Russia Opens Route for U.S. to Fly Arms to Afghanistan
July 4th, 2009There could be several factors at work here. Maybe the mobsters who run Russia were offered a cut of the drug money from the American mobsters. If might be that Russian strategists like the idea of giving the U.S. more rope to hang itself. Of course, there’s potential to make billions of dollars from arms sales to all sides.
While I doubt that this move by the Russians is motivated by pure schadenfreude, I’ve known enough Russians to know that this shouldn’t be ruled out.
Is there a Russian equivalent of Schadenfreude?
Via: AP:
Russia said Friday it will allow the United States to ship weapons across its territory to Afghanistan, a long-sought move that bolsters U.S. military operations but potentially gives the Kremlin leverage over critical American supplies.
The announcement by a top Kremlin aide came ahead of President Barack Obama’s visit to Moscow next week, when the deal is expected to be signed during a summit aimed at improving the nations’ strained relations.
Russia’s concession on arms shipments also came as the Obama administration is shifting the U.S. military’s focus from Iraq to Afghanistan, where a massive American offensive is currently under way in Taliban-controlled areas of Helmand province.
Russia has been allowing the United States to ship non-lethal supplies across its territory for operations in Afghanistan, and Kremlin officials had suggested further cooperation was likely.
Kremlin foreign policy adviser Sergei Prikhodko told reporters Friday that the expected deal would enable the U.S. to ship lethal cargo and would include shipments by air and land.
He said it was unclear if U.S. soldiers or other personnel would be permitted to travel through Russian territory or airspace.
“They haven’t asked us for it,” he said.
The normal supply route to landlocked Afghanistan via Pakistan has come under repeated Taliban attack, and the U.S. and NATO have been eager to have an alternate overland supply route through Russia and the Central Asian countries.
I would be more inclined to believe the Russia aligns itself with the U.S. against a chaotic region on its borders. Additionally, I’m sure plenty of wealthy and influential Russians are shareholders in American defense, sorry, WAR companies, so that would want more war spending to keep their shares high. In a sense, the arms manufacturers could be said to be aligned against all nations and all peoples because they only profit when said groups slit each other’s throats.
Finally, it is important to remember that nations are only fictions to accomplish certain task, and that said fictions are becoming less important as others rise in importance. There has historically been a lot of collaboration between the U.S. and Russia, such as when they allied with Iraq against Iran, which also borders Russia.
See also
U.S.-built bridge is windfall for illegal Afghan drug trade.
‘In August 2007, the presidents of Afghanistan and Tajikistan walked side by side with the U.S. commerce secretary across a new $37 million concrete bridge that the Army Corps of Engineers designed to link two of Central Asia’s poorest countries.
Dressed in a gray suit with an American flag pin in his lapel, then-Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said the modest two-lane span that U.S. taxpayers paid for would be “a critical transit route for trade and commerce” between Afghanistan and Tajikistan.
Today, the bridge across the muddy waters of the Panj River is carrying much more than vegetables and timber: It’s paved the way for drug traffickers to transport larger loads of Afghan heroin and opium to Central Asia and beyond to Russia and Western Europe.’
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Meanwhile, in the New Europe(OT),
‘Underworld figures facing charges of racketeering, embezzlement and worse have found a novel way to escape jail in Europe’s most corrupt country: they are running for parliament.
Some of Bulgaria’s best-known alleged mobsters have been let out of custody to campaign in the general election on Sunday under a legal loophole that gives immunity from prosecution to MPs and candidates. Those in the running include the Galev brothers – two reputed gangsters accused of running a southwestern town for years through their police and judicial contacts – as well as Ivan Ivanov, one of nine defendants in a fraud case involving EUR 7,5 M of farm aid from the EU. The case was supposed to be a showpiece trial to prove that judicial reforms were working in a country that was allowed into the EU in 2007, despite deep concerns about judicial independence and its backlog of more than a hundred unsolved contract killings.’
Colourful stuff, albeit on a puny scale next to, say, ‘Shoggoth’ Cheney
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=105302
@ Ebbing
Wow, good find on the bride story. Thanks.