Archive for the ‘Featured’ Category
Posted on April 11, 2009 - by Venik
Choose Your Justice
The New York Times recently ran a story about Telenor losing a $1.7 billion lawsuit in Russia. To summarize: Telenor – a Norwegian telecom firm – and Alfa Group – one of Russia’s largest private investment banks got into a squabble over VimpelCom (Beeline) – their joint telecom business in Ukraine. Alfa wanted to acquire [...]
Posted on April 4, 2009 - by Venik
Misunderestimated Enemy
Obama’s election campaign put the war in Afghanistan on a pedestal as the single most important national security goal of the post-Bush era. Currently, the NATO-led international force in Afghanistan numbers about 55,000 troops from forty one countries, including about 23,000 American soldiers.The NATO force in Afghanistan has virtually no heavy armor – just a [...]
Posted on March 26, 2009 - by Venik
Round Two
CNBC’s Jim Cramer believes that the economic recession might have reached the bottom and that we already are beginning to see signs of improvement. Indeed, the slightly-lower-than-expected quarterly decline reported by Best Buy infused financial analysts with much optimism. But even superficial analysis of Best Buy’s performance during the past quarter reveals the true reason [...]
Posted on March 15, 2009 - by Venik
Russian Military Reform
Putin and his cabinet have embarked on the most dangerous journey of their political careers: the 2009-2012 military reform. And by “dangerous” I don’t mean just unpopular but life-threatening. The decision to cut nearly 200,000 senior officers, special forces, and intelligence operatives will have serious consequences for Russia’s internal stability. Essentially, over a relatively short [...]
Posted on February 17, 2009 - by Venik
When subs collide
As we now know, a British and a French nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed submarines collided in the Atlantic earlier this month. Amazingly, the first newspaper to report the incident and to prompt the official admission of the accident was The Sun tabloid. The Royal Navy said that the subs “came into contact at very low speeds”, calling [...]
Posted on February 9, 2009 - by Venik
Russia Stepping on Obama’s Afghan Plans
For nearly eight years Manas International Airport in Kyrgyzstan has been a key element in the US tactics and strategy in Afghanistan. The airport supported a high volume of flights by USAF aircraft, primarily by heavy-lift transports and aerial tankers but also by F/A-18, F-15E, and A-10 ground attack aircraft, as well as by other [...]
Posted on January 28, 2009 - by Venik
Why Bailout Will Not Work, Again
Back in September I wrote a short piece on Bush’s bailout plan – Why Bailout Will Not Work. The bottom line of my rant was: the US economy is so massive and the US national debt is so high that the federal government is just too poor to fix the problem by simply throwing cash [...]
Posted on January 8, 2009 - by Venik
Paying Ukraine’s Gas Bill
Bloomberg reports that Ukraine’s president is using the gas war with Russia as a way to endear himself to the West and to improve EU’s disposition toward his country. What dark twisted alleys of logic led Bloomberg analysts to this extraordinary conclusion we will probably never know. Luckily. “Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko may be calculating [...]
Posted on January 3, 2009 - by Venik
Gaza Rocketeers
Just as I was starting to get bored, another squabble broke out between Israel and Hamas. Apparently, the mighty Hamas army has been firing rockets in the general direction of Negev wastelands surrounding Gaza, causing alarming damage to local wildlife. Or so Mark Regev, the Israeli government spokesman, tells us. Ms. Amanpour of CNN has [...]
Posted on December 29, 2008 - by Venik
Happy New Year!
I wish all of you a happy New Year. Thanks for reading my blog. My wish for the new year is the same as always. No surprises. And I wish the same to you. May only those things happen that you planned for, or at least saw coming. What would life be without surprises? Just [...]
Posted on November 15, 2008 - by Venik
Russian Missiles: the Minsk Option
A number of times over the past months and even years various Russian government officials mentioned a possibility of a ballistic missile deployment in Belarus. The independent-minded Lukashenko kept Putin at an arm’s length, while managing to achieve a seemingly impossible task: to annoy Moscow, Brussels, and Washington all at the same time. Lately, however, [...]
Posted on November 7, 2008 - by Venik
Saakashvili’s Endgame
As waning wartime patriotism in Georgia gives way to realistic assessments of the facts, Saakashvili can now see the end of his political career rapidly approaching. As predicted, the situation in Tbilisi is developing rapidly and Saakashvili may be expected to make his endgame early next year, probably soon after Obama’s inaugural speech in Washington. [...]
Posted on October 24, 2008 - by Venik
Combat Aviation 2030
Years of working in the aerospace industry presented me with opportunities to talk to many aviation specialists and this article is a digest of their opinions and my own comments. This article is a subjective look at what the future of combat aviation may or should be in the next 20-30 years, but not necessarily [...]
Posted on October 23, 2008 - by Venik
Jane’s is Jumping to Conclusions
Reuters ran a story on the recent study by Jane’s Strategic Advisory Services. I have a Jane’s subscription, but I couldn’t find the report on their site and so I will rely on the few passages quoted by Reuters. “A central problem is that of a Russian political and military leadership commitment to a Cold [...]
