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Pentagon officials were left scratching their heads late Tuesday over the latest ominous anti-U.S.-missile-shield pronouncement from the Russian foreign ministry. It warned of unspecified military action shortly after the nearby Czech Republic agreed to be the new home of an aging missile-defense radar system that has spent the last nine years at Kwajalein Atoll in the south Pacific. "We will be forced to react not with diplomatic, but with military-technical methods" if the shield is ever deployed, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The tracking radar slated to move to the Czech...
Defense Department officials were exasperated and frustrated as, once again, the Russian government denounced the expansion of the fledgling U.S. missile shield that U.S. officials maintain is designed only to protect parts of Europe as well as the United States. "No one's name [in the Russian government] is attached to it," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told TIME shortly after the Russians released their saber-rattling statement. "It's being reported as a foreign ministry statement - and it's got strange wording in it like 'We would be forced to react with military resources' or 'technical means' - what does that...
...Pentagon officials have wooed the Russians with enticements to get them to participate in the shield, saying that Tehran threatens Moscow as well as other Eurasian nations. Iran's newest missile, the intermediate range Shahab 3, can reach European capitals, although marrying it to a nuclear warhead remains a daunting technical challenge, U.S. officials say. Moscow has steadfastly declined to cooperate, saying the shield actually is a ploy to blunt Russia's own missile force. "This system is not designed to counter a Russian threat - this system is designed to counter what is an emerging threat from the Middle East...
...that didn't prevent the key industry players from pointing fingers at each other. At Monday's opening plenary, British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward called the suggestion that speculation was behind the doubling of crude prices in the past year a "myth," and instead blamed geopolitics, a decline in Russian production and increased demand for the crunch. "Supply is not responding adequately to rising demand," he said. "The problem is above ground, not below it." ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson echoed the last part of Hayward's equation: "Look, it's hard for us to fully understand what's behind...
...After my wife's call, I felt like lighting a votive candle to Russian progress: In Gogol's time, there were no cell phones to keep one abreast of the healing powers of the broken roads - just one of the daily miracles that keep this country going, sometimes against considerable odds. That may be why, even a century and a half after Gogol first complained about Russia's roads, expecting them to be repaired - well, that would simply be foolish...