Conspiracy theorists, meet the Nostradamus of Novels: Tom Clancy.

My colleague and fellow analyst, Christian DeHaemer, and I were reading up on the latest news from the South Ossetia conflict between Russia and Georgia. We were passing articles back and forth, trying to determine what was really at the heart of the matter, and how it would affect the markets.

(Turns out, Russian markets aren’t taking it too well… The ruble fell 1.6%.)

Then Chris turns to me and asks, “Have you ever heard of Ghost Recon?”

Back in 2001, military science novelist, Tom Clancy designed a video game called Ghost Recon. Here’s the story’s timeline…

The Russian Democratic Union, consisting of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, is formed in 2007, with the goal of reuniting the former Soviet Union states. Action comes to a head in April 2008, when ultra-nationalists seize total power in Russia and begin invading the Baltics and Georgia. U.S. Special Forces join with rebel factions in Tbilisi, Georgia, but can’t hold back the Russian tide…

Earlier today, in real life, Russian planes flew over the presidential palace in Tbilisi.

This coincidence gave me chills. You can check out the real timeline for the current conflict in this article from Reuters.

The Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili, says this conflict, in which Russia is supposedly supporting a separatist faction in Abkazia (an area in South Ossetia), is because Russia wants to control energy routes through the Caucasus.

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Now it’s China’s turn to publicly humiliate America.It’s one more display of our Cold War defeat that we seem to sweep under the rug.

This story in the New York Times reveals how China dissed America about our dim-witted economic policies. It’s hard to imagine this kind of attack ever taking place a few years ago. It truly reveals the shellacking we took in the Cold War from China and Russia.

The U.S. has been faking it for decades that we won the Cold War. We even tried to dictate terms of China: the valuation of the Chinese renminbi, state subsidies and food safety.

What America was really telling China is that no Communist economic model is capable of trouncing a free-market democracy. It sounded more like good old-fashioned Commie-bashing than enlightened 21st century trade negotiations.

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What if you discovered that America actually lost the Cold War?

When you accept the truth that the Cold War was an American catastrophe, everything starts to make sense from an investment perspective. Even the craziest money-making ideas, like giant shopping malls in Siberia.

You have to check it out…

This article about the new Siberian mall ran in the May 17th issue of the New York Times. It’s a must-read for investors interested in emerging markets such as Russia. The story is important, not only for its gist, but for what it doesn’t tell you. It’s a classic case of Big Media delivering the sizzle without the meat.

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