Saturday, August 16, 2008

New Cold war politics: It’s not 1968

The West has mishandled Russia at every point from the death of communism.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24164768-2703,00.html#

"It is government by mobile phone," says one foreign observer.     http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/33a7495e-6aed-11dd-b613-0000779fd18c.html

President Bush's new deal with Poland gives that country millions in aid, stokes Russia's paranoia and decreases America's security. It is bad policy.

President Bush has promised Poland tens of millions of dollars in defense assistance to buy its agreement to deploy 10 anti-missile interceptors he says are necessary to counter a future Iranian missile threat. Here is the punch line: the interceptors don't work and Iran doesn't have any missiles that can reach Europe, let alone the United States. Wait, there's more.

After insisting for two years that the anti-missile base had nothing to do with Russia and was all about Iran, missile defense proponents now say it is all about countering Russia. They cite the conflict in Georgia as justification for their rush to deploy a technology that does not work against a threat that does not exist.

The Bush administration had gone to great lengths to assure Russia that the proposed anti-missile bases in the Czech Republic and Poland are not intended to offset a threat from the Kremlin. Director of the Missile Defense Agency, General Trey Obering, said just one month ago.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-cirincione/georgia-crisis-propels-a_b_119020.html

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,572329,00.html Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has warned that "this is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia where Russia can threaten its neighbors, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it. ... Things have changed." Defense Secretary Robert Gates has threatened to end military cooperation with Russia -- in both bilateral ties and in NATO. "What happens in the days and months to come will determine the future course of US-Russian relations," Gates said. "My personal view is that there needs to be some consequences for the actions that Russia has taken against a sovereign state."

Where does the  EU stand on the future status of the South Ossetia and Abkhazia provinces that officially belong to Georgia?

We have avoided talking about this and I will also avoid discussing it with you. It's one the points where we said that we as the European Union will of course contribute in negotiations, in a sort of mediation or intervention. And we have said from the very beginning what should happen with this. In any case we are backing the integrity of Georgian territory.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3567398,00.html