Blitz Bear

Dissed by the Kosovo split - when kindred kin in Serbia lost turf, resources and populace to a makebelieve country (even worse - a self proclaimed democrazy that prett much looked West - not East), watching the old empire shrivel up faster than viagrafree swimmers, fully crunk with petrol rubles Russia watched how the game was played.

If seperatism is so sexy and desirable in the West than defending seperatism with panzers on the ground and troops in harms way would be way cooler.

Commonwealth played Ossetia - providing "Peace Keepers" that magically exponentially xformed into an armoured panzer strike force with significant air and sea power.


Pledging Russian citizenship to Ossetians sexcalated the sitch to a pitch of feverish proportions and gave the womderful reason to act out militarily and shoot for home base.

RE: Resurrecting the old school Soviet Union as an automatic autocratic new millennium imperium.

This is significant.

"These former satellites have been left in no doubt that Russia must be regarded as "glavniy", or No. 1, if they wish to avoid the fate of Georgia. Central to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's nationalistic policy is a conviction that the power of the West - seemingly unassailable at the end of the Cold War - is on the wane."

Hold up. Actually that bit is totally bass ackwards.

It is exactly the opposite - the fun, free ideas and ideals of democrazy are marginalizing the autocratic designs at the ballot box on Commonwealth's euro frontier.

Russia is launching a regime change against a democratic sovereign nation - driving a panzer blitz right into the capital of Georgia way past any Ossetian concerns.


Firing one off during the smokescreen deployed by sister autocrat China's coming out debut' the timing is significant both tactically and strategically.

While enjoying a mini surge of precious babies Mother Russia doesn't have time on her side.

Russia has demonstrated effective war-fighting capability abroad for the first time since the old school collectivist union crashed, redeeming the spiritual sons of the Red Army.

A new General who really digs the idea of a Russian rapid response force to act out against Russia's increasingly democratic Western Frontier.

Sorteeing an amphib force along with Air and ground cover Russia means biz.

"Russia enters 2008 in the strongest geopolitical position it has
known since the Cold War's end

"The rampant decay of its military has largely been halted, new weapons systems are beginning to be brought on line, the country is flush with
petrodollars, its debt has vanished, the Chechen insurgency has been suppressed, the central government has all but eliminated domestic opposition, and the regime is popular at home."

"Chinese pipelines to Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan (to be constructed in 2008) threaten to divert the energy that until now could only flow northward and serve Russian purposes."

"China is stealing Central Asia, building a network of
infrastructures that will make it more attractive for the Central Asian states to integrate with China than to use Soviet-era links to Russia."

"NATO and the European Union occupy Russia's entire western horizon
and are flirting with expanding their memberships. Rising defense modernizations in Asia are forcing Russia to deal with two military fronts - something at which Moscow never really succeeded during Soviet times."

"First, the consolidation that began in Russia's energy sector in
2003 will culminate. This will be the year that state giants Rosneft and Gazprom swallowup - whether formally or through 'alliances' - most of the remaining independentplayers in the country's energy industry."

"In 2008 a number of natural gas import projects will begin
operation in Western Europe, reducing that region's dependency on Russian energy and allowing the Western European states to be more dismissive of Russian interests."

"The Russians need a defining confrontation with the West. Russian
power is at a relative peak, and American power at a relative low. It is a
temporary circumstance certain to invert as the United States militarily extricates itself from Iraq, and one that Russia must exploit if it seeks to avoid replicating the geopolitical retreat of the 1990s."

"For Russia - which has publicly invested much political capital in
opposing Kosovarindependence - European success would be more than a slap in the face.Moscowmust prevent this from happening... Simply put, for the Western world, Kosovo isnot even remotely worth an escalating conflict with Russia."

"The former pro-Western Soviet republic of Georgia, long a thorn in
Moscow's side, has two secessionist regions that rely on Russia for their
economic and militaryexistence. Russia could easily absorb them outright and thus break the myth thatAmerican protection in the Caucasus is sustainable."

"Gazprom could swallow up Russian-British joint oil venture TNK-BP,
destroying billions in U.K. investment in a heartbeat. Union with Belarus would return the Red Army to the European frontier and turn the security framework of Eurasia inside-out overnight."

"When that happens, Russia will face a resurgent United States that
commands alliances in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Russia must use the ongoing U.S. entanglement in the Middle East to redefine its immediate neighborhood or risk a developing geopolitic far less benign to Russian interests than Washington's Cold War policy of containment."

Commonwealth's Military Intell site for the GRU believes it too. And that autocratic Russia will use Georgia as a model to again control turf from the Baltic to the Med

"Georgia can win only if it is backed by the United States and its
other allies. And even with such support, its victory will mean heavy losses, and entail lengthy guerilla warfare."