Saturday, February 10, 2007

A Putin evolution?

Something shocking almost happened today. The President of Russia, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, has actually said something that indicates he knows the Cold War is over. He opined today that what he perceives as the US's excessive reliance on and use of military force has destabilized the world, forcing many nations to seek nuclear weapons as insurance against preventive strikes. I think that is at least worthy of discussion, because the election of Ahmadinejad and the launch of the nuclear campaign in Iran seems to date from President Bush's speech branding Iran as a member of the "Axis of Evil" states, along with Iraq and north Korea. We all know what happened to Iraq, so I'm not sure it was unreasonable of Iran to go nationalist in electing Ahmadinejad and launching a campaign to go nuclear. I'd like to hear from people on the question of whether the US under President Bush has relied inordinately on military solutions to conflicts in the post-9/11 environment.

But alas, it was too much to expect that Our Man from the KGB would abandon his Cold War rhetoric for long. He ruined everything towards the end of his remarks by whining about encirclement. The Guardian correspondent in attendance reported, "(Putin) reserved his bitterest complaints, however, for the US drive to expand Nato into former Soviet eastern Europe and for the plans to deploy parts of the missile shield in central Europe. 'Why do you need to move your military infrastructure to our borders?' he declared.

Vintage boilerplate paranoia from the USSR...the more things change, the more they stay the same!

3 comments:

german said...

i read a version of his statement and felt conflicted by it especially the opening part i couldn't tell if he meant that the us was evil and combative or if the us was reacting to a unstable world excessively through military intervention. i don't know how simple it is to translate russian and if certain words have more or less meaning in strength and tone. ie mass protest compared to demonstration.

i think that gw bush might have been a little too ambitious in using military intervention but the playbook is not written for this kind of time. since his cabinet was and is filled with lots of old cold war warriors in the defense area it makes sense with the axis of evil statement letting the american people know who are new enemy is since we were unaware of who it is.

since the terrorists are not located in a specific location for a defined period of time living like nomads. intervention needed to be done to demonstrate that the us will not tolerate this kind of attack. similar to days when kaddafy( which ever spelling he is using now) was doing back in the 80's eventually we were able to calm his interests with a pin point boming of his family and that was the last of him as a terrorist.

couple that with Gates statement about iran intervention in iraq maybe this was the plan for the roadmap of new peace in the middle east that has been spoken about during his whole term. it would also show n. korea that maybe you do not want to continue down the path and cause you to become the next nation in our gun sights.

moville said...

I don't know about the exact words...if I can find a transcript on one of the Russian sites, I will be able to tell you precisely.

I agree that everyone is kind of feeling his way through this new period, where we have a new set of rules, or non-rules, about how the world works. People will make mistakes.

But I think we need at least as much emphasis on old-fashioned police work and maybe public diplomacy as saber-rattling, because remember, these jihadis are in every major city worldwide. we'd have to level all those places to get rid of everyone who wants to hurt us.

german said...

wonder if we have meet a new era and are not capable of adapting to the new changes of war/diplomacy.i read once about after the battle of gogobrats 1860's (sp) end of austria as threat to germany. since the high command feel into the trap of complacany best technology, army and truly a dominate force on the continent but times changed as did technolgy and they were not able to adapt to the next war, world war 1 hopefully the same fate will not happen to us since we did win the cold war but may not be able to adapt to the new war on terrorist