How about this:
During the run up to Nov. 2, Russian President Vladimir Putin announces he's agreed to send, say, 40,000 troops to Iraq to lend a hand with suppressing the insurgency and restoring security.
The idea was first floated last month at Stratfor, the outfit that sells "strategic intelligence on global business, economic, security and geopolitical affairs."
Via The Agonist, here's some of what Stratfor had to say:
Moscow and Washington are quietly negotiating a request by the Bush administration to send Russian troops to Iraq or Afghanistan this fall, Russian government sources tell Stratfor. The talks are intense, our contacts close to the U.S. State Department say, and the timing is not insignificant. A Russian troop lift to either country before the U.S. presidential election would give U.S. President George W. Bush a powerful boost in the campaign.
Supposedly, the Russians "agreed in principle" to send up to three mechanized divisions and an airborne brigade, which would amount to around 40,000 troops.
Now the theme has been picked up and elaborated on at Asia Times by a columnist who calls himself Spengler, after the early 20th Century German philosopher. I haven't been able to deduce Spengler's identity; the closest I've come is this Wikipedia description of him as a "Jewish-American columnist for the Asia Times Online, whose particular focus is on America." In any case, here's the heart of his argument:
In exchange for a troop presence in Iraq, Russia would obtain a free hand in dealings with the countries of the former Soviet Union. It would gain leverage against a weakening Turkey in the Caucasus and Central Asia. And it would vastly enhance its leverage in negotiations over the placement of oil pipelines. Most important, perhaps, it would assert its old status as a global military power against the feckless Europeans. In short, the arrangement would benefit everyone, except of course the population of Fallujah [insurgency central in Iraq].
America's squeamishness in the face of large-scale civilian casualties mystifies the Russians, who know about such things. The remnants of the Chechen resistance have few friends, even among Arab governments. The General Assembly of the United Nations remained mute over the Chechen dead when Russia razed Grozny in 1999, killing or displacing about half of the population of 1 million. The Council of Europe, responsible for investigating human rights violations, suspended activity in Chechnya last year by agreement with Moscow. In January, the Saudis received the pro-Russian president of Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov, who told alJazeera, "I think the most important factor is that Prince Abd Allah invited the leaders of the Chechen Republic. This is a definite recognition of the current authorities [being] friendly to Moscow."
In essence, we hire, cajole or induce the Russians to do the really dirty work.
The Russians have denied that they're sending any troops to Iraq or Afghanistan (where, let's recall, they were humiliatingly defeated by indigenous fighters and foreigners like Osama bin Laden, all of whom were supported with weapons and money by the U.S.).
The story, which has been perking along for a month or so, got new life when Hoshyar Mahmud Zebari, the new Iraqi foreign minister, visited Moscow for talks and said Iraq needed Russian troops as "peacekeepers." Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov repeated that Russia would not send troops, but said his government was willing to help in other ways and left open the suggestion that security issues could be put on the agenda for a subsequent meeting in Iraq.
So. A trial balloon? Maybe. Just wacky theorizing? Possibly. But we live in strange times. We blog, you decide.
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