Muleskinner

Issue date: 11/1/07 Section: Opinion

Commentary: Raghvendra Singh [Click to enlarge]

After the Cold War came to an end in the late '80s, many viewed the United States as the winner.

The U.S. was also thought of as the long superpower of the world, with strong politics, economics and ammunition in the 21st century.

Members of the Soviet Union had nothing close to what Americans had; their country was divided, their economy was on the verge of bankruptcy and their identity was diminished.

The dusk of the Soviet Union brought a bew dawn: the mergence of Russia. The builind up of Russia was seen as a ray of hope to many of its citizens, who embraced their president, Vladimir Putin.

Slowly and steadily, Russia appeared, once again, on the world mapy as an emerging economy and a strong military nation.

Just when we thought the days of the Cold War were gone, a series of events began developing in EAstern Europe, warning of the beginning of a second cold war.

Europe provided 59 percent of Russia's gasoline in 2004, while Russia provided 24 percent.

Forecasts from Eurogas, the trade association of European Union gas industries, suggested that be 2010 Russia's flow of gas to Europe would increase by 59 percent and, eventually, to 71 percent in 2015.

This raised the bar for Russia's stake in European policies.

Then came the energy threat to Ukraine and Georgia. For Russia, the demand for higher prices from Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia was said to be purely commercial, but the United States clearly defined it as an act of power, and so came the statements from Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, telling Russia to keep out of the blackmailing business.

Georgia, in its time of crisis with Russia, saw a friend in the United States and pledged its support for the war in Iraq with an initial deployment or 800 soldiers.

Presently, the United States' closest ally is the United Kingdom, which is planning to withdraw all its forces from Iraq, yet Georgia is committed to increasing its number of troops to about 3,000 soldiers.

To set up more direct control in the European region, the United States decided to set up an anti-missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic, just in case of attacks by countries such as Iran. Of Course, Russia knew who the United States was targeting, so it offered to install a highly sophisticated radar system in Azerbaijan or in southern Russia.

This decision was against its former depletion of the missile system, which it termed to be more dangerous than the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

The worst of the blows came to the United States, when the Russian president visited Iran and declared it to be free from any aspect of the nuclear threat. Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, the man termed equal to Hitler by the U.S. government, was termed a friend of Russia.

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