I don't dispute the facts here, nor the trajectory. I also agree this was easily forecast, as I noted in a recent post (Look who comes out of the Soviet experience most adept at moving ahead? Cops and criminals).

But trying to elevate Europe's task ahead (maturing both Russia and its relationship with it--a generational task at least) into a geo-strategic challenge on par with the Cold War is--as the preamble admits--risking the charge of absurdity.

Is there a serious bleed into security affairs? No.

Does the U.S. want any ownership of such a resurrected stand-off? Much less pick up the "near abroad" to boot? No way.

Do these concerns trump the clear requirement to focus on building more important relations and alliance with China (to include its maturation)? Hardly, and I'd say the same for India to boot (Hell, wouldn't even prioritize it over Brazil.)

Does the upside (alliance and resources tapped) on Russia potentially outrank that trio on the Long War? Maybe with serious effort, Russia ties India for long-term importance, but I think I get 95 percent of that help from Moscow with no effort beyond what the Europeans will need to do anyway, so why make the effort in a busy world?

In sum, I stipulate the backsliding (nothing is linear--not even America's membership under Bush!) but cannot summon the argument for recasting America's approach, Russia's membership in the Core (which isn't about democracy, as I've always argued), or Russia's relative importance in the Long War (again, why pick fights I don't need to divert resources I can't spare).

I'm an ideologue about markets, not democracy, and I suffer managed markets before I take on security burdens that time will heal on its own. My idealism, as I note in BFA, is long-term. My realism is short-term. That's how I think we hold a Shrink the Gap strategy together over the long haul, just like we did containment.

Thanks to Eric Hansen for sending this in.

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Europe.view
The fog of the “new cold war”
Dec 7th 2006
From Economist.com

And guess who's winning, so far

LIKE analogies involving the second world war, the “new cold war” is not a phrase to use lightly.

Or maybe at all. Russia is not now seeking military domination of Europe. It is not a one-party state. Nor does it claim to be the embodiment of an ideological success story. The once-towering edifice of Marxist-Leninist ideology is as ruined as social credit or syndicalism. An exposition of “sovereign democracy”, as the Kremlin now grandly calls its scheme of things, would barely fill a postcard, let alone a textbook.

To compare all this to the Soviet Union of Leonid Brezhnev's era may look not only insulting, but absurd. The West’s differences with Russia seem mere nuances when set against the gulf between the modern world and the suicide bomber.

But to argue only that the old cold war is dead and gone is to risk missing the point. Whatever we end up calling it, a new period of deep-seated rivalry is approaching—and perhaps has already begun. As in the mid-to-late 1940s, such things take a bit of time to sink in.

Point one: Russia is different. Whether you think of it as Gazpromistan, or as Kremlin Inc, the Russian state now is as inelegant a creature as ever it was in communist times. It is an authoritarian bureaucratic-capitalist arrangement in which a squabbling elite, drawn largely from the security services, extracts enormous rents from raw materials, steals some, and uses the rest to vie for power, spouting nationalist and sometimes xenophobic rhetoric to maintain popularity.

In short, it turns wealth into power, and then power back into wealth. At home—and abroad.

Point two: Russia is a threat. The Soviet cocktail of communism and imperialism was a hard sell. Especially towards the end, it meant poverty and dictatorship, plus foreign domination. Russia’s main weapons now are more subtle and potent: cheap gas, and money for the right people. The orgy of greed and moral myopia in Moscow in the past 15 years has shown that lawyers, accountants and bankers are willing to forget professional ethics for huge fees.

Russia’s main weapons now are more subtle and potent: cheap gas, and money for the right people
Politicians can lose their bearings, too. Imagine that Helmut Schmidt, the German chancellor until 1982, had not only been great chums with Brezhnev, but in his final months of office had pushed through huge government loan-guarantees for a project that would increase his country's energy dependence on the Soviet Union. And then, as soon as he was out of office, he had taken a lucrative post running that same project.

Fanciful? That is what Gerhard Schröder did with the planned Baltic gas pipeline. Even if it is never built or used, it shows that Russia can brazenly co-opt a Western politician, and expect only a whimper of protest from others. The West is all the weaker for its addiction to wishful thinking. Surely it is better to negotiate and compromise with Russia, than have a messy and costly confrontation?

Even now, money can’t buy everything. So there’s always murder. A veteran Kremlin-watcher in Moscow wrote to your correspondent recently: “Anna Politkovskaya was killed to warn Russians against criticising the Kremlin, especially in Western media. Alexander Litvinenko’s murder was to warn defectors. The only question now is: 'who is next?'”

Surely the Kremlin is not that brazen or brutal? Maybe. But few have won money in recent years underestimating the brazenness and brutality that lurk beneath those onion domes. We face a systemic rivalry based on conflicting values and clashing geopolitics. Not a cold war, perhaps, but it’s getting chilly

Long-awaited Iraq report offers 79 ways to 'cut and stay'
For President Bush, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group's long-awaited report must have had the shock value of an unexpectedly bad report card. It is a devastating assessment of the war — one so thorough that it is must-reading for anyone who wants to understand what is happening in Iraq and how dangerous the failing war is for the United States.

(What’s next? President Bush between Lee Hamilton, left, and James Baker. / By Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP)

But anyone expecting to find a magic answer will come away as disappointed as the president must surely have been. What emerges instead is a strategy that navigates a midcourse between "cut and run" and "stay the course." It might be called "cut and stay."

As unappetizing as that label sounds, it is at least a realistic assessment of the situation. The other options, as the report adroitly notes, are awful.

The basic idea is to reverse the U.S. and Iraqi roles while a diplomatic offensive is launched to get Iraq's neighbors involved in preventing chaos from spreading. U.S. troops would be shifted overwhelmingly to advisory and training duties. The Iraqi government would be required to achieve certain benchmarks in order to retain American support.

The problem is that the plan's success relies on attaining many goals that now seem out of reach. Exactly what should happen as they are achieved — or fail to be achieved — is not spelled out. Full withdrawal could occur in 2008 or, if progress is made, tens of thousands of troops might stay for years. That ambiguity might stoke the partisan fires the commission hopes to douse. Among other challenges:

In a dramatic change, U.S. forces would see diminished combat roles. They would retreat to training positions, embedding themselves in Iraqi units as Iraqis take the lead; U.S. combat troops would be phased out by the first quarter of 2008. That's fine on paper. But how would the trainers communicate? Quite apart from a need to bridge the cultural gulf (how to know whether there are Sunni-Shiite tensions in a unit, what basic grievances are, etc.), this would require a large number of Arabic speakers. Yet the United States is so short of Arabic speakers that — as one part of the report notes — there are only 33 Arabic speakers, and only six of them fluent, at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, out of a staff of 1,000. Reports of battles where Iraqis have taken the lead are not encouraging.

Sensibly, the United States would set "milestones" for the Iraqi government to meet — and if it doesn't meet them, the United States could withdraw military, economic or political support. This represents an effort to get Iraqis to start taking more initiative and responsibility. Again, fine on paper. But the Iraqi government is weak and divided. The police are infiltrated by Shiite death squads. Several anti-American figures, including religious leader Muqtada al-Sadr, have growing influence. The degree of sectarian violence is so great that it might already have overwhelmed the efforts of the central government. The report points all of this out, but it's fair to ask: Are the milestones realistic?

Another apparently sensible recommendation is to get the region intensively involved in stabilizing Iraq and in preventing the war from spreading. But U.S. actions have created so much anti-Americanism that even the dramatic steps the report recommends, including a regional conference and direct negotiations with Iran and Syria, may well not achieve much. It could take years, if not decades, to regain trust in the region.
To be fair, the Iraq Study Group cautions that even if all the recommendations were pushed hard, Iraq "could go either way." Those best odds are made even longer because it is uncertain how many of the report's 79 recommendations Bush might adopt. Many represent a 180-degree shift and go against his deeply ingrained instincts — particularly proposals for direct talks with Iran and Syria and a regional conference. Encouragingly, some, such as shifting U.S. forces to training roles, are already being tried and are part of competing reports being prepared by the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon. But the group warns that the package has to be taken as a whole.

The report's 79 ways to fix Iraq have the potential to focus the administration's, and the public's, attention on the real challenges that the United States faces and away from simplistic responses. It paints a full, easily understood picture, with details of everything from expenditures and the underreporting of violence to high levels of corruption in Iraqi ministries. And it does focus attention on how the United States can better manage the war at home: with better accounting and oversight and better leadership at the Pentagon.

But any ultimate success will be on the ground. The way to achieve that remains elusive.

Rejected

Cut and run? Stay the course? Both would fail, the Iraq Study Group said. It also rejected sending more troops. Here's why:

'Cut and run'

It's wrong and dangerous for the United States, after starting the war, to abandon Iraq.

Sectarian violence would rise. So would suffering in general.

A power vacuum would arise, destabilizing the region. Iran, Syria and radicalism could benefit.

Resulting threat to oil supplies would threaten the global economy.

Al-Qaeda would portray it as a victory.

The United States might have to return.
'Stay the course'

It's not working and would delay day of reckoning.

Cost in lives and dollars would be high.

American public support, essential to achieving anything, is waning.

Iraqi resentment at occupation is growing.
More troops

Would not end fighting among Iraqi factions, the core cause of violence.

U.S. military is already stretched thin and could not sustain deployment over time.

Would limit U.S. ability to respond with force to other crises.

What if Bush went to Tehran?
NEWS: Students Cry Out for Freedom in Large Demonstration at Tehran University
The forwarder said, in effect, imagine what Air Force One touching down in Tehran might set off?
Indeed, that's why I titled the original section in the Feb 05 article in Esquire: "Nixon Goes to Tehran."

Going on the offensive in the Long War ain't always about going kinetic, but it's always about shaking things up and putting the other guy on his heels.

You know what happens when I'm losing? Getting embarrassed? Running out of options?

I crank up the confidence even higher and try another path, another window, another door.

And I do so with maximum offense in mind.

My regime is sound. Iran's is not.

My economy's humming. Iran's is not.

My military is world class. Iran's is not.

My future is bright. Iran's is not.

Bush wastes our swagger and confidence on the worst things, like "stay the course," when our options are many and our strengths profound.

Our biggest boots-on-the-ground asset is staring us in the face--the Iranian people.

If only Bush would cowboy up when it matters and where it matters, it'd be wheels down in Tehran later today.

Thanks to an anonymous reader for sending this in

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Article from Fox News

Students Cry Out for Freedom in Large Demonstration at Tehran University

Thursday , December 07, 2006

TEHRAN, Iran — "What do we want? Freedom!"

That was one of the banners a large crowd waved on Wednesday at a demonstration at Tehran University.

As many as 2,000 students turned out to demand personal freedom in the Islamic state, which has cracked down on political activity on campus this year in what some have called the Second Cultural Revolution.

The theme of Wednesday's protest was Student Life is Alive.

The police apparently made no effort to stop the demonstration, which ended peacefully.

One banner, in Persian, read: "If I rise up and you rise up, everyone will rise up."

Another read: "Our struggle is twofold: Fighting against internal oppression and external foreign threats."

Photographs of Wednesday's demonstration were posted on Iranian websites and in the blogosphere.

The student protest was openly defiant of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who at the beginning of the school year asked students to speak out against the secularization of the education system.

The students apparently didn't, but an unknown number of professors who had been critical of the regime were forced into early retirement.

At the same time, students returning to the university were given "star" ratings by the administration. Students with borderline political leanings were assigned one or two stars. Students deemed to be vocally anti-regime were assigned three or four stars.

In many cases, three- and four-star students — regardless of their academic performance — were barred from returning to campuses this fall.

According to eyewitness reports, the area of the demonstration was blocked off by buses, and police forced cameramen away so that they could not shoot video.

According to one report, some students threw stones at news cameramen, suspecting they might be agents of the state documenting the protests for a future retaliation.

Student and academic sentiment could pose a problem for the Iranian regime. Seventy percent of Iran's population is under the age of the 30, and 90 percent of the under-30s are literate, well-read and seemingly aspire to greater personal and political freedom

Bush: Syria, Iran Have 'Choice to Make' Regarding Iraq
By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Dec. 7, 2006 – President Bush said today he welcomes closer coordination with Iraq's regional neighbors to promote peace there, but draws the line when it comes to working with countries like Syria and Iran unless they stop supporting terrorism or defying U.N. resolutions regarding nuclear weapons.

Bush, speaking at a White House news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, noted the Iraq Study Group's assertion that Middle Eastern countries have an important responsibility to help Iraq succeed. The president called the suggestion to broaden the compact beyond economic measures "an interesting idea."

But Bush expressed doubt that Iran and Syria could be constructive players in the process.

"One thing is for certain," he said. "If people come to the table to discuss Iraq, they need to come understanding their responsibilities: to not fund terrorists, to help this young democracy survive, to help with the economics of the country.

"If Syria and Iran (are) not committed to that concept, then they shouldn't bother to show up," he added.

Blair said the issue boils down to whether Iran and Syria are "standing up for the right principles, which are endorsed in the United Nations resolutions, in respect of Iraq."

"In other words, you support the democratic-elected government, you do not support sectarians, and you do not support, arm or finance terrorists," the prime minister said.

Bush said both Iran and Syria have decisions to make if they want to engage with the United States. Iran must suspend its nuclear-enrichment program in a verifiable way, he said. Syria must stop trying to destabilize Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora's government. It also must stop allowing money and arms to cross its border into Iraq and providing safe haven for terrorist groups.

"These countries have now got the choice to make," the president said. "If they want to sit down at the table with the United States, it's easy. Just make some decisions that will lead to peace, not to conflict."

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Related Sites:
Transcript of News Conference