Malcolm. If you intend to be a genuine historian, and not merely a propagandist for the US Studies Centre at Sydney Uni, I challenge you to provide an evidence based argument for your reference to "Russia's otherwise illegal 2008 military intervention in the former Soviet republic of Georgia." If you are completely at a loss, here is a clue, "Who attacked whom"?

Further evidence of the wilfully blind propaganda masquerading as "analysis" by yet another member of the cheerleader squads that populate so much of Australian academia. No doubt the author will cite this article in support of a position at one of the lucrative US "think tanks".

OLO readers would be better served by going to www.global research.ca and reading the analysis by Patrick Martin of Obama's speech in Brussels this Wednesday just past. Martin shows the huge disjuncture between American rhetoric and the grim reality of actual US policy.

I have yet to read in an Australian outlet that after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 Crimea held a referendum on whether they wished to stay in Ukraine or rejoin Russia. They voted overwhelmingly for the latter option. Ukraine refused to allow that to happen. Almost all the articles published by OLO on the Crimean situation show a similar blindness to the facts of history. Much easier to demonise Putin.

OLO readers are also referred to the latest UN Human Rights committee report on the US, published this week. It is scathing about US human rights abuses. Again, there is a conspicuous silence, not only from the msm, which given their track record is to be expected, but also from so-called alternative outlets, gatekeepers to a man.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/ is the best independent analysis of geo-political plays on Zibigniew Brezezinskis' " Grand Chessboard"

I just wish such an analysis was applied to he USA when they illegally attacked Vietnam, Iraq, Somalia, Libya ,Afghanistan, Pakistan, threatened to attack Syria, Iran and now want to take on Russia and China. Who are the real war mongers and aggressors?

The West with its head up its rectum, are pushing both Russia and China to a nuclear conflagration. Mutual Assured Destruction.MAD

Thanks, James O'Neill, for the tip to read Patrick Martin's take on Obama's speech.
I listened to part of the speech on PBS NewsHour and came away thinking I had just listened to possibly the most mendacious man I have ever heard.
Obama is scary enough, but what will happen if some tired old war-whore like Hillary follows him.
It says a lot about democracy in the West, and especially in Irsrael and the US, when their Generals are the leading voices of reason and caution. We do truly live in scary times.

halduell, The Clinton's are just another puppet of our Western financial system. It was Bill Clinton who removed the Glass Steagall Act in the late 1990's which enabled the GFC of 2008 to happen. This Act separated the Banks gambling activities in derivatives from our real assets.

The QE( money printing) and bailouts just re-inflated the whole bubble again to even bigger proportions.We need a Glass Steagall Act here because we no longer have Govt Banks or any real control of our finance system. APRA is controlled by the BIS or Banking of International Settlements and they are privately owned.

Russia and China have many Govt Banks and are not controlled by the Western debt system of money creation. This is why they are being demonised. They want sovereignty. Russia and the BRICS nations almost make up half the World's pop and they can topple the debt ridden Western economies very easily.

As time goes by the BRICS Nations get stronger, this is why the Western financial system wants war. They also need to steal more assets to back up their money printing.

We'd be better off joining the BRICS Nations because China is our biggest trading partner.

@Arjay
Interesting that you write of the West's (read US) need to steal more assets to back up their money printing.
Missing, presumably gone into the US Federal Bank, is Ukraine's 33 tons of gold. This now joins Libya's missing gold, seized when that invasion happened in 2011.
Which raise the question, does R2P stand for Right to Protect or Right to Plunder.
And not just enemies get this treatment. Germany has asked the US to return its sovereign gold and reportedly received to date only 5 out of its total of 674 tonnes held by the US Federal Bank.
"Additionally, like Libya, both Syria and Iran are two of the world’s last remaining nation states who both have state-run central banks and gold reserves which fall outside of the world’s private central banking syndicate."
More on this can be found at http://21stcenturywire.com/2014/03/21/the-latest-heist-us-quietly-snatches-the-ukraines-gold-reserves/

Halduell.I read that Germany had 6300 tins of gold being held by the Fed but could not get even 600 tons returned. Jim Sinclair says don't be surprised if Russia and China announce they have 40,000 tons of gold and will use this to back the Yuan as the new world reserve currency to replace the US $.Over half the world's gold of 170,000 tons is in private hands in the form of jewellery and bullion.

There are over 80 pieces of paper laying claim to every oz of gold held by our financial sector. They drive down the gold price by selling off derivatives and shorting gold.

There has been panic buying of gold in Japan because of inflation fears. Total value all precious metals = $15 trillion. World GDP = $70 trillion. Gold as a proportion of average income is about the same as in 1950,so it is not over valued. Cost of production per oz = $ 950.Some are making wild predictions on future gold prices but doubling of the price is not a wild prediction even with a little stress.

Prepare yourself as I think the really big collapse will happen soon and there will be no QE to re-inflate the market. Some are saying a 90% collapse, so if you are smart,real bargains will appear. Picking the bottom is the hardest task.

I fear you may be right about an impending collapse.
Some years ago I came across an observation by someone that if the world thought the implosion of communism created an earth-shattering din, wait for the fall of capitalism.
Or to put it another way, we ain't seen nothing yet.
Another report I read more recently, and again no reference - perhaps I should start taking notes - was that Russia had leased large bank vaults in Switzerland suitable for storing gold.
The short-sighted absurdity of the West's response to Russia's reaction to the West's meddling in Ukraine is that this will likely push Russia and China into an energy deal not written in dollars. Russia has the energy, China is the market, and both are tired of being pivoted upon.
Obama is holding a busted flush. And nukes. Dangerous times.

This is really important.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/28/viewing-the-ukraine-crisis-from-russias-perspective/