Plus ça change ....?

Remember, in the 1990s, when the crack about the disintegrating Soviet Union was that it was "Burkina Faso with nukes"?

The Feb. 2 issue of the Financial Times had an opinion piece by J. Robinson West, Putin's policies threaten global oil supplies, with the following: "There may be large oil reserves in Russia but without massive investment and management skills, it will not flow. In spite of the hype about Russia, more oil industry investment has flowed to west Africa. The risks in Russia were already large and have mushroomed. The impact of the Yukos affair could be enormous. Russian production, now the world's second largest, could slide, not surge, and with it the Russian economy and prestige."

The good old Soviet habit of wasting resources and substracting, instead of adding, value, seems to have survived.