tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9102937856333775840.post1364764607255172119..comments2023-12-23T19:04:18.739-05:00Comments on The Crow's Eye: The Carnifex Covers for the New MacArthurJack Crowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07499087036876745723noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9102937856333775840.post-7603290193779534002010-06-24T17:00:57.905-04:002010-06-24T17:00:57.905-04:00Sorry about some of the tense/missing word problem...Sorry about some of the tense/missing word problems. I chose between proofing and getting a drink.Jack Crowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07499087036876745723noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9102937856333775840.post-87764861363037351222010-06-24T16:58:57.037-04:002010-06-24T16:58:57.037-04:00Watching the flight of a murder of crows is probab...Watching the flight of a murder of crows is probably more useful than following the politics of empire.<br /><br />*<br /><br />I'm guessing, but I look back to the Georgian-Russian conflict and see a major shift along the axis of power.<br /><br />The Russian state reasserted control over its Near Abroad, and overtly, assiduously, deliberately included Iran under that umbrella.<br /><br />It also horse traded Israel into a precarious position (isolating the Turks, for very small concessions to Israeli local monopoly in shock trooper training).<br /><br />Firming up its benign neglect of the 'Stans (a brilliant maskirovka, that - since the US abhors a power vacuum, and a whole host of Americans in mercenary and official outfits have followed on Zinni's Folly), the Russian state has shifted the American line of control deep into Asia and away from the European Near Abroad (Byelorussia, Ukraine, the unfortunate Baltic states on the other side of Russian Kaliningrad).<br /><br />Russia absolutely dominates the European natgas and oil predicament, and has literally shut down Europe's energy conduits, during wintertime, forcing the German state to calculate both its east and the Islamic south, and putting great tension on NATO. Since the American state wants NATO to function along the same lines as the UNSC while the German-French axis wants NATO to serve central power energy needs, NATO is now divided between worrying the Russians without any ability to counter them *and* enforcing American dominance in the Caspian basin and the Middle East.<br /><br />This means the Germans have to take their cues from the American state, which obviously chaffs more than a bit.<br /><br />If you add all that up, plus other stuff I'm too lazy to link directly, the US-EU alliance requires an alternative to Russian energy dominance.<br /><br />(This should, I think, explain some of the strategic interest in maintaining Israel as a lodestone for regional violence.)<br /><br />Iraq didn't fail miserably, as some contend. Iraq War Two was about fucking Iraq up so bad that the European energy source became and unstable war zone.<br /><br />This is crippled the EU - from an energy perspective. They must either cozy up to a resurgent and rodinist Russia (one which Putin is inexorably driving back towards some sort of nominal Romanov participation...he went so far as to patch up all manner of relations with that ancient clan, especially the premier branch in Byelorussia, as well as rehabilitating the Romanovs at home and unifying several branches of the Orthodox Church) - or follow American leads.<br /><br />The Europeans have chosen, for the larger part, to follow the US.<br /><br />The alternative is the reestablishment of Russian influence throughout the eastern march states of the EU (Western Europe's cheap labor pool).<br /><br />Summing this up - the US-EU either finds a way to bring a color revolution to Iran, following an air and special forces based pacification campaign, one which gives precedence to foreign control of Iran's considerable natgas and oil reserves...<br /><br />...Or the US is looking at thirty years of nasty bush war in northern South America, where there's no radical Islam, but there is a one hundred and thirty year and very deep tradition of fighting unionism and revolutionary communism.Jack Crowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07499087036876745723noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9102937856333775840.post-63134261127358332012010-06-24T15:19:41.700-04:002010-06-24T15:19:41.700-04:00Perhaps I'll take augury in a flight of your n...Perhaps I'll take augury in a flight of your namesakes? What you propose is terrifyingly possible. Some kind of major, overt assault on Iran has been in the cards for a long time.RedPhillipnoreply@blogger.com