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137 comments on Using NATO to fight peak gas

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Luis de Sousa on January 4, 2007 - 3:29pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

What a great post, thank you Jérôme.

People like Mr. Lugar have to understand that the Thatcher-like politics of selling everything you can the fastest you can are long gone. Now the time is for Putin, Chavez or Morales like politics. You may call them aggressors, but in the end they are just trying to use sensibly their own resources in benefit of their folk.

It’s a new world that unfolds right in front of us.

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MUDLOGGER on January 4, 2007 - 6:53pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Agreed. An Excellent post.

Who is Putin?

Ex KGB, Straight into the KGB after Graduating in Law, Fluent German Speaker, Passable English Speaker, A (believed sincere) Convert to the Russian Orthodox church, resigned from the KGB rather than take part in a putsch.

What is he? One time member of the Our Home is Russia Party, he is a patriot. It is his job maximise the value of the assets of Russia and shepard those assets to the betterment of the Russian People.

He holds no job description for supplying Western Europe or anywhere else with unlimited supplies of oil and gas at below market rate.

We have hosed all our gas away, we did not even bother with any real strategic reserve, we have had ten years to think this problem through. We crippled the energy business with deregulation without thinking about the consequences. Well that's what 30 years of an 'entitlement culture' gets you.

And now we throw a hissy-fit.

I wish people like Lugar and Cheney would just stop and think before sabre rattling.

What exactly would NATO be able to achieve anyway?

So what will Putin do next? Probably spend a lot more of his new oil wealth on re-equipping and modernising his armed forces, maybe trade in roubles, which may harden while the dollar softens further.

All Putin is doing is putting Russia first.

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Squalish on January 6, 2007 - 4:50am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The dissertation, which Putin scholars have tried in vain for years to examine, is one of a number of mysteries surrounding the enigmatic Russian leader's academic career.
The official Kremlin biography asserts Mr. Putin obtained a "Ph.D. in economics" in 1997 from the St. Petersburg Mining Institute, but his thesis was for a "candidate of sciences" degree that is considered at least an academic class below a formal doctoral degree.
In a semiautobiographical series of interviews published just after he was named president of Russia in 2000, Mr. Putin does not even mention the thesis, referring only to preliminary work he did on another dissertation on international law at the then-Leningrad State University in 1990 while still formally an employee of the KGB.
It is not even clear when Mr. Putin wrote the thesis, formally titled "The Strategic Planning of Regional Resources Under the Formation of Market Relations," although it is known he returned from Moscow to St. Petersburg in 1997 to defend his work.
What is clear, according to Mr. Gaddy and fellow Brookings researcher Igor Danchenko, is that large sections of the dissertation's central argument were taken almost word-for-word from the 1978 management text "Strategic Planning and Policy," by University of Pittsburgh professors William R. King and David I. Cleland.

Wanna know more about Putin's strategy?

There's also this link.

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DingyWhite on January 7, 2007 - 11:45pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The Soviet/Russian system of academic degrees isn’t compatible with the Western one.
‘Cadidat nauk’ (candidate of sciences) is a degree one step higher than ‘specialist’ (the lowest). A dissertation of ‘candidat nauk’ must observe the existing theories on the chosen subject and demonstrate the graduand’s ability to operate with this information as well as to give the graduand’s own interpretation of these theories regarding some particular case. In Putin’s work it’s strategic resource planning (general subject) on regional level in transition economy (particular case).
It’s a common practice in Russia. My own ‘candidat nauk’ dissertation consists of (one half) excerpts from many Russian and foreign academic texts and (the other half) my interpretation of those theories in particular instance.

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137 comments on Using NATO to fight peak gas

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