Cold War On — M K Bhadrakumar: Obama's Monica moment

The United States may have administered one of the biggest-ever snubs to the Kremlin in the post-Cold War era with the White House announcement on Thursday that it will provide military support to the Syrian rebels....

The US President Barack Obama is scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit scheduled to begin in Northern Ireland this coming Monday. This was to have been the first meeting for the two presidents after their respective re-election to the high office.
As a token courtesy to Putin at a personal and public level, Obama should have deferred the announcement until after meeting Putin. Syria was expected to figure on top of their agenda and Obama and Putin have been closely in touch over Syria....

A senior state department official, Frank Rose, deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Arms Control, gave the bottom line on Wednesday that Obama has nothing to offer Putin on missile defense....

All in all, Obama's momentous decision on military intervention in Syria, which could well launch a new Cold War, is a desperate diversionary move when his administration is caught up deep in the cesspool over the Snowden controversy. 

The entire moral edifice on which Obama built up his presidency and the values he espoused at the core of his "audacity of hope" when he began his long march to the White House five years ago - transparency, accountability, legitimacy, multilateralism, consensus - lie exposed today as a pack of lies. 

Syria is now "officially" a proxy war, and the Cold War is back on. Three cheers for military Keynesianism. Now the ruling elite can breath easily again.

Asia Times Online
Obama's Monica moment
M K Bhadrakumar

If you are not paying attention to geopolitics and geo-strategy, you should be. It is taking some interesting turns of late that are portend potentially enormous social, political and economic consequences. The direction toward war is increasing as the global economic situation deteriorates and beggar-thy neighbor replaces international coordination.