It’s not the cavalry but it is important

Bexleyite

This is 1938. 1939 may come next year, the year after, five years later or 10 years later.

Where's Brown? Where's Miliband? His father fled the Russians.

Somebody would have said something in 1988. And in 1998.

In 2008... just silence.

Irish Redmondite

Foreign Policy now outsourced to Europe. Didn't you read the Lisbon Treaty, ratified and now deposited in Rome?

Fergus Pickering

I suppose it's my age but to me the Russians will always be the enemy and the Americans our friends. Europeans are neither here nor there. It's a pity we, the British, are represented by Brown, a man who mislaid his backbone way back in the mists of time. I don't think it's 1939 all over again because America is (still and thank God for it) too strong.

prziloczek

And where is Europe? No army, no political unity, just lots of bombast and M Sarkozy rushing all over the place.
He makes all of us Europeans look like fools.

Ray

Whilst the US aid effort should be the public face of a coded warning to Russia, hopefully behind the scenes the State Department will now go out of its way to reassure Russia that the United States respects 'the Bear's' vital interests in the Transcaucus and harbours no hostile intent.

The Americans should also remind the Russians that, for all the points of difference that have emerged between them, there are two over-arching concerns that ought to cause them both to work together to lower tensions and return to a more harmonious relationship.

Firstly, both the United States and Russia have reason to fear a resurgent Islam, with all its potential for stirring up trouble along Russia's southern borders. Secondly, both have cause to be wary of the growing might of China - in Russia's case because a populous, assertive China might one day want to reopen its quarrel with Russia over the under-populated provinces of eastern Siberia. And for all their newfound energy wealth, the Russians cannot be unaware of underlying weaknesses in their society (not the least being a plummeting population) that will limit their ability to confront these threats on their own.

That both China and Iran have been wooed by Russia may in large measure have been due to 'the Bear' feeling the need for an effective counter-balance to the Bush administration's strident foreign policy. However, with a bit more subtlety and humility it is not inconceivable that the United States could achieve its legitimate security aspirations without needlessly making enemies where it shouldn't.

Jack Burton in the Pork Chop Express

And the Royal Navy has cancelled a joint exercise with Russia. That'll teach 'em.

Rule Britannia, etc

Ted Tedford

Ray: You're right, up to a point. But does Russia 'teaching us a lesson' about the 'equivalence' [sic] between Kosovo and S Ossetia make Russia safer from Islamism? I doubt it, especially when it has endorsed rhetorically a precedent that logically should permit Chechnya to secede. To say nothing of the many other parts of Russia where its Muslim population is ascendent. As you say, it's a demographic basket-case - leasing huge tracts of land to China, and having to re-bore its sewerage in major towns to cope with the dwindling effluence.

And our failure to stand up for the democracies in her orbit are no inspiration for moderate/reformist campaigners in the nastier Islamic states, just as our 'accommodation' of Soviet expansionism in the 1970s was no succour to dissidents or reformers in the USSR.

Fortunately, the other former statellites have shamed Europe by standing up publicly with Saakashvili against Moscow. This has done nothing to increase Russians influence in its near abroad except to drive them closer to Nato.

Russia has won a short-term domestic victory but faces a longer-term regional - if not global - setback.

CG

I just wish that Richard Nixon was back in the White House. I'd been sympathetic to McCain but have gone right off him after hearing the nonsense he has come out with in the last few days. Henry Kissinger once said that the statesman soon learns to go for the best that can be achieved, not the best that can be imagined. He's now an adviser to McCain, so if McCain is elected, I hope he heeds this advice.

JONNY

Don't let's get over-excited.
Just end-game moves. Uncle Sam trying to tell us he won't be shuffled around. But a wee bird tells me Georgia won't be joining Nato.

JONNY

Sorry to add to my previous post.
But I must point out that the Russians have a vast array of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Enough to settle our hash for some time to come.
Alright some of them may be a bit long in the tooth and rusty. But they tell me a squirt of WD40 works wonders.

So tread with care my friends.

Ted Tedford

JONNY: Your wee bird (Kylie? Janette Krankie?) might be right, but, if so, this would be a self-inflicted defeat for Nato. Granting Georgia membership would deny Russia her main foreign policy objective in the theatre: to 'contaminate' Georgia and keep her out of Nato. She had been pretty successful, particularly by persuading Germany to block it at Macedonia. That was clever use of (moderately) soft power.

But now it's impossible to ignore the problem, and more importantly there is almost no chance of Russia again attacking Georgia, and with an international verification mission in place, the situation will be sufficiently stable to re-admit Georgia.

If Saakashvili gambled and lost tactically - and Russia did *not* expect Georgia to be so bold in response to its bullying, as its largely ineffective initial military response suggests - I think Putin lost his temper (that pesky pride again), gambled and lost strategically.

TGF UKIP

I'm now more than ever convinced that George Kennan is posting from his recent grave under the pseudonym "Ray."

George Kennan (deceased)

So, gentlemen, was I wrong?

Tim Carpenter LPUK

As I have long said, the EU is the Austro-Hungarian Empire circa 1914, but without the nice uniforms.