Russia and Afghanistan 2010.

Simon Tisdall's Guardian column represents the kind of line that supports the messianic "New Cold War" guff spouted by crude propagandists such as Edward Lucas. The very first line insinuates that Medvedev is merely a Cheka-KGB man in a suit.

Nato's Lisbon summit next month is in danger of becoming the stage for a triumphal procession by Russia's leather-jacketed president, Dmitry Medvedev. The mystery is what, exactly, Moscow has done to deserve this sudden burst of western camaraderie. It is hardly a new script: Russia comes in from the cold, again.

Actually, it is about the unmentionable aspect of post-Cold War reality-the fact that Russia is the largest gas producer in the world. According to the BP Statistical Review Of World Energy in 2007 , Russia has 26.3 % of the world total of natural gas reserves on the planet.

Germany was one of those nations even during the Cold War that supported after 1960 the policy of Ostpolitik because of the need for the gas that the Soviet Union had. The USA at the time opposed that but Cold Warriors have generally ignored that reality.

Moreover, one of the legacies of the bad diplomacy of the "New European " states such as Poland and the Baltic Republics in following a fanatical pro_US policy line against Russia is that Russia has decided to build the Nordstream pipeline which bypasses them entirely.

It's true that Medvedev appears to be about to douse Russia's previously combustible opposition to US missile defence plans. When the Bush administration first suggested the idea, co-opting Poland and the Czechs, Medvedev's patron and possible future nemesis, Vladimir Putin, was fit to be tied, as the Americans say.

Facts are entirely absent again. Medvedev is connected very much to Gazprom and Putin has also made the use of oil and gas to build up Russian national power the priority in the New Great Game for control over diminishing global supplies of fossil fuels and rising demand from powers such as China.

Russia wants to use gas and oil as a tool of diplomacy, something berated by those like Lucas despite the fact that the invasion of Iraq was based on precisely the same objective of controlling oil as a lever in global diplomacy and preserving US global hegemony.

Clever Barack Obama defused Moscow's objections by revising the Bush-Rumsfeld plan, switching missiles and platforms, and spinning it as an unthreatening European-Nato initiative with which the Russians were welcome to co-operate. This is what Medvedev now appears ready to do, albeit in a limited, vague sort of way – which is a significant victory for Obama.

In the long term , it is still part of the strategy to dominate Central Asia. To press the "reset button" implies not a fundamental change in that policy but in starting again in such a way that will be better this time. By detaching Russia from Iran, it is hoped that US interests in Central Asia can be advanced.

The opposition had little to do with Central Europe or revanchist ambitions there. Crude ideologues such as Lucas attempted to depict a resurrection of the Evil empire but it remains a messianic fantasy and propaganda. Tisdall follows that line.

Yet Obama's foreign policy advisor is Zbigniew Brzezinski who was one of the more hawkish of Cold Warriors who argued that the Russian response to Georgia's attack on South Ossetia was that it was similar to Hitler's attack on the Czech Sudetenland.

The reason is that the conversion of Georgia into a US protectorate and ignoring the claims of the South Ossetians, who must accept the boundaries that Stalin created ( whilst listening to neoconservatives prating about the evil of Stalin ) has been crucially concerned with the BTC pipeline.

It's true, also, that the Russian army has not invaded anybody lately, which is an advance on the situation that confronted Georgia in 2008. Not invading other people's countries is certainly a policy the Nato allies would like to encourage – unless of course it is them doing the invading, in which case it's different.

Obviously, its just "different" because without reference to the Great Game for resources, it is impossible to view the conflict in Georgia, Iraq or Afghanistan as having anything to do with NATO and its new mission to protect the energy security interests of its constituent nations in precisely such places.

And Tisdall might have noticed by now that Georgia started the war against Russia in 2008 and the USA started the war against Iraq in 2003. The USA was not reacting to aggression but initiating it. In that sense it was "different".

So perhaps the feting of Medvedev is justified; perhaps the stars are finally aligned and Russia's anticipated agreement to do more to help the Nato effort in Afghanistan is an earnest sign of better things to come.

Russia has little interest in anarchy in Central Asia but with the main NATO objective being the construction of the TAPI pipeline, one which looks more endangered by the increasing involvement of China and Iran in domestic politics there, Russia is open to using that to upgrade its status.

As RFE/FL reported on October 22 2010,

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin has said in Turkmenistan that the Gazprom gas giant could join in the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas-pipeline project.

Sechin, who is accompanying President Dmitry Medvedev on a visit to Turkmenistan, said Gazprom officials are in talks with Turkmenistan about possibly participating in building the nearly 1,700-kilometer pipeline that would carry some 33 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas from Turkmenistan to Multan, Pakistan, and then further to Fazilka, India.

Turkmenistan's President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov met with Medvedev today at the Caspian port city of Turkmenbashi to discuss gas exports to Russia and the Caspian summit coming up in November.

The leaders of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Iran, Russia, and Turkmenistan are due to meet in Baku to discuss the legal status of the Caspian Sea, which sits on huge deposits of natural gas and oil.

Medvedev said the five littoral states were able to work out the details of use of these resources without the participation of any other countries.

"The Caspian Sea is our treasure and we are capable ourselves of resolving all problems and developing cooperation in the Caspian region," Medvedev said. "And it is the responsibility of the five nations themselves to develop the legal regime with regard to natural resources."

Comments from Sechin and Medvedev indicated Russia is not interested in purchasing more Turkmen gas than it is already this year.

A price dispute led Russia to reduce its imports of Turkmen gas from more than 40 bcm to about 11 bcm in 2010.

The truth of the Afghanistan War lies in the TAPI pipeline. All diplomatic and military initiatives are determined primarily by it and the changing fortunes of the main contending Great Powers.