* Although I had suspected something fishy was going on with (much-touted) Berlin-Wall-comes-down-esque Orange Revolutions in Eastern Europe, it was Vice-President Cheney's outrageous speech in Vilnius Lithuania in May - what I now like to call the Vilnius offensive - that really told me something major is going on between the US and Russia. Not content to keep his mouth firmly closed when Russia is riding a largely energy-fuelled high-cashflow position, Cheney warned Russia in no uncertain terms not to flex its energetic power to a congregation of ex-Soviet republics on Russia's doorstep. The reaction was obvious and high-profile, from Gorbatchev slamming the speech on the Financial Times, to various official Russian outrages on the issue, especially from Putin himself.
* Beyond that however is a struggle that has been going on since Lenin marched onto the world stage, and that story took a sharp new turn about 15 years ago, as Soviet communism finished its downward spiral to oblivion. A recent article in the Nation magazine trains its crosshairs on the modern US-Russia relationship: this extensive primer on US-Russian superpower struggle is probably the only document you'll need to learn about the last 15 yrs, and see the next 5-10 years of superpower relations. From the gall of Madeleine Albright to the gall of Condoleeza Rice preaching regime change to the Russians and others, the condescending attitude of the US ruling elites has never been in doubt. Their obliviousness to the repercussions of fuelling a superpower Cold War, however, is pure folly. Realpolitik did not go the way of the dodo just because Francis Fukuyama said so. It's plat du jour again, and this article says don't say we didn't see it coming.
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