Telegraph.co.uk; Russia is fighting a new Cold War with banks and pipelines, not tanks and warplanes - by Edward Lucas

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Russia is fighting a new Cold War with banks and pipelines, not tanks and warplanes - by Edward Lucas

In classical mythology, Georgia was the land where the Argonauts had to harness bulls with bronze hooves to win the Golden Fleece. Modern Georgia is the source of a treasure scarcely less precious: oil and gas from central Asia and the Caspian, piped along the only east-west energy corridor that Russia does not control. But whereas Jason and his comrades triumphed, our quest has ended in humiliating failure. Russia is also advocating a new pan-European security organization, with formal legal status. This, it hopes, will exclude the United States, and tie up the West in the knots of international law, so that military intervention of the kind seen in the former Yugoslavia becomes all but impossible.

Note EU-Digest: The Telegraph is one of the mouthpieces of British Conservatives who rather be part of the US than a member of the European Union.