habit? sentiment for bygone days?

both?

the premise that the evil bear would eat europe for breakfast is long gone, we're their cash cow, why eat your milk supply?

great diary, J.

we are very fortunate russia's leaders have cool heads, considering the abuse they've put up with from our idiotically patronising attitudes.

 we are almost as bad as the yanks when it comes to illusions of entitlement, sigh...

and as for georgia, we should not be trying to take too much responsibility for their fate, especially if they are so foolish as to poke a sullen bear.

 U.S. posturing is, as usual, unhelpful, even damaging to all interests.

the west has betrayed russia, we owe an apology, and we should be grateful to them for treating us correctly.

their first affair with capitalism brought organised crime and social anarchy, that was america's contribution...

one window of opportunity, for russia to emulate a more democratic system, lying in shards on the ground.

now it's our turn as europeans, we would be wise not to repeat the same mistakes, especially the hypocrisy of pretending we know better than they do how to run their country, or even where to place their borders. we should be feting medvedev, for example, as a pro-western, moderate leader, thereby encouraging him to be more so, instead of winding him up like a clock.

 very. very. dumb. indeed...

let's treat our own minorities with more dignity, then politely ask russia to observe and share better values, not before.

or we risk looking even more stupid than we do now!

yes, and reduce demand, become sovereign of our own supplies of what we need, because energy is the new capital, and the sun, wind and tides will extract less rent in the long term than russia.

we have to identify, name and shame those fossil fool interests that are keeping us in thrall, and continue to raise public awareness about the vulnerability we suffer because of the narrow interests of a very few, but still powerful, bad-faith actors in this global drama.

the MSM will not be our friends in this endeavour, they will come late, if ever, kicking and screaming all the way.

so it's up to us, cheerful thought, as TBG might say!

beats 'we are so doomed' anyway...

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

Furthermore, without the Americans we would se huge nuclear proliferation in Europe. To put it bluntly, most people don't think the French or British are as aggressive and badass as the Americans when it comes to the nuclear posture. Does anyone seriously think they'd risk Paris or London for Tallinn or Bratislava?

Europe would not be a safer place with Hungarian, Polish, Swedish and German nuclear weapons.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

That seems to be the USG single-source (tank) thinking because it guarantees their mil/ind friends permanent source of income:  They spread fear daily through the media, interfering everywhere and causing unnecessary threats that otherwise would not exist.

Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. -Charu Saxena.

'Course, the locals whose turf you occupy usually lose even more. But that's beside the point from a Grand Chessboard perspective.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

Is Germany considered broken into pieces because the Laender have some independence? Even France has regional level structures, it is not just a hundred different departments, wouldn't you say?

You have an excellent point about the issue of superpower status. That's something the people of Europe as a whole need to sort out. I myself (as a frenchman) am not sure what direction I'd like to see, but I do believe that the world is not going to wait until organizational issues can be settled. And unfortunately the old Roman dictum si vis pacem, para bellum appears to still be valid. Europe does not have the kind of natural geographical protections that Switzerland enjoys.

--
$E(X_t|F_s) = X_s,\quad t > s$

Hence the utter stupidity of Georgia's actions.

Saakashvili is a tool in several of the common senses and, it would appear, a very naive one at that. He does have GWB standing behind him, way behind him, all the way back in Crawford, on vacation.  But the problem was that he had a very different agenda than the older members of the EU.  He thought that he could parlay his US backing, purchased in part with $800,000 from the Georgian treasury to his US lobyist, into neo-cold war glory by reasserting control over South Ossetia.  

He failed to appreciate that the $800,000 only purchased the ringing endorsements, not any effective military assistance come the crunch.  His goal was not irrational, but his means were rash and he walked right in to a trap set by Putin.  What the EU needs is to realize that they have to more forcefully repudiate putative future members of the EU and NATO which Washington would like to arrange for them.

The EU might be spending about as much, per capita, as the USA on military forces, but, as suggested by others above, it is not getting similar bang for the buck. The existing arrangement can only really be directed by the US.  The US abuses this arrangement to suit the needs of domestic politics, as with Georgia.  The US is very unlikely to abandon that ability voluntarily.  The arrangement has the potential to become an attractive nuisance, like an unfenced swimming pool, but one that can start WWIII, just so that one US political party can gain an electoral advantage.  If this nuisance is ever to be adequately fenced, it must be done by Europeans.  Doing so would be a service to the entire world.  

The only one to come out of this with any advantage is Putin and possibly McCain.  Should this ploy work for McCain it could be much more difficult for the EU to ever get control of its own foreign agenda.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."