[GusFrerotte]

Who is going to stop them? Nobody. Why? Simple their Northern borders are in the Arctic Circle anyway, the North Pole is virtually their backyard. They can probably tap the oil fields under there without even leaving Russian waters, and even if they did it is too far north for anyone to do anything about it. Putting it in football terms, it is a big homefield advantage for Putin and co. Meanwhile China is outflanking us in Latin America and Africa with goodwill gestures, etc, while Iraq is making us look like a bunch of arrogant idiots. In the not so distant future we are going to get totally screwed. Remeber if Russia totally drops the dollar for the Euro as one of their reserve currencies, with Europe dependent on Russian oil, the rest of Europe will b e compelled to do the same and tank our economy. Russia has a lot of natural resources, and more importantly has a lot of gold, which we don't. Also they have hedged their resrve currencies into more of a basket of currencies configuration meaning they have insulated themselves fairly well against a dollar crash. The Russians, along with their Chinese allies can in essence "nuke" our economy and still be relatively functional with their own.