2012 U.S. Presidential Election

[Roy Karrde]

again, both sides can take mutual advantage from putting it off

on a practical level, obama can not give in on this issue without harming the party in 2014 and 2016 (and as above, he has no reason to reverse his current course)

You assume Obama actually cares about his party over himself or his political beliefs.

Furthermore you assume that Russia wont immediately call in all their chips to get it done. They have been chomping at the bit to get this missile shield down, including using our own START treaty renewal to argue that it made the missile shield illegal.

uh yeah

the whole point is that the separatists have been russian-backed for decades

since the russians were thus 'in' and 'with' south ossetia they considered the ongoing build-up of conflict to be against them (and their allies)

this is the entire justification for their involvement

I am sure, and it is a fairly weak justification, especially when Georgia did not actually threaten Russia directly with attacking South Ossetia, nor does it call for Russia's response of not only invading Georgia but driving toward the capital.

you have already cited an article in which "Russia and NATO have agreed to work on the missile shield but NATO wants it to be based on two independent systems that exchange information, while Russia favors a joint system with full-scale interoperability"... is this simply a lie? there are multiple interests involved.

Of which they knew NATO would not agree to a joint system as Russia's military dealings with Iran would make such system void of any purpose.

they could easily move forward on this, but they do not because of such regional interests (as you mention) on the part of russia, and because having this issue continue provides a useful target for 'noise' (as i argued above).

Which is a failed argument, if they wished to use it as a noise they would not have gone the radical step of actually attempting to use the START treaty to stop the missile shield, and even saying that by continuing it, it would make the START treaty void.

the status quo on the missile shield is not one favoring iran, it favors america, europe, and russia. as russia is increasingly looking to integrate with america and europe, the status quo remains. russia's economic interest in iran is tiny compared to that with europe: european defense is thus beneficial to russia. this is why nothing serious changes despite their "objections" - they are false objections.

You seem to have this rather false belief that Russia is looking for the status quo, despite the fact that not only have they become a vocal supporter of Iran at the UN, but also have attempted to shut down the missile shield at every turn. Not to mention the fact that Russia has a sizable military and economic intrest in Iran due to it's trade in war assets and economic assets with the country.