The oil of Central Asia, and control over it, is the key to Russian survival. The situation has not changed today from Soviet times in terms of revenue for the Kremlin. Chechnya itself is a worthless piece of mountainous guerrilla favorable territory filled with hillbillies with guns. Some of them make the boys in "Deliverance" seem like cultured gentlemen. (I've met them out there. A village headman wanted to breed me to the village's women - all of them. Another story...)

Russia's incursions in Georgia, first taking Abkhazia, and solidifying their presence in South Ossetia during the last summer Olympic games in Beijing, are all about that unpleasant pipeline from Baku that pays no tolls to Moscow. Since Armenia is in bed with the Kremlin, there is literally about 30 miles of land now that the pipeline runs through which is not under Kremlin control. Sooner or later the pincers will strike. I've been surprised it hasn't happened already, but my best guess is that Putin doesn't have enough support in the Kremlin to test the American Tiger. And I suspect that BP is aware of the problem and some deals have been cut.

I am sure the Kremlin would like to rerun the huge runup and overshoot in the oil market of a few years ago. They could do it if Osama bin Laden gets hold of nukes. My guess is that they don't want him and/or the Muslim Brotherhood controlling Pakistan and its nukes because he's crazy enough to use them on Russia.

And that brings us to Iran and its nuclear program which has about as much chance of being peaceful as a shark does of being vegetarian. As a nation-state that has depended in part on Russian help and has more than its quota of Russian agents, Iran is more controllable. Just pointing out here that it is in Russia's interests for Iran to nuke Israel and if possible the oil fields of the Gulf. That would provoke a counterstrike that would wreck oil production in Iran and put the Kremlin in the driver's seat. Probably end with Moscow owning Iran. The price of oil would spike if only Iran's production was clobbered, and the West would fall to its knees if the gulf went with it.