This Year's August Surprise: The Cold War Is Back

Let me add this up:

Russia's still in Georgia and Washington's still ticked.

Defense Secretary Gates saying Thursday that there needs to be some consequences for Russian actions; that the Russian prime minister wants to reassert a traditional sphere of influence and that the U.S. is reassessing all relations with Moscow.

A day after a top Russian minister tells the U.S. it has to decide: Georgia or Russia — who's your friend?

The cold War is back, my friends. And with it, the need for cold cash to fight it.

I'm not saying it's justified or right. It just is.

We're back to really not trusting the Russians, as if we ever did, and they're back to not really loving us, as if they ever could.

So they're back to getting militant. We're back to getting defiant. And our budget's back to... well, backed to the wall.

We don't have any money. Our deficits are bigger and getting even bigger still. No room for spending of any sort.

And up to now the only saving grace was that no matter who was elected in November, defense spending would go down, as we wind down in Iraq. We might wind down there, but looks to me, we'll be winding up elsewhere. Preparing to confront an enemy whose intentions we fear and whose actions now confirm that fear.

Gone are the days we said we conquered the Soviet beast. We didn't.

Which is why defense stocks on Wall Street have been humming — many convinced that fear breeds financing and for them money, lots of money.

I think the "August surprise" this year is not that Russia and Georgia, went to war but we all went back to the future. Back to the days we fretted over our very existence, just when we thought we had secured it.

We likely did, but we'll pay a hell of a lot in cold hard cash these next few years to make damn sure we did... and do.

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