A few weeks back, Dubya sent a ship to visit Georgia.  The Russians were outraged.  Now we have their response:

Two Russian strategic bombers landed in Venezuela on Wednesday as part of military maneuvers, the government said, announcing an unprecedented deployment to the territory of a new ally at a time of increasingly tense relations with the U.S.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the two Tu-160 bombers flew to Venezuela on a training mission. It said in a statement carried by the Russian news wires that the planes will conduct training flights over neutral waters over the next few days before heading back to Russia. . . . In Moscow, Defense Ministry spokesman Alexander Drobyshevsky refused to say how long the Venezuela deployment will last or say whether the planes carried any weapons. . . .

Earlier this week, Russia said it will send a naval squadron and long-range patrol planes to Venezuela in November for a joint military exercise in the Caribbean.

Everyone keeps saying it isn’t a new Cold War.  I certainly hope that’s true.  But let’s look at the evidence:

• The U.S. and Russia are no longer cooperating on reducing nuclear arsenals.
• Cheney just spent the past week running around Europe and warning against Russia (more on this later).
• The EU is looking into ways to reduce its dependence on Russian gas and oil.
• Russia is developing close relations with a Latin American neighbor of the United States, and has potentially sent strategic assets within striking range of the continental U.S.
• U.S.-Russian space cooperation appears to be a thing of the past.
• Both the Bush Administration and the McCain campaign no longer talk of Russia as an ally, but as a rival.
• Russia and China have become more and more friendly since Putin came to power.
• Russia has supported the establishment of two nascent organizations, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan), and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), either of which could evolve into a rival to the United States/EU/NATO.

Is it me or is it getting chilly in here?

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