How Not To Punish Moscow

Wake up and smell the stench of death that???s coming.

It would appear to me Afghanistan and Iraq are bit players in a much larger conflict which has been gaining momentum under Putin. War is not only about shooting numerous people it is about setting the scene for the purposeful destruction of another society by whatever means.

Putin as Hitler and other megalomaniac rulers of which I must say some number of past Russian leaders are represented is in the process of dismantling the US and associated Western allies piece by piece. Why? It is in their nature to destroy, not to create unity of purpose. Fear and death are their tools of trade; the manufacture of war machines not health systems and a freedom to pursue independent citizenry.

How will it unfold?

Simply read your history. People like Putin and the others are unable to stay still for too long as it will give time for the outcomes from past actions to envelope them in the nasty process of accountability. They protect and pride themselves in keeping foes and supposedly friends continually off balance. Stalin was a perfectionist of this art.

The atrocities become unbearable; the provocative wave of bombers and submarines go a meter too far; one super weapon too many; another raised Russian flag in someone else???s kitchen. It will happen.

In a one to one personal relationship this is not much of a trouble you simply tell the psychotic person to get lost. The trouble is when you are dealing with someone who controls power particularly a whole nations resources with nuclear weapons with ambitions which stretch from north to south poles we as a human race have real problems.

I would like those who love or hate Putin to stop and think seriously about what a first strike actually means. For this is what I can see will be Putin???s gift to our children and I underline our.

Whether it be China, France, Russia, England or the USA who presses the button first the reason the trigger is pulled will be of Putin???s making.

Some Russians like many societies before them are obtaining a short lived cheap thrill from a sense of power over others which will lead to their own and others inevitable destruction.

Wake up and smell the stench of death that???s coming.

"The system works well when everyone plays the game on equal terms."

Did the author conveniently forget how the Soviet Union collapsed? The Soviet disappeared because the game weren't played equally. This article is quite ridiculous and hard to be taken seriously.

Why must we punish Russia? How about stop breaking agreements we have with Russia by stop pushing NATO to their borders. Russia must respond somehow!
After America builds rocket shield on their borders and Russia must respond by placing nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad, how shall we punish them then?
Well, first we can come up with a way of punishing Russia for responding when US-sponsored Georgia commited genocide against Russian citizens.
The worst possible thing we can do to punish Russia is just continuing the policy we had towards them the whole time. America is already using cold war tactics towards Russia, so what else can be done towards them? As Medvedev said, "we are prepared for a cold war". Americas cold war never ended to begin with

There is an interesting suggestion from Steve Levine. The Russians have a big weakness. The West should keep in mind Russia's Achilles Heel while dealing with Putin and Medvedev. Levine knows this area, having covered wars in Chechnya, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Tajikistan as well as the Soviet-Afghan war: http://oilandglory.com/2008/08/russias-achilles-heel.html

Anti-Communist government of Russua is hardly capable of reviving once powerful Soviet industry so do not worry about "Russian might".

Reading this news article, it has become blatantly apparent for the world to recognize just how weak the position of many "world powers" are in the current global scenario.

Russia is the "new" emerging power of the world....not China....not India....not the EU. For better or for worse, the world needs to deal with it.


Quote from article that says it all:
"The system works well when everyone plays the game on equal terms. But the outcome can be poor if an important player is half in, half out. Russia's energy resources and its financial reserves make it a key player that needs to be kept fully within the system, not pushed out to the margin."


The problem is, the world during the 90s made a lot of promises, and never held any of them to Russia/Soviets.....and now they are really "pissed", and look like they WANT to go out to the margin by themselves.

Georgia is nothing more than an hors d'auvre........this is going to get ugly in a real hurry, and you can see it on the faces of the Amercians running the show like Rice, Bush, and now McCain.....

If you think Iraq/Afghanistan was bad.....The US really got caught with their pants down on this one. If you have any doubts, go to youtube and see any of the live"press conference" feeds/links that the US or Georgia have on this issue......Faces to accompany the term "fear" in a dictionary.

Russia has used its economic/resource leverage against Western Europe to make it cow-tow to Putin's actions and so the response being proposed here is to give them MORE economic/resource leverage against the West?!?!? For some odd reason I have to question this arguments weight.

In the end, all that matters is the international economic system, right? When morality sinks that low then there is little morality. We rush into Iraq, a country with a nasty dictator yet no more nasty than 25 or so nasty dictators, but this one dictator was sitting on black gold, now we do nothing when one of our supposedly allies gets stomped by invasion, because doing something would hurt the economy, let's all take a deep breath, lean back, and have a good laugh at what our country has become.

In the end, all that matters is the international economic system, right? When morality sinks that low then there is little morality. We rush into Iraq, a country with a nasty dictator yet no more nasty than 25 or so nasty dictators, but this one dictator was sitting on black gold, now we do nothing when one of our supposedly allies gets stomped by invasion, because doing something would hurt the economy, let's all take a deep breath, lean back, and have a good laugh at what our country has become.