Oracle wrote:james_mav wrote:Oracle wrote:james_mav wrote:bill cobbett wrote:But seriously if this story of illegal exploration is true it would be good reason to suspend the talks until it's sorted .. Perhaps that's the intention(?).
But the report of drilling is strange. Usually a seismic survey is done first. Wind-up?
I don't understand. The article posted by Oracle talked about a military drill, i.e. practicing military maneuvers. Why are people talking about oil wells all of a sudden?
They are my sheep, and they shall follow me wherever I lead them ...
Don't blame me - I don't pretend to be Military minded
You are the good shepard!
Given that we're talking about Greeks, you're trying to herd goats and not sheep, and we both know how much harder it is to herd goats!
I allowed Miltiades to distract me in the background, making arrangements to speak with him ....
OMG what did I agree to?
Anyway, on reflection this news is even more devastating ....
It means the Turk and TCs are preparing to
FIGHT us for our oil.
Doesn't it?
It's a long way from a search and rescue drill to a fight. The mogoloi might be barbarians, but they know a thing or two about self-interest. An armed attack on RoC economic assets (oil & gas infrastructure, let's say) would invite a response from Greece. Despite the absurd tales you hear about large scale ground invasions, a war between Greece and tourkomogolia would involve attacks on eachother's economy; the Hellenic Navy and Air Force would choke off mongol trade flows in the Aegean and the Med. Target number 1 of course will be the loaded oil tankers from ceyhan, which pass, alas, within range of Greece's exocet missile defences. Unless the RoC is going to become the next Kuwait, there is no chance that it is worth it for mongolistan to start a war.
This kind of misbehaviour is par for the course; the mogoloi nearly miscalculated badly in 1987 in the Aegean when they sent an oceanographic vessel into Greek territorial waters to conduct mineral surveys; the Greek government promised them that it would mean war, which the mogoloi presumed was a bluff. Of course it wasn't, and the mogoloi backed down when they realised that the Hellenic Navy had sortied her entire fleet. Unlikely that they will make this mistake again.
There are a couple potential explanations for the latest aggression (and that of late last year):
(1) Since the mogoloi have virtually no political or economic levers they can use against the Republic of Cyprus, they are using military posturing in order to extract concessions by the RoC government towards the island's muslim minority in the current round of talks. They're after concessions, and they want them quickly (i.e. before the review of mongolistan's progress towards meeting the reforms they've pledged as part of their EU candidature). This explanation is unlikely however, because they're probably not so stupid as to believe that their bluff will be believed.
(2) Domestic political posturing, to demonstrate that they're tough guys who support their bretheren in occupied Cyprus. This is not impossible. A less likely evolution of this strategy is for the mongolistan government to be looking to create political capital that it can expend by cutting some kind of deal in Cyprus. I don't think this extension is likely.
(3) The nationalist and euroskeptic military of mongolistan want to demonstrate both to the mongolistan government, and to the EU, who is boss in mongolistan. Even if the AKP wanted to send conciliatory messaged on the Cyprus problem for the benefit of their EU ascension, the military will not let them. In effect, the military is acting as a spoiler of mongolistan's EU membership bid, because if gains momentum, the military stand to lose (remember, in order to join the EU, a nation's military must be under civilian control - a situation that is certainly not the case in mongolistan). So instead of allowing mongolistan's EU bid to gain momentum, they act like pricks now and provide more firepower to the likes of Sarkozy who have a policy of keeping mongolistan out of the EU.
