Or should that be 'meet the new war, same as the cold war', for once again the Russian Bear is blustering about Eastern Europe. In the truth is stranger than fiction category, the United States has taken a hard line stance against Russian aggression along with it's new found allies, and former Warsaw Pact countries, Poland, Ukraine, The Czech Republic and the Baltic States. The United Kingdom, already annoyed with Russia over the poisoning of Andrei Litvinenko, is rather edgy. While the rest of Europe, with strange dark spots on the crotch of their pants, runs to and fro, kissing the Bear's 'Gas'... afraid of the Russians cutting off their supply.
It seems our 'western' European allies are back in their thirties appeasement mode, while our 'eastern' European allies all too well know the price of freedom. Meanwhile we get to watch pretty girls swimming and doing gymnastics on the majority of our media outlets. One can only wonder what madness is this?
The West missed, or intentionally let slip, many opportunities to bring Russia into the fold, payback for years of transgressions real and imagined. As the CS monitor put it "The sky grows dark with chickens coming home to roost". Don't get me wrong, Russia must be told clearly, and point blank that the sovereignty of it's neighbors must be respected. Now more then ever, the West must stand united, unless we want to return to the days of yore. We had a more democratic Russia not so long ago, a Russia working to transform itself into a modern western industrial society and suffering severe economic consequences as a result while we stood by gleefully smirking with our we won, you lost attitude.
Today we are stuck with a Russia moving down an authoritarian path, restricting free speech and the media. Yet like Germany in the 1930's it is a Russia, which due to it's hydrocarbon wealth appears to its people to be prospering as a result of Putin's power grab. He, and his little foray into Georgia has the widespread support of the Russian people. No one likes to be shamed and laughed at, and following the collapse of the Soviet Union, we, the West, treated Russia like a joke. Now, we pay the consequences.
It is the West's difficult path now to show Russia that this kind of behavior is intolerable, yet we must at the same time accord them the respect they deserve. NATO's expansion to the east, while undoubtedly the right thing to do, is unarguably threatening to the Russian state, the Russians, after their treatment at the end of the cold war have no reason to trust us. We have, in this current difficulty, an opportunity to move in a different direction. The question that remains is what direction will that be? Another five decade standoff? Or an honestly different tact.
South Ossetia is indisputably part of the nation of Georgia, the Russian 'peacekeepers' indisputably sided with the separatists. Russia cannot act as an honest broker with the Georgians, nor can the Georgians be trusted to act civilly with the Ossetians. A joint Russian-NATO effort, odd as it may sound, might do wonders. The Russians don't trust the Georgians, the West doesn't trust the Ossetians... the question is can the Russians and NATO put aside their posturing and work together for the common good. No one, I would suspect, wants a return to the cold war.
I spent the first nine years of my military career, prior to the collapse of the Berlin wall, working missile warning radars, keeping an eye on the Russian bear. Take it from an old cold warrior, there has got to be a better way.
~Finntann~
