Part of this blog will also be my own (not necessarily party line) opinions on current affairs.
Something that has caught my eye in the press if you haven't already noticed it is the conflict between the former Soviet state of Georgia, and everyone's favourite former* communists, Russia.
The whole Russia sabre-rattling affair is growing in intensity to almost critical levels. At the end of the cold war everyone was convinced that Russia was a relic from the past, and that the future lay in China/India and their coming of age in the industrial world. However, events in recent years have highlighted that there is more than a little bit of life in the old girl yet. The Russians continue to meddle in the affairs of former Soviet states, leaning on their governments as much as they can, both overtly and with backhanded methods. Be it with agressive military methods as shown in Chechnya and now Georgia, or with underhand methods such as threatening to cut off supplies of fossil fuels - the Russian Federation continues to be a thorn in the backside of western politics.
Obviously something has got to give somewhere. If Russia is to progress** fully into western society then the full dying out of the leftovers from Soviet times needs to come to completion. The man in charge at the moment is ex-KGB (Putin still pulls all the strings), and a true believer in the fact that Russia is one of the world's main superpowers. Once the last of the old school generation of thinkers peters out of the Kremlin, then hopefully we will see an end to their imperialistic meddling that has continued to exist from the end of the cold war. As it stands they will continue to influence neighbouring states, and deliberately oppose measures put forward in the UN much to the chagrin of the western powers that propose them.
Funnily enough, you could read I've just said about Russia, and draw parallels to unnamed western powers and certain conflicts they've participated in during recent times. Oh the irony...
OWAC.
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* Has that much really changed in Russia since the end of the cold war, especially with Putin in power? Answers on a postcard, and don't rush all at once.
** Obviously the term 'progress' here is used relatively, who are we to claim we're better?
