Sarah Palin: Alaska as Foreign Policy Experience
International Affairs —offers specific details re. Russian threat to Alaska
Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin is criticized for a lack of foreign policy experience. Overlooked, so far, is consideration of Alaska’s geopolitical position: 50 miles from the increasingly aggressive Russian Federation.
Palin is the chief executive of the U.S. State on the front line in what some describe as a new Cold War.
The list of threats against Palin’s State are serious and growing. Russian economic interests are attempting to gain control of the construction of a gas transit line from Alaska to the “lower 48.” More seriously, Russian cruise missile-capable bombers are probing Alaskan coastal defenses, and Alaska’s Arctic coast is becoming part of a confrontation with Russia over the region’s considerable natural resources.
The most obvious, and ominous, threat to Alaskans comes from Russian aircraft operating off the Pacific coast of Alaska. Since 2007, TU-95 bombers, referred to as “Bear” bombers by U.S. and NATO military leaders, are testing U.S. defenses. Although relatively slow, the TU-95 is capable of carrying cruise missiles that could cause a sudden and disastrous attack on Alaskan cities and oil facilities.
U.S. Secretary Condoleezza Rice has condemned the Bear bomber flights as a “very dangerous game.”
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Re. the Alaska oil reserves and threat of Russia