Russia is actually strong but is feigning weakness, correct?
Weakness has been quite the moneymaker for the State and their shattered economy is sufficient not only to excuse our throwing good money after bad, it serves to excuse their continued military sales to China and 'rogue' nations as well as the nuclear power plants they're building in places like Bushehr, Iran. Regardless the fact that -- as is their practice -- they often state the obvious for the Slow:
The bombing of Kosovo was setup by Moscow, correct?
I wouldn't go that far. I don't think you can look at the way the GOP preserved the "Mad Bomber of Sudan" through impeachment and cattle-prodded the Big Lewinsky with the Incredibly Shrinking Cox Report into launching the war well before the "good bombing weather" over which the Pentagon was crowing would come in June ... long after we were running out of things to hit.Do you remember the Evil Clinton's ashen face in that first week? Didn't appear to me the face of a bold madman who was bombing the Cox Report off the front page. Rather, it was a President so shaken somehow that he dropped the "football" one day. Remember?
Rather, I look at the way some of the Bush administration admitted they really could have had the Bosnia thing wrapped up before handing the Balkan baton to Clinton ... who managed to ratchet our presence appreciably and cash some substantial check with Congress -- even committing us somehow to assisting in the prosecution of Milosevic as part of finishing the Moral War we started -- before handing it back.
I think indeed there are Western stakeholders who consider themselves Interested Parties to the continuing conflict in the Balkans. (See, George Soros, Trepka Mines, etc.)
This (as well as concerted infiltration of our "think tanks" and agencies for over 50 years) could be part of the reason that our leadership's thinking is a little deluded and -- just as they didn't comprehend the incongruity of NATO's acting offensively outside its charter -- they think nothing of putting a former Soviet at the right hand of every critical post (as in 1989, putting a former radical like Robertson at the head of the beast and -- with Russia's conditional membership that (like their and China's set-ups with the world economic collectives) amounts to simple, effective Veto Power contemporaneous with the wooing of a potential "full" or "most favored" member -- effecting precisely the security collective the former Soviets envisioned for Europe to match the Euro Economic Collective already in place.
The war in Chechnya is staged, correct?
Let's just say it continues to great effect. Unlike Yeltsin's standing atop a tank a la Lenin during his bombing of "The White House", I don't like to believe that such violence could be "staged" however. I think the war is genuine on several levels.Unleashed, exacerbated ... controlled, perhaps.
I believe it's been perpetuated for many reasons ... not the least of which is that it goes a long way to explaining how in the world "terrorism" managed to strike at the heart of the Terror Internationale and thus put Russia on our side as "fellow victim" of terror at the hands of Islamic fundie dogs.
In this instance, I would not only look to the perpetuation of soviet-sponsored terror and violence in Israel that ebbs and flows as circumstances dictate but also the crystal clear maxims of those who "established" the Security Services, like Trotsky, who said: "The revolution does not make sense without terror."
I think the Soviets have done a bang-up job and abolished the image of the enemy just as they promised to do on the eve of perestroika. I couldn't help but notice in Red Square last summer that an icon of Christ now faces off with the tomb of Lenin ... but from the "holy gate" that is GUM department store.
I gave you some of my thoughts so you'd understand why the articles I linked not only resonate with me but make sense in that they reveal a certain consistency over time despite the dialectic yin yang by which Russia will saber rattle against NATO one moment and join it the next.
"OH please don't throw me in da briar patch!!"