Posted on 08/26/2008 8:50:40 AM PDT by forkinsocket
Looking for the next South Ossetia.
Late one Saturday night last month, I found myself in a Greenland bar conversing with an extremely drunken member of the Royal Danish Navy. When he found out I was American, he lurched over and shared his belief that the United States was preparing to invade and annex Greenland, which currently belongs to Denmark, though it is peacefully moving toward independence. Washington, he explained, was worried about its key missile-defense radar site in far northern Greenland and didn't trust politicians in Denmark or Greenland to guarantee continued American access.
"Of course, we know that the Danish military is a lot weaker than the U.S. So you know who we'll have to call? Russia. They're the only military that can stand up to the U.S. Think about it," he said leaning into me, his breath reeking of Tuborg. "Think about it." I thought about it, and it seemed like a pretty improbable scenario. But back then, so did the return of the Cold War over South Ossetia, a tiny separatist enclave in Georgia that almost no one had heard of. After the events of the last two weeks, it behooves us to take another look at those obscure regions around the world that could also explode into global conflicts. Here's a list—in no particular order—of some of the most dicey:
Nagorno-Karabakh: The former Soviet republics of the South Caucasus—Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan—lead the world in separatist enclaves per square mile. Georgia has South Ossetia and Abkhazia and only regained control of Adjara, on the Turkish border, in 2004.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
I was gleeful that they were out of Eastern Europe and that the Baltics and Ukraine were independent. But even then I had a lot of misgivings about the indepedent Central Asian Republics, it seemed like perfect pickings for the Islamo-Fascists.
The world is a lot safer since the breakup of the USSR. And it will be even safer if Russia is broken up further.
I would have told him “Out! Out, damned sot!”
I never subscribed to the "End of History" bunk peddled after the end of the Cold War. Heck - the Great War (WWI) was supposed to be The War to End All Wars. I thought then that we would return to the traditional competition for scarce resources that has characterized international relations. I hoped the Russians would stay out of that competition, given that they are 70% bigger than the next largest country around. It looks like Imperial Russia is alive and kicking.
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