Russia Gambit: the West In Check

When the Berlin Wall cracked and the Iron Curtain fell, the West took a break from the Cold War cynicism that gave spawn to generation of novels and movies. Some of us hoped outright for a world with a Russia that might storm back from its Soviet Dark Age into the midst of the rest of us, it's people rejoicing in their new-found religious and political freedoms.

Not even the most sanguine peacenik among us can now believe that the next twenty years on earth will be remembered for dialog, accord, and a general improvement of humanity. For Russia landed a hay-maker on the West this week with their reaction to Georgia's foray into Ossetia in pursuit of separatists. Georgia, a NATO candidate and an ally of the United States, was overrun by Russia's superior force this week, and Russia will now dictate her terms about the largely Russian breakaway zones of Ossetia and Abkazhia.

There is little we can do about it. Russia has made her move in chess-like fashion. We are in check, we of the West, and we are down a pawn.

Russia has let us know that we are powerless to act. Our military is shackled to Iraq and Afghanistan. Russia has a hand in that too--she has given close cover to Iran in the rising conflict about Teheran's nuclear program, and does a thriving arms and technology business there. She is even playing side by side with China, who likewise ships aid and technology to Iran. And locked into this Iranian sidebar to our own Iraq gambit is the end-game we face.

The end-game is the U.S. and West, pitted against Radical Islam, China, and Russia.

By the way, we are outnumbered.

Russia has chosen this moment to let us know that she swings the balance of power against the West. Europe's relationship with the United States ran aground and sank over the War on Terror. One can hardly imagine a United European fighting force coming into existence at all, for any reason--is there an American that believes that Western Europeans would fight in the face of a Russian onslaught across Eastern Europe? Not I.

Russia knows of our challenges. They know them by heart. First, they know we have the successful but costly Iraq war, in lives 4,000 killed, in money--$600 billion and counting. Then, they know we are a locked into a upward spiral of fuel costs due specifically to the unwillingness of Democrats in Congress to permit an immediate build-out of oil-refining capacity, and to further drill for domestic crude. They also know that we are sending $750 billion a year to largely Islamic countries for oil,while our trade imbalance with China is in excess of $200 billion annually.

They know that we are draining our life's blood into the very veins of people who are at war with our way of life. The Islamic World of 2008 is not convinced that their radicals are wrong, so we feather the nest of potential enemies there. China, for all its "modernization" and "consumerism", is a totalitarian regime that would never tolerate and American freedoms and norms in their country. Even their modernization hurts us, as their added demand due to the pressures of growth have driven oil prices to record highs in the last year.

The Russians know all this. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (we cannot see you, Vladimir Putin, but we know you are there...) can point to the Russian ethnicity of the Georgian separatists, and can make speeches about ethnic cleansing, but he knows the real score. They know Georgia's counterpart Mikheil Saakaskvili will have to accept the loss of one fifth of his country to Russian aggression, and that the mighty U.S. must stand alone against Radical Islam now, and will again stand alone against China, later.

Russia has made her play, and it's a good one. Even if we'd feel more comfortable playing Texas Hold 'em, we'll have to make a chess move.

At this moment, it is their game.

Memo to Business Week: Cheap Fuel...GOOD (omg...)

Memo to Business Week:

Cheap Fuel GOOD, Expensive Fuel BAD
....omg.....

Business Week trumpets "Should Oil Be Cheap?" on their July 23rd cover, and you have to wonder if the inmates have indeed stormed the front office and taken over the asylum. John Carey writes: "(e)xpensive energy is a powerful medicine. It may hurt when taken, but it brings long-term cures for a host of ills."

Carey's laughable take on high oil prices is thinly veiled in economics, and heavily smeared with the politics of big government and market manipulation, all, he writes, to teach consumers to use less. Business Week should be ashamed of ever having run such a piece as Carey's. His spurious and vague statement that there is "pressure from the left and right" to put a "floor" of taxes under the price of oil borders on science fiction. The pressure from the "right", right now, is to build out our refining capacity, and to drill for more oil. Mr. Carey, are you paying attention? I don't think so.

The fact that a debate about whether we should be strapped for fuel is so ridiculous as to make one wonder if the earth has fallen out of orbit. Business Week, listen up: AMERICA NEEDS MORE OIL REFINERIES. AMERICANS CANNOT AFFORD $10 A GALLON GASOLINE. One political party in this country is onto a solution. The other, like Mr. Carey, seems bent on giving us that painful dose of hurtful medicine that is ever mounting fuel costs due to our inability to process crude into gasoline any faster than our current capacity will allow.

BW, honestly, have you lost your grip? Let me suggest a couple of other covers for your editors: "Should America Be Strong?" "Is It OK To Be A Superpower?" "Is The First Amendment Relevant Anymore?" "Is Family Really Important?"

While BW and the Democrats wonder about "whether" oil should be cheap, Republicans are getting serious about becoming the voice for the small guy, and molding the GOP into the Party of Energy Independence, as Sean Hannity has been recommending for months. While traveling with my daughter to visit colleges, I saw a video clip of House Republicans decrying Speaker Pelosi's refusal to allow discussion on fuel costs to come to the floor, and was thrilled to see my own Representative Scott Garrett talking about hearing us and wanting to help us get lower gasoline prices, and even gave an email address of painatthepump@house.gov.

There is no question that the Republican Party is answering the call on this issue, while the Democratic leadership of Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and the blundering Barack Obama, refuse to lead. (Hey, Senator Obama, can I see that tire gauge...?)

What a surprise. According to Mark Levin (forgive me on minor errors of recollection), 92% of House Democrats and 98% of Senate Democrats since 1973 have voted AGAINST adding refineries or drilling anywhere in the U.S. for more oil. This is a generation of Democratic Party leadership, and their leadership has spawned a generation of "industrio-phobes", rabidly environmental, who believe that deer and polar bears will stop procreating if they once smell crude oil or sight a derrick. No wonder Senator Obama's answer to the fuel price crisis is that he'd "rather fuel prices had risen more slowly," nor is it mysterious that he would think that checking tires would save more money at the pump "than drilling for oil ever would."

Simple research about Alaskan oil reveals that one major field only produces half of what it could pump south---because, California cannot process any more than that. We need more refineries, and we must begin building them now.

Some simple economics: First, the announcements of adding refinery capacity and of our drilling for more oil domestically will lead to an almost certain immediate downward pressure on crude prices. Futures will be sold short, and the dynamics of the fuel marketplace will begin to shift. If we begin building out our refinery capacity today, in two years or less we can be delivering more gasoline to the pump, and that will sink gasoline prices to pre-2004 levels without a doubt.

So, Business Week, you keep scratching your head and ponder things like "should oil be cheap," "should it hurt when I fall down," and, "should I bandage an open wound?" The Republican Party knows gasoline CAN be cheaper, and WILL be cheaper, if we build more refineries and pump more AMERICAN OIL.

James A. Bridge
www.loudandtrue.blogspot.com
jim@james-bridge.com