Georgia-Russian war: Energy Conflict?

I watched an amazing segment on Democracy Now about the Russian - Georgian conflict. I was honestly surprised to learn that it was pretty much exclusively about oil, I guess because the mainstream media really seems to focus on democracy blah blah blah. Network news is junk food for the mind.

Michael Clare, author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, talked with Amy Goodman (The anchor for Democracy Now). He mentioned the pipeline built with the urging of the US during the Clinton administration -- and how that pipeline was an attempt to undercut Russian political and economic power over Europe. The strange thing of course is why Georgia would have risked provoking its much more powerful neighbor, and Klare speculates (though I should add without conclusive evidence) that the Neo-conservative faction in the US government led the Georgians to believe that the US would lend more significantly more military aid then was actually politically feasible.



And now because of the conflicting foreign policies coming out of the US (the neo-con faction and the State department) Russia is now within easy striking distance of the pipeline, giving Russia significant economic and political leverage against Europe, NATO and to a certain extent the United States. At least for now.

Sometimes I get nostalgic for the chessmasters of yester-year. It occurs to me that Henry Kissinger was an evil bastard, but at least he could recognize the 'game'. The Neo-Cons seem to be evil and totally clueless. That doesn't make them any less dangerous of course, but instead of worrying about the relative strength of the US, they seem to concerned only with their own exceedingly narrow goals. They seem to myopic and totally inflexible. I'm surprised they haven't been shoved out of power yet.