"Red Storm Rising," the Remake. 
News arrives from bankrupt Iceland that the Cold War airfield that was the critical battle zone in Tom Clancy's sensational 1986 techno-thriller "Red Storm Rising" is now for sale and the
Russians are on the short list. At a Reykjavik luncheon last week Iceland President Olafur Ragnar Grimmson announced that he was offering the Keflavik airport and airbase (right) for cash to any taker, and that Russia was the deep pocket he had in mind for a buyer. Forward basing Russian Backfires and Mig 29s at Keflavik would cede control of the North Atlantic and therefore of the NATO alliance supply lines to Russian air power. In the event of war, game over Western Europe. There was no report of laughter at the remark. Iceland is now beyond desperation. A combo of Scandanavian and UK interests have blocked the IMF loan until and if Iceland negotiates more earnest over the fraud of the online Icesave bank that enticed and then shredded Europeans accounts. A report from an LSE brain says that a third of the
country's 300,000 citizens are planning to emigrate, vamoose, and this includes most all the young. Iceland's three big banks failed in the first weeks of the credit crisis, and since then the
young and restless financial children on the island have been making plans to go back to fishing cod like their grandparents or to go fishing for Euros in Europe like their peers. Iceland needs cash and selling Keflavik has the advantage of being rational. The US withdrew its air arm in 2006, Iceland has no Air Force, and the threat of an imminent world war in which Keflavik would anchor the defense of Western Europe and North America from Russia does seem remote. Nonetheless the Russian ambassador, who was present at the luncheon, acted surprised but not offended or speechless. No plans to purchase, he said, but then again --
When the Kremlin Reconsiders.
This last week, the leading man sock puppet Russian president Dmitri Medvedev (left) has been busy delivering bellicose remarks, inspecting NKVD recreators on Red Square, posing with first strike mobile missiles and jawboning the ever-shrinking ruble. The ruble is the regime-change threat. Russia was beggarly with oil at $28 in the winter of '03, and it will be beggarly in the winter of '09 with oil at $38 and sinking. Do I think the ex-Reds will make an offer on Keflavik? No. Because it is theirs for free if they want it. The defenses are down. The crisis of confidence worldwide has damaged everyone's ability both to project power and to defend territory. It makes no sense for Russia to be parading might and threatening Europe with missiles. It makes no sense for the United States, with Citibank under $10 a share and GM out of cash, to maintain half a million troops overseas to guard the oil supply lines that can't be guarded and to leave the US and European coasts uncovered. You have noticed the Russians have a surface and subsurface fleet with plenty of nuclear fuel and weapons? Will the Kremlin reconsider its position about Iceland as oil goes lower and as the Russian budget shortfall grows and the ability to maintain the ruble and order fall?
1933? 2008?
It didn't make any sense in the first panicky run of the Great Depression for Germany to be parading its might, consolidating its power and persecuting Jews and dissenters as soon as Adolf Hitler took the chancellorship January 30, 1933. Yet as I read through the London Times, amid all the brave words about how the markets are dull, or firm, or light, there was the drumbeat of German race theory. There was a sidebar of Japanese aggression in China, too, but not so much attention for Nippon aggression in 1933. The prominent sinister story line from Europe was Germany, the "concentration camp" at Oranienberg, and the desire of Jews with cash or a skill to emigrate, some to Palestine, most hoping to get into England or the United States. And the prominent sinister story line from North America in 1993 was tumbling farm prices, higher and higher unemployment, failing banks, and an earnest, uncertain, beseeching new president. Do I think we are seeing the same conditions today that pertained in 1933? No, though we do have bad banks and worse leadership and an earnest, uncertain new president. Still, these are much stranger, more tangled moments. I cannot read the threat warnings. But I am certain that the fact that the Iceland president taunted NATO by offering a strategic asset (retired) to the other wobbly, over-confident super-power for cash is not a positive development. Even in jest -- and Mr. Grimsson, with an island of pensioners, penitents, and the hopeless, was not light at heart -- even in jest, the 21st Century has too many frail, enraged, financially and politically unstable nuclear powers for the idea of Russia wanting a strategic advantage in a test of strength to be dismissed as impossible.
(1)
"Who lost Iceland?"
Let the televised show trials begin! After all, Fox News needs the ratings.
When world affairs get to the point of complexity where human logic can no longer make heads or tails of it; when even the definitions of reasonable strategic objectives disappear in a haze of uncertainty, the default position is always war. War levels the playing field, re-focuses objectives (survival) and allows for a new (organized) order to emerge.
Everyone recognizes the futility of war, yet we seem to be unable to purge it from the cycle. The next war may well we the end of us all, courtesy of the weapons we now have at our disposal. As long as there were just slings and arrows, the carnage was local. In a global conflict, the consequences are likely to be more dire. We’ve been primed for it for a long time: taking shelter under our school desks in the ´50’s; narrowly avoiding to pull the trigger during the Cuban missile crisis in the sixties; (man-made) global warming now.
Enter the players: There is always a villain: Germany; then Russia; now ourselves. We will first have to come to terms with ourselves before we can even hope of winning. Iraq was just a test before the big one.
Russia had fared out their mischief making to China and Iran. Now all three are hurting economically . Maybe we can drive a wedge in their axis, but I doubt we are clever enough.
The USSR was brought to its knees by Afghanistan and we may be seeing our decline by being there. At this point the best idea would be to Leverage India on Pakistan and force Pakistan to stop assisting the Taliban.
"At a Reykjavik luncheon last week Iceland President Olafur Ragnar Grimmson announced that he was offering the Keflavik airport and airbase (right) for cash to any taker, and that Russia was the deep pocket he had in mind for a buyer."
Haarde dismissed the possibility of this in Oct when the Russians offered to rescue them. So far, the Russians haven't produced a cent of money. One thing is certain: if the Icelanders are going to let the Russians have the base in the end, they better damn well get all the money up front before they let the first Russian military team set foot on the base. They'd never get them out if the Russians, who don't have any money either now that oil is less than $60/barrel, don't pay up first.