If the U.S. Keeps Kosovo, Russia Will Keep Ossetia

This time, the two superpowers of the Cold War—which has been declared dead, but threatens to revive—have two open fronts in the back patio of Europe: the first in the Balkans, with the independence of Kosovo, under the auspices of the United States, but not recognized by either Serbia or its ally Russia, and most recently in the Caucausus, with Russia’s present war to take control of the separatist, pro-Russian South Ossetia from the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia. The next objective of the Russian campaign points at Abkhazia, where Moscow intends, with almost complete security, to impose as a fait accompli the self-proclaimed republic in that western corner of Georgia.

Moscow and Washington are returning to the language of arms in order to impose a new order, which basically consists in assuring control of energy resources that are more scarce and valuable with each passing day.

The first Gulf War-–the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein and its later liberation by the United States in the lead of an international coalition (that was, for sure, winked at by Russia, which did not veto the war in the Security Council)-–already anticipated what President Bush confirmed when he ordered the second Gulf War with the actual invasion of Iraq; if during the Cold War the power of dissuasion consisted of accumulating nuclear weapons, in the current post-Cold War the strategic thing is to control oil and guarantee its secure transit so that their respective economies do not collapse.

In the current conflict, the strong men of the Kremlin, President Dmitri Medvedev and his Rasputin and executing arm, Vladimir Putin, have patiently waited for the moment to avenge the affront that the decisive support by Bush for the unilateral independence of Kosovo represented. The tragic attempt of Georgia to reassert control of South Ossetia by force met the response of a Russian military invasion with the goal of including those two enclaves in its orbit, which the United States firmly opposes. Why? Very simply, to avoid a widespread war in Georgia that would put in danger the two strategic oil pipelines that carry the oil mined by Azerbaijan from the Caspian Sea and that fills the American oil tankers in Turkish ports. This is the principal reason behind this new war that could convert itself into the cause of a Second Cold War.