David J. Williams

Unlike the one in BURNING SKIES, the summit between the U.S. and Russia was not crashed by elite Autumn Rain hit-squads. Nor did any of the participants wear powered armor. They did, however, dance around a couple of the key issues that arise in the Autumn Rain trilogy, to wit:

Missile defense:  Russia would like nothing better than for the U.S. to dismantle its plans for missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe.  This is unlikely to happen, but the key variables are (a) the administration’s overall posture toward missile defense (which is still being defined), and (b) whether Russia will ultimately insist on a formal linkage between that and overall arms control talks (in particular the still-unresolved questions around bombers/launchers). While the defense facilities themselves would appear to be directed at Iran rather than Russia, a heavy NATO presence in Eastern Europe is something that makes the Bear nervous.  To say nothing of the possibility that the current “Son of Stars Wars” will ultimately be a stalking horse for a more robust space-based systems.  The conversation so far has both sides biding their time, agreeing to study cooperation options, i.e., defer the key decisions to a later point.

Cyberwarfare:   I’d be surprised if serious discussion occurred on this between the principals, but it’s definitely something getting discussed at the lower levels.  Particularly given that the U.S. created CyberCommand a few weeks back (handing the whole thing over to the NSA—uh-oh).  But while everyone agrees that cyberwar is a problem (if it’s aimed at them), no one agrees on what to do about it.  Indeed, Russia has already launched successful attacks on both Estonia and Georgia.  And China has been attacking the U.S. in cyberspace for some time now.  Ongoing “warfare” of this nature may just be a fact of life in the 21st century, at least until/unless the major regional power blocs establish their own separate nets like they do in my books.  (Of course, such “cyber-autarkies” would have to be accompanied by a comprehensive failure of globalization, but that could be the least of our problems in the decades to come.)

And of course there’s no better way to prepare for those problems than to read BURNING SKIES.

Two interesting headlines today:

-Kyrgyzstan under cyberattack:  Details are sketchy, but Russian hackers appear to have knocked Kyrgyzstan entirely off the Internet, engaging in the same DDoS attacks that they deployed in Estonia and Georgia. As of last night, the American air base in Kyrgyzstan was no longer receiving emails, which is presumably the point, given that the U.S. and Russia are jockeying for position/negotiating in Central Asia as the U.S. tries to secure supply lines into Afghanistan that don’t involve Pakistan.  Regardless of the extent of the attack, geography dictates that Russia has the upper hand here, and this is their way of reminding the U.S. of that fact.

-Iran launches satellite:  As Danger Room is quick to point out, the details need to be taken with a grain of salt, as Iran scores high on the Bullshit Meter vis-a-vis anything involving missile capabilities.  Nonetheless, the satellite is being tracked even as I write this, meaning that Iran’s weapons are on the verge of global reach. The targeting problem will be a lot trickier, but in the meantime:  score one for the Persians.  Xerxes would be proud.

More news on the Resurgent Bear: lost amidst the financial/campaigning chaos of last week was the item that Russia is laying the groundwork to help Cuba build its own space center. This is a deft move by Putin; in a stroke he simultaneously continues to put more pressure on the Americans while giving Russia a potential alternative to Central Asia’s Baikonur, which is too far north to be ideal for space launch purposes. We can start to see in all this glimpses of the world of the MIRRORED HEAVENS, in which considerations of launch real-estate drive geopolitics.

But only glimpses.  From a space hardware perspective, Russia would be advised not to place too many eggs into the Cuban basket; Baikonur may be less-than-perfect, but it’s still a damn sight easier to defend credibly than something within ten minutes of Miami.  Though proximity offers opportunities too, as witnessed by Moscow’s mulling over the explosive possibility of putting nuclear bombers into Cuba too.  And the larger pattern is clear, as Russia continues to make inroads on the U.S.’s privileged position in the western hemisphere.  I talked about Iceland yesterday; the Cuban move is linked to the already-in-progress Venezuelan one.

And all of it links right back to Europe, of course.  At the end of the day, Russia isn’t interested in playing puppetmaster in the U.S. backyard because it’s trying to invade New York or any of the other RED DAWN bullshit that the mainstream media seems to buy into.  These are just more cards to play as the U.S. continues to build missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe while supporting no-hopers like Saakashvili in the Caucasus and urging NATO membership for every nation in #$# Eurasia.  Ultimately this is a game of realpolitik, and it’s about time we stopped with the endless moralizing/attempt to define the entire planet as our sphere of influence (something only nations with unlimited treasuries can indulge in) and started conducting our international relations like professionals do.  Because right now the pros are running rings around us.

Iceland has gone bust. But all is not lost. Swimming toward them is. . .a bear! It’s Russia! Vladimir Putin no less, looking as sexy as ever in those bathing trunks of his. Russia is loaning Iceland about the equivalent of a third of Iceland’s GDP, and God only knows what the terms are going to be. I’m sure it’s not going to come cheap, though; although it seems unlikely Russia will get a base out of it (not yet anyway), they’re clearly going to have a lot more maneuvering room in the North Atlantic now.  In fact, it seems that this could become the greatest Russian foreign policy coup since . . .since . . .shit, since Cuba?  Anyone want to help me put this in perspective?

I should also point out that this has occurred despite the fact that the Russian stock market has shut down several times in the last month.  What people often miss, though, is that that stuff doesn’t matter as much over there:  their stock market handles a fraction of their economy, whereas it turned out OUR stock market handled many times our economy’s weight in bullshit assets.  Score one for more primitive markets.  Russia is now able to use its immense foreign currency reserves to stir up additional trouble for a weakening West, and Iceland is the first such move.

It won’t be the last, though.  And Iceland is particularly interesting:  in the Cold War, it was the key to the sea-lanes between the U.S. and Europe; had the shooting started, it would have been essential for the Red Navy to neutralize Iceland in order to cut the supply-lines to NATO forces in Western Europe seeking to resist a Warsaw Pact invasion.  Now Iceland’s geopolitical angle may be a little different.  As global warming keeps on opening up the Arctic Ocean, Russia is getting ever more interested in claiming ever vaster areas of energy-rich seabed.  She planted a flag on the North Pole last year, much to Canada’s chagrin.  (Harper’s comprehensive 07 article on this issue is well worth reading.)  And now there’s even been talk that Canada should invite Iceland to join it, just like it did to Newfoundland back in the 1940s:  after all, Reykjavik is no further from Ottowa than Vancouver.  Someone may yet save Bjork from the bear.

As the New Russia continues to take shape, the Old Russia’s getting a makeover. Case in point: the latest Russian school textbooks go a long way toward exonerating Stalin for all that pesky mass-murder stuff, emphasizing the work he did to save the Soviet state, and instructing teachers to emphasize that all Stalin’s actions were “entirely rational.” What makes this all the more fascinating is that Prosveshenije, the textbook company that’s released this magnum opus, is the same one that for years had a monopoly on Soviet textbooks: i.e., they’ve got a lot of practice in making the past whatever it is that the present needs it to be.

A second cold war? Russia regains its great power status? There’s a lot of SF fans who said my geopolitical ideas were crazy. But turn on the TV, and Russian tanks are steamrolling over Georgia. And now I’m getting emails from *other* SF fans who are asking me whether I’m going to use this to claim vindication.

Well, no, I’m not.

For one thing, gloating ain’t attractive. But more importantly, despite the media’s hysterical claims of a new cold war, this isn’t the one I had in mind. What’s presented in THE MIRRORED HEAVENS is a Russia capable of projecting force on a global basis. But the Russian Federation of today is a long way still from anything that approaches the all-encompassing global reach of the Soviet Union.

And that’s something the U.S. ought to bear in mind as it weighs its options in the aftermath of the Georgia fait accompli.  A lot of people who should know better are calling for Bush II to get tough on the Evil Russian Bear.  But what they’re forgetting (or ignoring) is that we already HAVE been getting tough.  We promised that NATO would never expand into the former Soviet Union, but then NATO did.  Not only that, but we withdrew unilaterally from the ABM pact and started building missile defense infrastructure in the Czech Republic and Poland.  And while we were at it we intervened in Ukrainian politics.

But although the Russia we’re dealing with now may not be anywhere near as powerful as the Soviets, it’s still a damn sight stronger than the broken reed we trampled over in the 1990s.  And although American domestic politics has reached such a lamentable state of affairs that both candidates feel they have to immediately jump on the anti-Russia bandwagon (any rhetoric besides the mindless assertion of American power being deemed unpatriotic these days), hopefully something at either the State Department or the Pentagon is weighing the facts:

Item #1:  the bulk of our military forces will be engulfed in the Mideast quagmire for some time to come
Item #2:  the question of whether America intervenes in the former Soviet Union means a lot more to the Russians than it does to the Americans
Item #3:  we need Russia’s help with Iran whether we like it or not.
Item #4:  Putin ain’t Hitler. (This doesn’t mean that Putin’s a saint.  It just means that he isn’t the leader of a state hell-bent on conquering all of Eurasia and killing entire ethnic groups while he does so.)
Item #5:  While Putin may not be Hitler, he really has the potential to fuck with the price of oil.

Bottom line, regardless of what Russia does next, we’re idiots if we go to the mat with them right now over territory inside what was once the Soviet Union. And we’d be unwise to forget that for-too-long discredited concept in international relations called spheres of influence.  And I’m more than a little concerned that over the next few years (regardless of who wins the election) we’re going to start to see just how flimsy some of the assumptions that guide American foreign policy have become.

With the invasion of Georgia, Russia has signaled that reports of her demise are greatly exaggerated, and more than a little premature. Thanks in part to the U.S. being mired in an endless Middle Eastern war, Russia is in a position to define a sphere of influence, and operate within it with impunity. Many are focusing on the legalisms involved: in particularly, how the secession of Kosovo from Serbia opened up the door for Russia to play the same game in South Ossetia/Georgia. But the truth of the matter is that U.S. moves in eastern Europe (in particular the prospect of U.S. missile defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic) meant that Russia has been backed into a corner. Now we see her response.

And we’re also getting a glimpse of the new face of warfare. Even as the tanks started to roll, it became evident that Georgia was under massive cyberattack; now the New York Times has reported that this online incursion (or rehearsals for it) commenced last month. The NYT calls this the “first time that a known cyberattack has coincided with a shooting war”, which I find strange, as there’s more than a little evidence that the U.S. did the same thing in its assault on Iraq in 2003 (and if they didn’t, then they were fools not to).  At any rate, it won’t be the last.

But the exact contours of this new type of war will take some while to play out.  As with space warfare, the topography of cyberwarfare remains relatively undefined.  A fascinating article in Wired pointed out how some countries are cyberlocked:  just as a landlocked country has no access to the sea, cyberlocked countries rely to too great an extent on nearby countries for their access to the net.  (In this case, Georgia is dependent to an alarming degree on Russia infrastructure.)  The road from here to THE MIRRORED HEAVENS (in which the World Wide Net actually sunders along geopolitical lines) remains a long one, but I think we’re starting to see the first signs of it.

And meanwhile Georgia had better pray the cease-fire holds.  Vladimir Putin may not use computers, but he’s pretty good at employing people who do.