Look, this stuff is important and scary.

I was lying in bed last night thinking about a post that had been in my head for the past day. I sent an email to my friend Tejash in response to his comment on the situation with Russia.

My thoughts boil down to this:

1. Georgia is not totally innocent in all this

2. While they had every right to exert control over the province in question – it is part of their country, the fact that so many of the population holds Russian citizenship made the move stupid.

3. I really wonder what Georgia was thinking Russia would do? Sit back and let it happen? Did they expect the U.S., already bogged down in two wars, to come to their aid and risk war with Russia?

4. However, it is kind of odd that Russia had so much available firepower right along the boarder. They had more than just a boarder security force. It appears they had armored columns just waiting to roll.

Anyway, I didn’t want to give the impression that the Georgians were totally without blame, but I do worry that Russia’s actions are consistent with their veiled threats against other former republics in regards to NATO and a missile shield.

This does seem to be part of Russia’s long range plans to regain control over their former buffer states as a way to counter act American power.

Today we learned that Poland has agreed to house missiles as part of a missile defense shield. Why? They just saw what happened to Georgia and they don’t want to be next.

The Russian’s response?

A top Russian general said Friday that Poland’s agreement to accept a U.S. missile interceptor base exposes the ex-communist nation to attack, possibly by nuclear weapons, the Interfax news agency reported.

The statement by Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn is the strongest threat that Russia has issued against the plans to put missile defense elements in former Soviet satellite nations.

Russia is also scared to death of Ukraine entering NATO.

With that in mind, here is what my friend Tejash has to say and I tend to agree with him:

[In answer to what Russia is up to]…Oil. That and to test how strong NATO is or will be. This is Russia trying to figure out how the next 20 years of its existence will play out.

Sure there is a lot of bravado at work, and a best effort made to rekindle the feeling of Nationalism. China has taught Russia, that you don’t have to let go of dictatorship when you remove the Communist ideology. Earlier this year when the Tibet-related unrest created boos and hisses from the international community, in China itself, the reverse occurred. People, so distorted on the existence and reality of Tibet felt that there was something so unholy and so un-patriotic going on, that a proud and resurgent Nationalistic spirit took over just prior to the Olympics. (The earthquake, as unfortunate as it was, worked wonders on nationalism as well) Russia is going to see how it too will need to tinker with its own national pride.

With price of Oil where it is, all countries, and I mean ALL countries with oil…every Tom, Hugo, and Vladimir, thinks they have reached immortal status, and the right to carry a big stick. They have all kinds of wealth rolling in, thus the thick wallet to really flex some muscle.

So what with NATO slowly surrounding Russia, from it’s 7 o’clock to 11 o’clock position they are going to test how the NATO countries react to a notion of one of their future partners getting roughed-up a bit. One of the most obvious reasons is due to one of it’s Natural Gas pipelines that run through Georgia, while the other, to test the solidarity of NATO and its raison d’etre.

I have a feeling that since Georgia is not in the NATO fold, and the international community kind of just did a belly flop, Russia got the affirmation it was looking for. They also timed it perfectly. Middle of the Olympics. Most of the International communities have most of their foreign correspondents handling PR in Beijing. And of course, it’s dead-middle of August. In August half of Europe is on Vacation. Even the news orgs are missing people, either due to the Olympics or due to the Holiday season. Russia has been planning this for a while in my opinion. I mean how does one mobilize hundreds of tanks that quickly, and in such short notice. We are not just talking tanks. But those bad-ass T-72’s suck gallons not in hours but in minutes. Imagine the logistics coordination, the supply trucks, the men required for that. This was not a spur of the moment decision. If it was, they would have sent in Paratroopers, and light mechanized force. But bringing in tanks takes some effort.

So what now? Well I don’t necessarily think they will take over Georgia. Not yet at least. But don’t be surprised if you see some squabble arise with the most recently joined NATO countries in the Baltic’s (Latvia, Estonia) or with Bulgaria, and Romania in the next 12-18 months. With the ultimate warning going to Ukraine. They will never, NEVER, let Ukraine join NATO. There will be WWIII before that happens. If Russia goes after any of the new NATO members, everyone will be watching how strongly NATO reacts. What are they willing to do? Basically this will be NATO’s ‘put up or shut up’ time. Will we send forces to support these members as we are obligated to do? Me thinks no. Why? Mostly because most of NATO’s founding nations are in no position to do anything. And what about the USA? Well again. We can try, but do we have any leverage or the will? Due to our debt imbalance, we borrow heavily from countries like China, and Russia, to pay for our spending habits. Second, we love oil. We can’t get enough of it. So like a pimped-out crack whore, we suck down the oil with no understanding of the future consequences. So even though the crack whore gets testy with the drug dealer, they would never kill the goose. Or better yet CAN’T kill the goose.

We need clarity in this situation.

Tejash, I cut off your ending because I wanted to highlight what the dangers are with Russia. I plan on making another post using the rest of your comment and some of my input.