Estonia's first stab at independence lasted all of 22 years, from 1918 to 1940. I fear the second attempt will not last quite as long. History will judge the Bush-Cheney regime harshly for this.
An alarming front-page investigation in The Washington Post shows just how powerful and sophisticated Russia has become in the art of unconventional warfare. When Estonia moved a monument depicting a Red Army hero in the fight against Naziism to a less prominent but more dignified setting, amateur Russian hackers targeted Estonian government websites with denial-of-service attacks. A few weeks later, however, the cyberattacks took on a much more sinister character.
I'm surprised that a diary on this hasn't popped up already in this tech-savvy community. Granted, Estonia is small and far away. But I think this story has implications for us all — not just because hostile foreign powers can meddle with our communications and freedom of expression, but also because of what might happen if the wrong hands in Washington seek control of cyberspace.
Anyway, back to the story at hand. The Post article describes how NATO information-technology experts began monitoring the situation in Estonia late in April. Some of the attacks were traced to IP addresses belonging to the Russian Presidential administration. It's worth reading the article to see the level of sophistication and coordination involved.
By May 10, bots were probing for weaknesses in Estonian banks. They forced Estonia's largest bank to shut down online services for all customers for an hour and a half...
"The nature of the latest attacks is very different," said Linnar Viik, a government IT consultant, "and it's no longer a bunch of zombie computers, but things you can't buy from the black market," he said. "This is something that will be very deeply analyzed, because it's a new level of risk. In the 21st century, the understanding of a state is no longer only its territory and its airspace, but it's also its electronic infrastructure.
"This is not some virtual world," Viik added. "This is part of our independence. And these attacks were an attempt to take one country back to the cave, back to the Stone Age."
So how did Russia emerge as a dangerous technological and economic superpower less than a decade after it was groveling at the world's feet in default and destitution — powerless to protect its Serbian ally from a military assault by Western powers operating without United Nations blessing? Weren't Condoleeza Rice and Dick Cheney supposed to be the "experts" who'd prevent that from happening?
Certainly their obsession with a tin-pot dictator in Baghdad and their lust for his oil fields caused them to drop the ball elsewhere. But you'd think the oil-centered Bush-Cheney regime would realize that a pro-SUV energy policy could only drive up oil prices in the long run, resulting in a massive transfer of wealth from America to her adversaries.
Silly me — I forgot: in the long run, Cheney and his cronies will have retired to their palaces in Dubai with their nine-figure Halliburton Deferred Compensation packages — beyond the reach of any investigation and prosecution by his Democratic successors. That's all that matters!
Anyway, the long run didn't turn out so long after all. Russia went from deadbeat-debtor to creditor status in no time flat, thanks to Bush-Cheney energy policies, and now has the wherewithal to invest in unconventional weaponry — of which we've only seen a glimpse in Estonia.
I expect the next phase of Russia's campaign to recover the Baltic states for her Empire to come soon, and it will be of a more coercive nature. As Bush and Cheney concentrate and squander all military power in Iraq in order to avoid exiting the stage in 2009 branded as "losers", the Western powers have few tools to resist Russian revanchism.
The release of Eastern Europe from Russian bondage during the Gorbachev and Yeltsin eras is considered by Republicans and many others as "Ronald Reagan's great achievement." Through gross incompetence — a complete lack of strategic thinking combined with a catastrophic degradation of America's hard power (military assets) — this accomplishment will be lost. For that, Mr 28% (that's just where Bush is today) will enter the history books as a big fat ZERO! The Base will never forgive him.