Interesting twist on the cold war

Tell me again why we didn’t open the ANWR for more oil production.  Here is a important clue as to why we should:

PICTURE the families shivering in apartments without heating, factories grinding to a halt, frozen water pipes bursting in the depths of winter. Welcome to the new Cold War.

At 10am on Sunday, Russia is threatening to unleash the most powerful weapon in its post-Soviet arsenal: unless Ukraine agrees to a fourfold increase in the price it pays for gas, Russia will simply turn off the tap.

Nor is it just Ukraine under threat — the EU imports about half of its gas from Russia and 80 per cent of that comes through Ukrainian pipelines.

So when President Putin met Ivan Plachkov, the Ukrainian Energy Minister, in Moscow yesterday, there was more at stake than relations between the neighbouring states. Analysts fear the dispute could provide a foretaste of how Russia will use its massive oil and gas reserves as a foreign policy tool in future disputes with the West.

“Energy co-operation has replaced military might as the mainstay of Russia’s international credibility,” Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Alfa Bank in Moscow, said. “It is using its importance as an energy partner to pursue its geopolitical and foreign policy agenda.”

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2 thoughts on “Interesting twist on the cold war

  1. I hereby propose the following amendments to the U.S. Constitution, though they should not be needed, and in spite of the fact that the Constitution is not being obeyed anyway;
    “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of energy production or distribution, nor prohibiting the free excercise thereof.”
    and
    “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of education, nor prohibiting the free excercise thereof.”
    That’ll do for starters. Then we can throw in transportation, agriculture, communications, labor, et al.
    After all, do we really need to discuss the success of a free market as compared to a socialist system? If so, that only proves the failure of our socialist education system.

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