Adrian Hamilton: It's economics, not politics, that will influence Russia

Among all the dramatic and doom-laden suggestions this week of how to deal with Russia after Georgia, one of the most naive must be the suggestion that we can somehow separate the politics from the commerce, playing hardball with the one and softball with the other. Tell that to BP. Tell that indeed to the Ukrainians, the East Europeans or the Baltic states in their price negotiations for Russian gas. You can't separate politics from business, not in Africa, Asia and most of all not in the countries of the former Soviet Union. In the fall of the Berlin Wall it might have been possible to see Europe's future simply in terms of the spread of democracy and the autonomy of new states. The growing shortages of of raw materials, and particularly oil and gas, have changed all that. In the first place, it has altered the bargaining... [read full story]