At first glance, a flair-up in the Caucasus region seems to have little meaning for Americans. But just as the collapse of the subprime mortgage market ultimately came to symbolize the beginning of the end of an American credit system run amok, so too does the Russo-Georgian conflict illustrate the limits of American military power and its capacity to exert itself anywhere in the world unilaterally. Neither economic, nor military “unipolarity” seems to work any longer. We have, in the words of Boston University professor Andrew J. Bacevich, a “crisis of profligacy”, in which US foreign policy parallels its domestic dysfunction, because of the refusal of Americans to recognize that they have to pay a significant price for economic abundance at home and geopolitical dominance abroad. In this world the Bush administration unveiled “a breathtakingly ambitious project of near global domination,” writes Bacevich. Preserving American abundance was the watchword, “yet that way of life, based for at least two generations on an ethic of self-gratification and excess, drastically reduced the resources available for such an all-encompassing imperial enterprise,” he writes. No wonder things have not gone well.

Recently, I have become very concerned about the deteriorating geopolitical situation and its likely effects on the global economy. The Georgia-Russia situation produced a response from the U.S. to defend Poland with a missile shield, which could be labeled provocative at best.
In further escalation of U.S. -Russian tensions, the response from Moscow was to [...]

The U.S. has decided brinkmanship is the way to deal with the Russians. Having seen Georgia overrun by the Russian military, Poland jumped at the chance to have a stronger U.S. defense behind them and so they now have it. Less than two years ago Russia said the following about missile defense:
U.S. plans [...]

General Musharraf, the man at the America’s side in the War on Terror who came to power in a military coup d’etat, is out. His replacement is unknown. This is further evidence that the geopolitical situation is becoming extremely volatile.
President Pervez Musharraf is expected to leave office in the next few days before Pakistan’s Parliament [...]

I wrote a blurb on the Georgia-Russia struggle on my blog. But I wanted to add a blurb here from Mikhail Gorbachev’s Op-Ed in today’s Washington Post. His viewpoint stands in great contrast to the punderati of Washington. Framed in a real understanding of Russia, Gorbachev speaks a truth that no [...]

If Georgia or Ukraine were a part of NATO, we would be willing to go to war for them as that is what NATO means. Think about it: Russia attacks the Ukraine or Georgia and the U.S. and its allies go to war to stop the Russian aggression. Is this what we want for the future? Are Ukraine and Georgia places of strategic interest for the United States?

While the finance world is concerned with its own problems of writedowns and deflating asset prices, a proxy war of great importance is being fought in the country of Georgia. It has everything to do with both a Russo-American power struggle and oil, with far-reaching implications for geopolitics.
This war started as a clash between [...]

Now that Russia has finally gotten belligerent after many a provocation, one has to ask whether the U.S. NATO expansion plans have been wise. Basically, the U.S. has tried to offer every Eastern Bloc country it could safe harbor under NATO auspices.

From Russia’s point of view this has all been done in order to strip away Russia’s traditional sphere of influence and bring these countries under U.S. hegemonic control. One reason for the souring of US-Russian diplomatic relations has been Putin’s anger at this power grab. Now, Russia is fighting back and we can see that the dangerous NATO expansion may be near an end.

I am sufficiently concerned about John McCain and his foreign policy creds to write a blurb about his anti-Russia rhetoric and its likely effect now that Russia is on a rampage in Georgia.

My colleague Lisa Lerer, traveling with McCain, sends over his tough comments on the escalation in Georgia:
In a statement at the Des [...]

Haven’t we been told time and again that much of the oil price rise was due to to external event risk like political instability and war? Well we’ve got this is spades and oil is still falling.
Today, Russia has launched a war against its neighboring country Georgia, who’s ex-President Eduard Shevardnadze was once [...]