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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Russia Proposes Anti-America Pact With Europe |
| 2008-10-11 |
| THE President of Russia has called on Europe's leaders to create a new world order that would minimise the role of the United States. Confident that a row with Europe prompted by Russia's invasion of Georgia in August was over, Dmitry Medvedev arrived in the French spa town of Evian on Wednesday determined to woo his fellow leaders into creating an anti-US front. Gone was the kind of wartime rhetoric that saw Mr Medvedev lash out at the West and describe his Georgian counterpart, Mikheil Saakashvili, as a "lunatic". Instead Mr Medvedev spoke of a Russia that was "absolutely not interested in confrontation", and outlined plans for a new security pact to ban the use of force in Europe. Yet there was little doubt that Mr Medvedev was playing the divide-and-rule tactics of Vladimir Putin, his predecessor and now Prime Minister, by seeking to pit the US against its European allies. In a speech delivered to European leaders at a conference hosted by the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, to discuss the international financial crisis, Mr Medvedev sought to show that the US was at the root of all the world's problems. He blamed Washington's "economic egotism" for the world's financial woes and then accused the Bush Administration of taking Europe to the brink of a new cold war by pursuing a deliberately divisive foreign policy. He also maintained that the US was once again trying to return to a policy of containing Russia. "After toppling the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the United States started a series of unilateral actions," Mr Medvedev said. "As a result, a trend appeared in international relations towards creating dividing lines. This was in fact the revival of a policy popular in the past and known as containment." While he called for a cooling of the noxious rhetoric that had blighted East-West relations over the past two years, Mr Medvedev clearly laid the blame for the deterioration on the US, which he said was again viewing Russia through the prism of the Cold War. "Sovietology, like paranoia, is a very dangerous disease, and it is a pity that part of the US Administration still suffers from it," he said. In order to end the "unipolar" model in which the world depended on the US, he proposed creating new financial systems to challenge the dominance of the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation, both of which had fallen under Washington's spell. Attacking the enlargement of NATO, which he said had advanced provocatively towards Russia, he proposed a new European security treaty. The new European pact would include "a clear affirmation of the inadmissibility of the use of force - or the threat of force - in international relations" and would be built on the principle of the territorial integrity of independent nations. While Russia has insisted it was not intending to supplant NATO, Mr Medvedev made it clear that the US-dominated alliance was partly responsible for the war in the Caucasus by its failure to rein in Georgian "aggression". The Russian President won praise from Mr Sarkozy after he announced that all Russian troops had been withdrawn from buffer zones around Georgia's rebel enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia before today's deadline. Describing his guest as a man who had "kept his word", Mr Sarkozy immediately declared that talks on an EU-Russia partnership deal, suspended as punishment for Russia's military operation in Georgia, could resume. "Why are the eastern European delegates all pouring their toast vodka on the carpet?" |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #15 I'm wondering if the contents of George Soros' phone records and hard drive might not make very interesting reading... Why hasn't George Soros been the recipient of some wet work? This guys fingerprints are all over a ton of mischief being perpetrated just about everywhere. Soros = Blofeld |
| Posted by: Slolung Pelosi5213 2008-10-11 22:54 |
| #14 Wow. Just wow. Ya know, between this and all the economic/financial seismology of the past few months, I'm wondering if the contents of George Soros' phone records and hard drive might not make very interesting reading... |
| Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) 2008-10-11 18:18 |
| #13 so .. we pull out of Europe and South Korea.... looks like "Fortress America" |
| Posted by: 3dc 2008-10-11 18:11 |
| #12 "It may be time", and there's another "s" in successful....Too busy watching college football...my bad PIMF |
| Posted by: Frank G 2008-10-11 17:58 |
| #11 emasculated even with a NATO alliance, by their own domestic politics. They won't be welcoming a Russian army, which can't even do business succesfully in Georgia. I may be time to review just who is pulling their weight and who we should be spending our blood and treasure to defend. The Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, Ukrainians seem to be up to the challenge. Any common denominator to note there? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2008-10-11 17:56 |
| #10 In many ways anti-american attitudes are prevalent, yes - but not to the point of other alliances that would kill formal cooperation between us at the government level. |
| Posted by: lotp 2008-10-11 17:50 |
| #9 I thought Europe was already anti american? |
| Posted by: chris 2008-10-11 17:43 |
| #8 I think lotp has it right: if Medvedev and Putin pull this off, we're looking at a Europe that is now completely emasculated, neutered and put at Russia's lap. That means the dissolution of NATO (which a President Obama might not mind one bit) and loss of all facilities there, including the BMD sites. That might not happen in a month or a year but that's the clear point. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2008-10-11 17:32 |
| #7 I wouldn't worry too much: Russia is just barely managing its own problems and is not quite up to marching into Europe. But I am getting tired of footing the bill for everybody, Europeans especially. |
| Posted by: Darrell 2008-10-11 17:00 |
| #6 THE President of Russia has called on Europe's leaders to create a new world order that would minimise the role of the United States. I'm all for it if they (the Euros) are. The US has bailed them out since WW1, nearly 100 years. Let the new and improved Russia take next one hundred. Good ridance. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2008-10-11 16:05 |
| #5 But the current leaders will be able to say they secured gas and oil for the next decade. And we will either lose the BMD sites in Eastern Europe or see our allies there heavily pressured on both sides. |
| Posted by: lotp 2008-10-11 16:03 |
| #4 Our troops might not leave all of Europe, SB. They might just move to Poland, Lithuania, etc.... |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2008-10-11 16:02 |
| #3 Don't forget, if they do that, all our troops leave europe, which means that their pitiful militaries will be unable to prevent the russians from taking them over. We all know Russia and their lovely agreements compliance. |
| Posted by: Silentbrick 2008-10-11 15:33 |
| #2 This isn't satire? Amazing. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-10-11 14:35 |
| #1 Go for it, Europe. It's exactly what you deserve. At the same time, if your I'm sure we can find plenty of Stateside Rantburgers willing to sponsor you. You're decent folks and don't deserve what the Bear will do to you. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2008-10-11 14:08 |