Power Games
It’s a perfect diversion to the world – we come together every other year to be entertained by the Olympic tradition of friendly rivalry and national pride. We put aside our differences and take time to celebrate universal passions that bring us together and enjoy the sense that the world is not so large and unfamiliar. The 2008 Olympic Games are underway and the Russian army attacks the sovereign nation of Georgia. The invasion has scary similarities to the German invasion of Czechoslovakia at the beginning of World War II. For the Nazi Germany, Hitler’s hunger was for an embedded ethnically-German province belonging to Czechoslovakia. So it seems for Russia and the Georgia province of South Ossetia, only this invasion began with a Russian cyber-attack on the financial and governmental centers of Georgia – truly a sign of the times.
Russia built much of its now sustained wealth on the heavy investment of crude oil. Pipelines now lead from Russia to Europe, providing as much as 40% of Eastern Europe’s oil. Georgia also hosts one of the longest pipelines in the world, the BTC Pipeline, which runs between the Caspian Sea offshore oil fields and the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. The pipeline’s major shareholder is the United Kingdom. With crude supplies becoming a critical piece to the world economy, it looks more and more like Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is playing power games – Power games under the shadow of the beloved Olympics.
Please pray for the victims of the Georgian invasion and for justice, freedom and national sovereignty to prevail.
– D