Or more accurately, the illusion of security for the American Homeland.

The Cold War arms race was largely manufactured from outright lies about Soviet nuclear capabilities. (Nothing new to see - move along please...) The Soviets had bombs, but they didn't have nearly as many bombs as intelligence analysts stated they did. With accurate intelligence the pace of the Cold War would have been much slower and the threat of total nuclear wipe-out much lower.

There's something truly psychotic at the heart of the US establishment. It's not as insane as Stalin and Hitler were, but it seems to suffer from a milder form of the same sociopathy - albeit directed more towards siphoning tax money towards military adventurism than rounding up millions of civilians into camps.

That would be the rational response, wouldn't it?

That is a bit of a problem with the approach, but the Russians are sort of short of options here ... and maybe the Polish and Czech governments could have a think what a targeted departure from the CFE would mean for their borders ...

I always thought expanding NATO to the East was insane. When Madeline Albright proposed it I thought, "Hey Madeline, why you want to fuck with the Big Bear? Especially a bear that plays chess very well."

Hey, Grandma Moses started late!

I'm pretty sure the Soviets, uh Russians, explained it in detail to him.

We're letting the US drag us down with it.

Let the Albatross soar...

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."

I've often wondered whether it is better to be far-sightedly cynical or short-sightedly altruistic.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

Thanks for that comment.

Does nobody remember this one?

NTI: Bush-Putin summit, November 2001 (Michael Jasinski, December 2001)

The most closely watched part of the discussions, however, was the question of strategic arms control. In spite of expectations that the two presidents might reach a breakthrough on the ABM Treaty, no such breakthrough materialized. The two presidents, however, expressed readiness to sharply reduce their countries' strategic nuclear arsenals, and following the December 13, 2001 U.S. declaration of intent to withdraw from the ABM Treaty, some observers speculated that Bush and Putin had reached an informal agreement on the withdrawal during their Crawford meeting.

...

Following the friendly earlier meetings between Bush and Putin, some observers expected the two presidents to reach a breakthrough on the crucial issue of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which would allow the United States to proceed with the National Missile Defense program without having to withdraw from the treaty. Such a breakthrough, however, did not materialize. But the two presidents appeared ready to sharply reduce their countries' strategic nuclear arsenals, and there are some indications that the Russian Federation has informally adopted a more flexible stance on the ABM Treaty.

...

During the summit, President Bush unilaterally pledged to reduce the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal from 7,000 deployed warheads to only 1,700-2,200 over a period of 10 years. The promised unilateral cuts in effect side-step the START II treaty and its warhead ceiling of 3,000-3,500 warheads. In response, Putin promised that Russia would respond in kind and reduce its own strategic nuclear arsenal consisting of 6,000 warheads by two-thirds, which would also leave approximately 2,000 deployed Russian nuclear warheads. ... Moreover, the two presidents appeared to have had different views on how formalized the new commitments ought to be. Whereas Putin insisted on turning the commitments into a formal treaty, Bush expressed a preference for a far more informal, and unbinding, arrangement.

I remember Bush came up with some trademark bullshik along the lines of "gentlemen don't need treaties" [but States do, unless you have a patrimonial vision of the State, like Bush] and something about "looking into Putin's eyes", etc.

Let's not look at the propaganda from November 13, 2001...

Johnson's Russia List: Bush, Putin Build a Friendship (By NANCY BENAC on November 12, 2001) — this one shows Bush and Putin drooling over each other despite earlier mutually dismissive statements.

The Acronym Institute: Disarmament Diplomacy (November 2001) — this one has very interesting transcripts from the press conference, all about trust and being friends and no longer enemies, etc.

Center fro Nonproliferation Studies: Hope for a Strategic Breakthrough at the Bush-Putin Summit (William Potter and Nikolai Sokov, November 12, 2001)

For attentive observers, there is little new in that statement. Mr. Putin has warned a number of times that if the U.S. withdraws from the ABM Treaty, Russia would feel free to withdraw from other arms control treaties. The new language simply adapts this old position to the new circumstances and opportunities: whereas previously it was withdrawal for withdrawal, now it is modification for modification.

So where's the surprise at Putin's current position?


"It's the statue, man, The Statue."

It's irrelevant anyway. Purely moving the deckchairs on the Titanic.

No support they could give the US can prevent the necessary structural global readjustments....

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

Europe's leaders eye Sarkozy partnership

Nicolas Sarkozy may still have work to do to win the French presidency but he has already secured the unspoken support of Berlin, Brussels and London.

Since when is Gordon Brown a European leader? And having the endorsement of Barroso and Blair/Brown should be enough to make Sarkozy very scary.

European Leaders are just Germany, France and the UK. No mention of Spain (Zapatero would readily partner with Royal) or Italy (Prodi's  Margherita is already a partner of Bayrou's [former] UDF in the European Democratic Party).

Bush is a symptom, not the disease.

Events in Estonia have internal reasons, they are not related to Russia and took several years of campaigning and passing laws that allow government to interfere into what is essentially a local, city level, issue. Russia does not offer any meaningful support to Russians abroad, and Russian politicians rhetoric is on the memorial is just that - rhetoric for domestic consumption. Estonia is one of offshores for the Russian elite, there are common business interests, so government there has a free pass from Russia.

Issue here is with Russian (and Soviet) minority in Estonia (used to be 30% of population) and attempt by the government to once again show them the proper place in the country and remind the electorate who the real enemy (naturally, Estonia's own residents) is in the light of the coming economic troubles. But looks like government miscalculated the reaction of the Russians - I don't think they really expected several days of disorder, that borders will have to be closed (happened today) and that hangars will have to be filled with the arrested.

Russians in Estonia do not have citizenship rights, and discrimination increased in the last few years due to more nationalistic government. Russians have higher unemployment, less paying jobs, are under represented in management and government jobs. Problem is with Estonian "integration" policy: Russians ought to speak, think and live like Estonians. "Integration" means full assimilation and still monoethnic job places are quite common. Jobs are conditioned by government Estonian language exams, which were becoming more and more strict. Requirements include writing business papers and essays. Recent amendments to the language law allow language commission to re-examine a person while the whole exam process is universally considered arbitrary.

Government and media prop fake "pro-Russian" parties and only "model Russians" (slightly to the right of the government) are allowed mainstream media time. Another issue is schools: teachers in Russian schools are being
replaced by native speakers and number of subjects in Estonian are increased. Government program for those schools by design does not give correct or enough Russian and after high school the education level is
not enough for the college.

Russians do not have political voice, government actively arrests, intimidates, deports or uses language commissions to fire from jobs possible troublemakers.

What Russians in Estonia are saying is that there are preciously few cultural places at this point they were allowed to keep, including only one theater. Destroyed monument and tradition to go there on VE Day was exactly one of those places, thus the reaction.

So what it is a movement against oppression. Problem is, it's leaderless resistance and that government is not ready to view the conflict in political terms.