What a 'war for oil' really looks like
Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., at The Wall Street Journal:
"Barack Obama thinks the solution to high gasoline prices is punitive taxes on Exxon. All this in the background could not have failed to reassure Mr. Putin that the West would not invest political capital in protecting the interests of its oil companies. He learned that his allies could go so far as to commit nuclear terrorism (so it has been alleged) to murder one of his political critics in London without consequences. Why expect any blowback from merely repeatedly defrauding Western energy investors?"
Read the rest here.
But then Jenkins makes a 180:
"Likely, Mr. Putin miscalculates too. Western powers may not do much immediately about his squeeze on Georgia, but over time he will find he has created conditions for the emergence of a coalition to contain Russian energy power. His immediate neighbors, with fresh memories of Soviet domination, will be even more eager to align themselves with the West and NATO. Possibly even the myopic Germans will discern they've gone too far in putting themselves in energy hock to Moscow. They may even start asking pointed questions about the presence of former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on the board of Nord Stream, a Gazprom affiliate devoted to increasing German reliance on Russian gas."
Considering the example the "Western powers" set by encouraging Georgia and then leaving the room when the fight started, Putin's immediate neighbors had better think twice about aligning themselves to the West and NATO.
For a more skeptical (some might say cynical) take, see "Spengler's" piece at Asia Times: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH13Ag01.html
Reply to this