Tomorrow is the 136th anniversary of Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninov’s day of birth. Radio WRTI is celebrating with a 12-hour marathon of the Rusky ex-pat’s crystal-clear texture and elegant yet strong phrasing.

Rachmaninov is best known for his Prelude in C-sharp minor, which he composed at age 19. He lost his land during the Bolshevik revolution and subsequently fled Russia for the United States, though he was consoled by an estate he managed to buy in Switzerland. He died in 1943, and his wish to be buried at his Swiss estate could never be fulfilled because of the ravages of the Second World War.

Rachmaninov on Rachmaninov, Prelude in C-sharp Minor.

Rachmaninov on Chopin, Nocturne in E-flat.

Mr. Rachmaninov's Neighborhood

In the wild waters off the Horn of Africa, local fishermen have turned to piracy. And this week they hit the jackpot in the form of a ship registered in Belize - $30 million of Ukrainian arms bound for Kenya. The booty includes grenades, small arms, and yes, Soviet tanks.

Piracy has been an increasing problem in the Indian Ocean waters hugging Somalia. Earlier this year a Jordanian ship was seized en route to Mogadishu with international aid supplies. Pirates took hostage a French yacht and her crew in April before the French military led a successful raid on the pirates’ headquarters in the Gulf of Aden on the northern coast of the country. The International Maritime Bureau believes that pirate attacks were up 10% in 2007 from 2006 – and most of these attacks occurred off of Somali and Nigerian waters.

Piracy is an increasingly popular career option in the nearly-anarchic Horn nation, which is one of the most lawless countries in the world. After independence and unification in 1960, rebels forced out the president in a 1990 invasion of Mogadishu; a UN invasion followed in 1992. In 2006, an Ethiopian-led coalition stepped in, in order to shore up a government besieged by rebels. Violence has continued between Ethiopian forces and various insurgent groups up until now. The de jure government in the south can not control the de facto independence of the northern regions, where the pirates operate.

We should seemingly be quite dismayed that pirates now have a column of T-72 tanks. Not exactly so – they may be in possession of them, but it remains to be seen that they have the technology to offload them. In fact, most pirate operations are known to store captured ships in coastal caves. None are known to have the technology or know-how to get the tanks off the ship, which requires specific types of machinery.

Where this episode will get interesting is the international response. Russia has already deployed a flotilla to hunt down the missing ship. The U.S. Navy is not far behind. I do not expect African Union and Ethiopian forces to delay long. I do not think it would be a stretch to say that, in conjunction with their military exercises South America, this is a great opportunity for Russia to assert influence in a Third-World area and possibly gain some friends among Somalia’s more stable neighbors.

America’s involvement is interesting, within the framework of African criticism of American military presence in Africa. The Africa Command, established in 2007, has come under fire as being a vehicle for combating Chinese influence in oil-rich African nations. The U.S. military responds that its primary mission is to prevent terrorist networks from operating effectively in Africa. The current pursuit of the pirates could also be an excellent opportunity for the United States to aid the political stabilization of the Horn, strengthen relations with Kenya (by rescuing their arms – which might similarly help relations with the Ukraine, but hurt those with Russia), and then return to a general policy of non-interference.

I am surely not the first to compare the recent conflict in Georgia to the Balkans in 1914, where two bullets from Gavrilo Princip’s revolver started the First World War. Mr. Putin clearly has dreams of a new Russian Empire dancing in his head. If he does not, his strongly nationalist attitudes, couched in nineteenth-century concepts, and the tsar-esque executive powers he has arrogated to himself certainly give a reasonable facsimile. Georgia has its own strongly nationalist president, Mr. Mikheil Saakashvili, who is intent on seeing the whole of Georgia – including breakaway provinces South Ossetia and Abkhazia – under Georgian control.

In order to reassert Georgian control of the de facto independent region, Mr. Saakashvili ordered Georgian troops into South Ossetia after midnight, 8 August. The Russian Federation moved to protect pro-Russian South Ossetia, whose official languages include Russian and whose currency is the Russian Ruble.

On 25 July 1914, Russia became the first nation to mobilize in what would become the First World War. Tsar Nicholas II moved to protect his sphere of influence in the Balkans, which he believed was strengthened by an ethnic bond between South Slavs (Yugo-Slavs) in Serbia and Slavs in Russia, after Austria-Hungary demanded that Serbia severely punish the conspirators of the 28 June assassination of the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and suppress all nationalist elements of its government.

The analogy becomes more acute when it is considered how much worse the situation could have been. Georgia has been campaigning for NATO membership for some time. If that had been granted before recent hostilities, the United States would have been legally obligated to give military aid to Georgia. However, a Georgian farmer seems to grasp with relative clarity the moral and political obligation that the United States already has to Georgia.

Spheres of influence and complex alliances formed several automatic systems of defense in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe. Russian defeat at the hands of the Japanese in 1905 forced Russia to allow Japanese influence in southern Manchuria and China, and to grant Britain (Japan’s supporter) expansion of its sphere of influence in Afghanistan, in order to maintain its own influence over northern Manchuria and parts of Mongolia. This also fostered anti-American feeling in Russia, whose Far Eastern foreign policy aimed at minimizing the number of other nations with a foothold in China. With Russian potency in the Far East somewhat neutralized, Russia renewed interest in the Balkans, becoming the patron state of Serbia and nurturing Slavic nationalist sentiments. Austria-Hungary similarly supported Bulgaria. Meanwhile, in order to check Austro-Hungarian aggression from the other direction, the Triple Entente powers of Great Britain, France, and Russia signed a secret alliance with Italy in September 1914, when Italy was still formally and openly allied to Germany and Austria-Hungary. Tripping any of the wires criss-crossing Europe and their spheres of influence could set in motion prearranged contingency plans for military action.

Russia has also mobilized its Black Sea Fleet for action against Georgia; the Fleet is bilaterally commanded by Russia and Ukraine. Kjiv has already warned that the Fleet will not be allowed to return to its station at Sevastopol in the Ukrainian Crimea. Both Russia and South Ossetia have accused Ukraine of supplying Georgia with arms.

Western Europe has been relatively ambivalent: a French official called Mr. Saakashvili mad for invading South Ossetia while French President Nicolas Sarkozy flew to Moskva and Tbilisi to broker a cease-fire. After all, Russia controls most of the petroleum supply into Europe. For nations like Germany, almost one-quarter of their petroleum and forty percent of their natural gas needs are provided by Russia. In the past, the Kremlin has not shied away from using this power. Ukraine’s vocal support of Georgia and apparent readiness to help their brother former Soviet republic is even more surprising, and perhaps brave, considering three major flare-ups in an ongoing petrol trade war between Kjiv and Moskva in January 2006, October 2007, and January 2008.

But, should we really be surprised that we engage in complex political and economic relations, and that the webs we weave often bring us to unpleasant choices? Should we renounce these complex foreign alliances, to follow the advice of George Washington? The Peace of Westphalia (1648), the Treaty of Paris (1783), the Congress of Vienna (1815), the Peace of Paris (1919), and the Potsdam Agreement (1945) all stand in a long line of European peace accords that set the standard for diplomatic theory and strategy: peace was instituted, and supposedly guaranteed, by territorial transfers, political quid-pro-quo, and economic provisions with the ultimate goal of enabling a balance of power. Today we have the United Nations – has it changed the rules of the balance of power game, or has it just applied the same strategies to the whole world?

So what are the options on the table for the United States and Europe? Several strategies have been suggested in an attempt to slap Russia’s wrist hard enough without souring relations further. These include denying Russia entrance into the G7, and/or speeding up Georgian and Ukrainian bids for NATO membership. But Western Europe has shown itself reluctant to do the latter, precisely because of the obligations demanded if there are future hostilities between Georgia and Russia. The United States has shown willingness to enter the fray with limited military assistance to Georgia (ferrying its troops in Iraq back home), and a promised humanitarian aid campaign. President Bush delivered some sharp words this morning, saying that Russia has “tended to view the expansion of freedom and democracy as a threat to its interests.” But the tightrope walk for America is made that much thinner by Russia’s support of Iran, which could be aggravated and increased by American action in Georgia – much to the detriment of troops in Iraq and civilians in Israel. The UN has been rendered useless by Russia’s veto power.

Mr. Putin’s strongly centralizing power and foreign policy initiatives are is couched in terms that belong to the nineteenth century or the Cold War: nationalism, spheres of influence, and satellite states. But in order to prevent the Georgian conflict, or any future conflicts propagated by Russia (or other aggressive nations: North Korea, Iran, China), from becoming the spark to the powder keg, there needs to be twenty-first century diplomatic innovation that combines a versatility to deal with complicated economic, military, and political relationships with a strength to solve these problems without allowing compromise to undermine the outcome.

The United States and Europe have the bear by the ears. Europe cannot let go, for fear of an energy crisis. America cannot let go, for fear of Russia’s enduring political clout in areas of the world that have become vital to American interests. But neither can they hold onto it for much longer, for the bear has them too and it has claws.

Yesterday, the Russian Federation invaded the semi-autonomous and pro-Russian Georgian province of South Ossetia in response to Georgia’s increased efforts to rein in the area’s de facto independence. Today, Russian officials report that 1,500 civilians have been killed and that they have taken the regional capital of Tskhinvali. Georgian forces shelled the city today as Russia advanced beyond the southern borders of South Ossetia  and into Georgia proper to the town of Gori. The Russian air force bombed the city, which is the birthplace of Josef Stalin.

Georgia has increasingly faced the Kremlin’s wrath, particularly from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, because of the Caucasus state’s attempts at Westernization. Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili is seeking NATO membership for the country and the country had, until Russia’s invasion forced their recall, the third-largest troop presence in Iraq after the United States and Great Britain.

It should be noted that while Dmitri Medvedev is the President of the Russian Federation, and as such is head of Russia’s foreign policy. Mr. Putin, whose office does not have control over foreign policy, was actually the one who announced the beginning of hostilities.

Russia invaded South Ossetia on the opening day of the Olympic games. Both Russia and Georgia are participating in this summer’s games.