RUSSIAN POWER

oil and power, oil and power, go together like the dirt and flowers, let me tell you brother, you can't have one without the other...

Russian superpower status linked to oil, ex-CIA official says; Putin’s objective: to control oil
David Gaddis Smith, March 4, 2007 (San Diego Union-Tribune)
- Russia is trying to use its oil wealth to become a superpower again, a former CIA deputy director says…retired Adm. Bobby Inman said President Vladimir Putin seized control of the Yukos oil firm not just because its owner engaged in politics, but because Putin wanted the Russian state to control the energy industry…

- He said Russia is reassembling “state control of all the energy production distribution processes” and seeking to own “the downstream facilities in the countries that are dependent on Russian foreign gas.”
- “The reality in the world that we live in is that the competition for available fossil fuels is growing far faster than the suppliers are being found,” Inman said…
- Anne-Marie Slaughter, a Princeton dean, who some say could become secretary of state in a Democratic administration…put the price of oil “at over $150 a barrel when U.S. defense spending dedicated to keep oil flowing is factored into the price.”
- Slaughter, dean of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and…[co-director] of the Princeton Project on U.S. National Security in the 21st Century…pushed for a more multilateral approach to the world and said the U.N. Security Council should be expanded…