“The Montreal Convention assures the free passage of Russian warships through the Straits of Bosphorous. Under the circumstances, NATO’s grandiose schemes to occupy the Black Sea as its private lake seem outlandish now. There must be a lot of egg on the faces of the NATO brains in Brussels and their patrons in Washington and London.”

The reason being , as we have been at pains to point out, that the whole Georgia operation, from the US point of view, was concerned, not with the realities of geopolitics but with saving the knecks of Cheney and co. It may seem remarkable that thousands of lives were sacrificed, a key US ally was humiliated and all foreign policy rationality abandoned just to save a few war criminals from the dock, but such is the reality of politics at the end of empire.

M K Bhadrakumar

Asia Times

30th August, 2008

If the struggle in the Caucasus was ever over oil and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO’s) agenda towards Central Asia, the United States suffered a colossal setback this week. Kazakhstan, the Caspian energy powerhouse and a key Central Asian player, has decided to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Russia over the conflict with Georgia, and Russia’s de facto control over two major Black Sea ports has been consolidated. 

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