August 23, 2008 (LPAC)-- Richard Holbrooke, exhibiting the crisis-manipulation mindset he is famous for (like his associate, H.G. Wells Society initiate Madeleine Albright), is in Tbilisi, Georgia. From there he penned a column in today's Washington Post, calling for "massive economic and military assistance" to keep Mikheil Saakashvili in power. In it, he asserts that Ukraine and Azerbaijan are the likely "next targets" for Russian intimidation and/or the use of force.
The sudden reference to Azerbaijan is ominous, in view of remarks by another shadowy ex-State Department figure, Paul Goble, yesterday. Commenting over Voice of America on the bombing of a major mosque in Baku, Azerbaijan, which had just happened, Goble was ready with an elaborate scenario. "This event seems to be extraordinarily dangerous," said Goble, "Regardless of who is behind those terrorists, the Abu Bekr mosque bombing is easy to interpret as a Russian or Armenian provocation, for the purpose of causing a conflict between Azerbaijan and Iran, then finding a pretext for Russian intervention in Azerbaijan." Goble, a long-time specialist in manipulating Central Asia and Caucasus conflicts against Moscow, painted a picture of such an incident spinning out into a larger conflict, with the USA and Azerbaijan on one side, and Iran on the other.
Goble claimed that Russian diplomats in Baku have threatened Azerbaijan that it had better "draw the consequences" of the Georgia events. Today's Russian Foreign Ministry announcement of a phone call between Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the Azerbaijani foreign minister, however, said it featured a constructive discussion about "recent proposals for institutionalized multilateral interaction in the Transcaucasus." This would include the Caucasus-region initiative of Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan. He had been in Baku, after a visit to Moscow, shortly before the bombing, while Turkey itself has been the scene of a new round of bombings.
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