Russia has reasserted itself in all sorts of ways of late. Stratfor has a list:

Russia is prepared to completely break ties with the Western military alliance. According to Medvedev, even if NATO chooses to cut ties with Russia, “nothing terrible will happen” to Moscow. Second, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced that World Trade Organization membership no longer interests Moscow. He added that Russia would soon be pulling out of several WTO-related agreements, thereby paving the way for Russia to formally withdraw its membership bid after more than a decade of negotiations. Third, the Russian Duma and Federal Council unanimously approved a nonbinding resolution calling for the recognition of the Georgian breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia…

Azerbaijan shipped approximately 200,000 barrels of crude to Iran on Monday. This is no ordinary economic transaction; Azerbaijan is the origin of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline that circumvents Russia and transports Caspian oil to the West. A recent pipeline explosion combined with Russian military action in Georgia effectively have knocked the pipeline offline, leaving Baku with no choice but to look south and sell to Iran to maintain some level of oil income. This energy deal runs completely counter to U.S. strategy to keep Iran in a financial stranglehold. Through both direct and indirect means, Russia has simultaneously thrown a monkey wrench into the West’s plans to evade Russian energy bullying tactics while undermining Washington’s pressure policies against Iran.

The in-your-face attitude of the new Russia does not appear to help the narrative of the Democratic candidate for President. At least that is what the McCain campaign apparently believes, since its new foreign policy attack ad against Senator Obama now characterizes him as “dangerously unprepared to be President.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 8:17 pm and is filed under Democrats, General, Republicans, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.