The Asterixian wars

It is great to see that not only cartoons depict reality, sometimes it is also the other way round: I just felt reminded of the "Asterixian Wars". At the end of ‘Asterix and the Goths’ all clans of the Goths are allied with each other in various opaque configurations and they also fight each other. It is a huge mess and nobody knows who started it.

One can get a similar impression from the current debate about the use or nonsense of the current missile deployments and defense systems by reading the headlines of the recent days. NATO is concerned over Russia’s missile plan to station Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad. Russia picks up this ‘blame your eastern neighbor’-game: Lavrov expressed his worries over Asian missile programs. One of his addressees – China – strikes back by announcing that global missile defense systems do not aid world stability. Moscow takes the same line by calling the alleged Iranian missile threat a ‘fairy tale’. At the same time Russia made the tremendously generous offer that it would not rush to deploy its tactical missiles near the Polish border if Washington scrapped plans to station a missile shield in east Europe (oddly enough Reuters speaks of ’a softer stand’). It should come to no surprise that the U.S. rejected these proposals. A MDA spokesperson counters that the Russians know that the missile shield is no threat.
So who was blamed by whom and why? Let’s hope this mess finds a different end that that in the Asterix cartoon.

Sorry for the long pause. I will write again on Tuesday.