A New Iron Curtain?
In a big night for speechmaking, it's possible that the most resonant sound-bite wasn't uttered from the papier mache Parthenon at Denver's Invesco Field, but 10 time zones to the east.
There, in a pro-Kremlin rag published out of Moscow, a throw-back line sparked to life, as a Russian foreign affairs analyst speculated that "a new Iron Curtain will be drawn between Russia and the West - cutting straight through Ukraine."
Is this just a case of a lone Russian rummaging in the rhetorical closet, looking for ways to rattle us? Or is this evocation of what is arguably the Cold War's most memorable metaphor something more?
In 2008, in a month where Russian tanks rolled into Georgia and have yet to fully roll back out again, talk of splitting Ukraine in two commands attention. After all, rhetoric has a funny way of prefiguring reality: Witness the wall built in Berlin that turned Churchill's chilling metaphor into the physical representation of repression.
Our worries are warranted these days, when we in the West are subject to a steady drumbeat of Russian statements – and Russian actions - each more menacing than the last.
In Ukraine – object of today's rhetorical partition – President Viktor Yushchenko announced new rules governing Russian maritime forces as they return from their recent deployment to block Georgia's ports to their bases on Ukraine's Crimean coast, adding that failure to comply would be grounds for Ukrainian forces to block the Russian fleet.
Russian officials countered that they have no plans to abide by Ukraine's new rules – adding on their part that they will not depart their Ukrainian Black Sea base at Sevastopol a moment earlier than 2017, when Russia's lease ends under terms of a 1997 agreement between Kiev and Moscow.
Of course, should an Iron Curtain cleave Ukraine, Sevastopol - like all of Crimea - would likely fall on the Russian side.
Nor is Ukraine alone on the bulls-eye. Russian news today trumpeted the test-firing of the Topol ICBM missile, with this commentary by a Russian military official: "Russia is saying once again that it has the opportunity to overcome US missile defense." This follows a recent statement by a Russian general warning that Poland's agreement to accept a U.S. missile defense installation has exposed that country to the threat of a Russian military strike - with a helpful reminder that Russian military doctrine holds open the use of nuclear weapons in such scenarios.
Meanwhile in the former Soviet republic of Moldova, Russia seems to be treating the "frozen conflict" of Transnistria like a bag of microwave popcorn. This nominally independent sliver-state at the eastern edge of Moldova – where, interestingly enough, it abuts Ukraine - already hosts a self-styled Russian "peacekeeper" contingent, as did South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Earlier this month, Transnistria endeared itself to Moscow by declaiming against Georgia's "aggression" against South Ossetia. Full independence, a Transnistrian military official said this week, is "only a matter of time." A war in words only – for now, at least.
And so on this night of high rhetoric, as echoes of MLK and JFK waft above the 50-yard line in the mile-high air, iron words of a less hopeful sort catch our ears from the East.
