recent NATO missile pact with Poland to defend against Russian aggression towards the west I would say a war guarantee by the US that it knows it cannot make good on puts us/NATO on a dangerous path all to much like the one Neville Chamberlain lived to regret in so many ways. If a U.S. state department official utters something along the lines "peace in our time" I for one will start looking for shelter in a bunker!
- Posted By: Braes @ 08/22/2008 11:09:16 AM
  
  Comment: You mean the State Department that under republicrazies has run Blackwater savages through villages shooting up hapless civilains? Yeah, I guess you would be afraid of them if they started running a diplomatic shop again, instead of stealing passport information, running oil wars, spying on Americans, etc.
  Yeah, I'd worry about loss of a state-police apparat if I were commited to world policing.
- Posted By: jblackwell88 @ 08/22/2008 9:32:24 AM
  
  Comment: You guys are wasting your time with analogies. No one started WWI or WWII with nuclear weapons. The mathematics are entirely difference. Personally I don't see Russia stomping on our puppet something to get all tizzy about. We AND the Israelis sold the Georgians weapons, trained their forces, made them blusterous promises, and basically ENABLED them to commit war-crimes in Ossetia. Immediately after the attacks, Russia made an appeal for cease fire, and it was rejected by Saakashvili. Only then did they invade. But I gotta give the Russians credit for one thing... their leaders aren't going to be dropping any bombs on the Russian taxpayer to rebuild Georgia, and at least when they invaded it wasn't 100% based predicated upon lies. America doesn't like invasions unless it comes with a slick package of BS with a bow on top. People need to be asking themselves why Freedom is OK for Kosovo, when we're cannibalizing a Soviet ally, and catching Serbs as putting them before the Hague as war criminals, but freedom is NOT OK for Ossetians, and we're not hunting down Georgians who did the EXACT same things that the Serbs did.
  - Posted By: jblackwell88 @ 08/22/2008 9:35:23 AM
    
    Comment: Pardon my grammar, I just noticed a few gratuitous words in there. ;)
    - Posted By: Braes @ 08/22/2008 11:03:33 AM
      
      Comment: Oh no foul at all. The Chaimberlain Straw Man is all a part of enfeebling Obama, Democrats, and is absolutely going to be thrown in Democrats face until they get it. The GOP knows that the Democrats wont side with Russia, ever.
- Posted By: tc125231 @ 08/21/2008 10:39:20 PM
  
  Comment: You know, if you actually knew some history rather than mythology, you would realize that it is a lot closer to the run up to WWI than the run up to WWII.
  
  If I hear one more poorly informed right-winger lecture me about "peace in our time" I am going to lose my lunch.
  - Posted By: Braes @ 08/22/2008 11:00:12 AM
    
    Comment: Look they spout lies and half truths to low information/education voters in a grade 8 reading society. The talk radio fascists have inspired a generation of Neo Con rabble. Krauthhammer wants to get it on with Russia now and is beating the war drums:
    * Charles Krauthammer: Russia Growls, NATO Meows http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer082208.php3
    The more war, the more relevant Johnny MaC seems. More Oil monopoly, More war, More conquest!
    - Posted By: ualexm @ 08/22/2008 12:29:57 PM
      
      Comment: More conquest??? By whom Russia or the United States?? If anyone in the United States honestly thinks that currently with all the domestic and foreign problems we face, we can also take on Russia should be sent to the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's sickening that people born with silver spoons talk all the b.s. but then the people born with wooden spoons have to fix the b.s.