World peace? Give me Putin anyday! by Correlli Barnett

Since the Russian Army routed the Georgian incursion into South Ossetia last week, Western politicians and media have been hotly accusing the Russia of President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin, of Soviet-style expansionism by means of bullying small neighbours like Georgia.

In windy rhetoric, U. S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband pronounce that this alleged strategy would, if continued, pose a threat to world harmony.

It reminds me all too vividly of the way George W. Bush and Tony Blair worked up war fever against Iraq in 2002-2003, entirely on the false basis (as some of us suspected at the time) that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction ready to use against us....