Mr Assad said that he would be discussing the deployment of Russian missiles on his territory. The Syrians are also interested in buying Russian weapons.Russia is resuming it's place as a power in the Middle East, mounting a challenge to U.S. dominance in the region, and getting closer to the Ezekiel invasion. Syria is playing a very dangerous game, and if you believe the Bible, it's a game Damascus will lose.
In return Moscow is expected to propose a revival of its Cold War era naval base at the Syrian port of Tartus, which would give the Russian Navy its first foothold in the Mediterranean for two decades. Damascus and Moscow were close allies during the Cold War but the Kremlin’s influence in the region waned after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yesterday’s rapprochement raised the possibility that Moscow intends to re-create a global anti-Western alliance with former Soviet bloc allies.
In times of famine or hardship, for example, the typical Western response is to send over plane-loads of food aid. Although this might seem like the most logical thing to do, often it overlooks the chief cause of famine. Lack of food generally comes below politics, political instability, access to resources and markets, and civil conflict in the famine equation. In other words, it's rarely about a simple lack of food. And flooding a country with food aid creates its own problems, from feeding the militia in conflict situations to destroying what's left of the local and national agricultural market systems.Offering direct electronic payments over mobile phones would directly aid the neediest people, provided they have cell phones, which is something I would tend to think could be a problem in rural Africa.
For now, this is simply a minor war between a great power and very small state, but it has the potential to be an important conflict that sets Russia's path firmly away from the West and toward it's familiar role of rebel power seeking to challenge the status quo.
- If Russia is successful at annexing all or part of South Ossetia or even subjugating all of Georgia, it will be an important expansion of Russian power and a territorial expansion south, closer to Israel and the Middle East's oil fields.
- This drives the nail into the coffin of any hope of a peaceful integration of Russia into NATO and the EU, a hope many naive people had for the future of Europe. This war, if it expands, may provoke a crisis with NATO and the EU, and if it is resolved in a way that leaves those two organizations stronger and more able to exert their influence over the region, that will also be prophetically important if we imagine the EU as the sponsor of the covenant with many and NATO the future military guarantor of Israel's security.
- Finally, this war once again reveals the impotence of the U.N. and the failure of the post-WWII arrangement in the 21st Century. When the great powers that run the U.N. are the instigators of war and exercise their veto power to prevent others from meddling in their affairs, the system is broken. Perhaps this will be the catalyst for a new arrangement or will further set the stage for the EU or the Med Union to replace the U.N. on a regional and then global level.
