The Colder War: How the Global Energy Trade Slipped from America's Grasp

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Russia seems to be the good partner for the west: due to its resources on gas, uranium and oil. The USA should take heed of the “judgment day for the petrodollar”. Japan is about to return to nuclear power and Russia still holds half of the world production of uranium. Okay, confession time. Espionage novels really aren't my thing, but I was prepared to give this one a shot, firstly because I've never read any of the authors work before and secondly because it was chosen for the Richard and Judy Spring Book Club this year. I follow their recommendations religiously and 9 out of 10 times they get it right for my personal reading interests. Unfortunately this time, I was sorely disappointed. As the story begins, the chief of MI6, Amelia Levene, also known as "C," is having a terrible time. A few agents abroad in Greece, Turkey and the Middle East that have defected to working for the West have been killed and rumours are flying around that there is a mole within the service. To add to this, one of her British agents Paul Wallinger (whom she was having a long-standing affair with) has been killed in a light aircraft crash yet the manner of his death is arousing her suspicions.

Over the past few years, I have followed the odd stories on Rosneft, Gazprom, Ukraine, Georgia etc. This book does a comprehensive job in joining the dots highlighting an undeniable and cogent rationale behind Russian involvement in all what I have read thus far. This book reminded me that living through the Cold War, however, is not the same as understanding it. Although I remember most of the key events and national leaders of the period, my knowledge of the causal forces behind them, as well as how they were interrelated, was influenced – and limited – by the emotions and passions of the time. From there on, the story goes every place you would wish it to, though without ever being predictable. The writing is economical and effective and I was held hanging the whole time - constantly trying to guess what was next. I was (nearly) always wrong. It’s a read it a little bit more, read it propped open with the jam jar at breakfast, read it on the bus and miss your stop, think about it all day, try to explain your theories underway, in Danish, to your Danish colleagues, good. Really. This is gonna be a hard act to follow and no mistake. But I think, on the evidence of this (and I have my own idea of how he can do it), Charles Cummings is the man to do it. Orwell takes his place at the head of this list as the first writer to use the term “cold war” in relation to geopolitical conditions immediately after the second world war (in You and the Atomic Bomb). Nineteen Eighty-Four remains the defining vision of totalitarian rule. It supplied us with a vocabulary we still use and is as relevant today as it was when Orwell wrote it. “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

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Di sinilah, kita akan ikut merasakan rentan, ragu, memahami keinginan mereka yang secara manusiawi di tengah dunia berisiko tinggi yang mereka tinggali. Perfect for fans of John le Carré, a gripping and suspenseful spy novel from ‘the master of the modern spy thriller’ (Mail on Sunday) But Putin had more than a vision; he had a plan: He would use Russia's greatest asset, its wealth of natural resources, to reconstruct the economy. He would build a new superpower on a foundation of oil, gas, and uranium. And then he would use these assets as weapons in the Colder War. Written by not a US or UK national and it tells. It is far more balanced in its assessment of events. I would say it's ±70% ideal. Why 70? Because even in this tour de force equally diabolical acts of the US and the West still leave an impression of being less sinister and nefarious than those of the USSR :(

https://ximage.c-spanvideo.org/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJwaWN0dXJlcy5jLXNwYW52aWRlby5vcmciLCJrZXkiOiJGaWxlc1wvN2E0XC8yMDE0MTIwNzAwMTkzOTAwMl9oZC5qcGciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsiZml0IjoiY292ZXIiLCJoZWlnaHQiOjUwNn19fQ== Marin Katusa talked about his book, The Colder War: How the Global Energy Trade Slipped from America’s Grasp, in which he argues that Vladimir Putin’s dream is to restore Russia’s past glory by dominating the world’s energy supply. Mr. Katusa said that if Putin achieved this goal, the U.S. and other G-7 countries would find themselves playing second fiddle, economically, to countries like Russia, Brazil, India, and China.These are possible questions one may raise after listening to and viewing Katusa’s interviews to RT and Bloomberg Radio. Why did the Cold War end when it did? Few questions have generated more heated debate over the course of the last three decades. Archie Brown, one of the foremost experts on the subject, shows why the popular view that Western economic and military strength left the Soviet Union with no alternative but to admit defeat is erroneous.