Vladimir Putin believes that American Foreign Policy poses a threat to global security due to arrogance and double standards.
By Amiel Ungar, INN
It is significant that presidential aspirant Vladimir Putin, the all but certain victor of next Sunday’s Russian presidential election, returned to foreign policy in the last lengthy article that he has published prior to the election.
During the campaign, Putin composed a series of lengthy articles on various topics in which he communicated his positions to the Russian electorate. To some extent they remind the reader of addresses by Communist Party First Secretaries prior to elections for the Supreme Soviet, elections whose results were also certain. These addresses did serve as a policy platform and Putin is updating the format.
Putin emphasizes the importance of an independent Russian foreign policy as a key to that guaranteeing respect for his country, but he also believes that Russian independence provides a key to global security. The United States, in his opinion, constitutes the major threat to global security due to a number of glaring flaws in its foreign policy.
The Americans are so preoccupied with their own security, he writes, that they are willing to make others insecure. This can be seen in NATO’s eastward expansion and American insistence — Russian objections notwithstanding, to push ahead with an anti-ballistic missile system.
Secondly, the United States has espoused humanitarian intervention while undermining national sovereignty. The one body that can and should decide on such intervention is the United Nations, where abuse of power is tempered by the veto power of the permanent representatives. Putin erroneously claims that the veto power was originally installed at American insistence; it was actually installed to placate Stalin, who feared that otherwise the Soviet Union would be isolated and outvoted in the new world organization.
Putin criticized the West for supporting the United Nations when it suited them, but not when they could not get their way. In that case, they formed coalitions and acted unilaterally, despite the fact that they lacked UN sanction.
The failure of such policies, he continued, could be seen in the Arab spring where the West intervened and succeeded only in replacing one power clique with another – under the best of circumstances – and empowering extremist Islamists under the worst of circumstances. Russia ,in contrast, sought to create reconciliation while demanding that all sides refrain from violence.
A third major irritant was the manipulative use of soft power, that in Putin’s view, was “all too often being used to develop and provoke extremist, separatist and nationalistic attitudes, to manipulate the public and exercise direct interference over the domestic policies of sovereign states.” [That’s what Europe and the US do to Israel]
Russia, he said, did not use or fund NGOs to pursue Russian influence (although towards the end of his article Putin promised to promote Russian culture abroad as a way of achieving influence – a variant of soft power), Russia acted on a policy shared with China, India and Brazil on a state to state basis; this way it acted openly, rather than on the sly.
Putin expressed alarm about a possible attack on Iran and claimed that Russia would seek a solution under which Iran would verifiably abandon its military nuclear program. In return, Iran would be granted full freedom to pursue the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Putin blamed the West, particularly the United States, for the growing nuclear proliferation problem, arguing that this was a reaction to the Western disrespect for sovereignty as governments are seeking an antidote to intervention.
“It appears that the more frequent crude and even armed interference by outside forces in the domestic affairs of other nations, the more likely it is that hard authoritarian (and other) regimes wish to possess nuclear weapons.
On the issue of Afghanistan, Putin has declared the NATO intervention a failure in terms of reducing the threats of terrorism and drug trafficking. Putin termed the flow of drugs to Russia from Afghanistan aggression and was willing to offer greater Russian participation in return for more vigorous pursuit of the crops and the opium refining labs.
Putin devoted a section of his article to relations with China. He has been accused in some circles of reducing Russia to a subordinate status vis-a-vis Beijing. Putin replies that he does not consider China a threat and both countries benefit economically and technologically. He would even involve China – judiciously of course – in developing Siberia and the Russian Far East (these regions, as opposed to Western Russia, consider China a greater threat than the US).
China has opposed the United States, did not seek dominance and there were no outstanding differences between the two countries, even if the relationship was not completely trouble-free.
Using the relationship with China, including joint participation in international organizations, Russia views itself as a bridge between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Putin offers the European states a Union of Europe, an idea that Russian leaders have suggested on and off (for example Mikhail Gorbachev during the 1980s offered Europeans a “common European home.”) Part of the idea is to wean the Europeans away from the United States. Putin however lectured Europeans on the need to balance their budgets and to stop discriminating against Russia. Russia has opened up lucrative areas of its economy to the Europeans, but the Europeans still impose restrictions on Russia he claimed.
Coming back to the United States Putin regretted that relations had not yet reached the desired level and he blamed anti-Russian stereotypes and phobias on Capitol Hill. Putin singles out Henry Kissinger for praise and lets his readers know that he frequently meets with Kissinger.
China is no more C-omm-unist, then America is Capitalist nor is Russia C-omm-unist.
They are all various forms of Thugism, Thugist Elite Rule,Stalinism, economic fascism of the few over the many.
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The big lie of the West’s propaganda is to pretend that the elites of a country are the people of the country and represent their interests when in fact they are the parasites of the country that oppress the people and bleed them to death.
There is currently NO country that is free, democratic or capitalist.
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The only way to have a capitalist, democratic country is for workers own majority share of the companies they work IN not “for”. Everything else would remain the same except the company would work for the nation. put their profits back into the nation not for a rich elite and the wealth would be distributed amoug the population not in the hands of the .01 percent
That being understood as the foundation of the World’s Political Structure then we can look at Israel in this light..
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The question is who owns Israel. WE know who owns American, Russia and China but who owns Israel?
Under what conditions will the owners of Israel sell out the Israeli people ? or rather should I say ..
How have the Israeli elite already sold out the Israeli people?
Putin is all over the news drolling and ranting with his victory, He sounds like he was in civil war with his opponents – instead of wining gracefully he is sneering at the “election losers”.
I can believe he bought and strong-armed the election.
Sounds like Stalin re-incarnated.
Has Russia ever stopped its campaign of dezinformatsia. See Pacepa, Propaganda Redux. In the Wall Street Journal. You can find it on the internet.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118645110306090056.html
The only difference between Putin in the Russian Federation and the current political regime in this country is the absence of term limits for the presidency. If there were good term limit restrictions in the Russian Federation, nobody would have to worry about Putin at all or anything him, whatever that is. Furthermore, if we were to restrict the presidency in our country to a single term, we wouldn’t have to worry about a lot of the garbage from our crop of presidents either. Imagine the Obamination were at the end of his one and only term now.
The constant reference to Putin’s KGB past and the Russian Federation’s past in the Union of S_______t Soviet Republics is pointless and easily dismissed. Notice what is missing in Putin’s criticism of the US and its foreign policy. Nowhere is the march of c_______m an issue and nowhere is the US ever condemned in any ideological sense. Putin isn’t saying anything especially radical. He and the Russian Federation isn’t anything like Cuba or Chavez. The Russian Federation has more in common with the US than the US has in common with China, and we are all too happy to do all kinds of business with China. And we treat China with more respect than we do the Russian Federation. China is c_______t, the C_______t Party in China runs the country. Nobody of any note seems to care.
The Russian Federation is coming. They have the potential to replace Germany in terms of productivity and marketability. And the Russian Federation isn’t a looming threat to anyone, despite the way we treat them. China is a more likely menace and only because we are flooding them with money. Our money.
*I edited out certain terms in the above post and found it posted immediately.
My post is not showing, is it in moderation?
The only difference between Putin in the Russian Federation and the current political regime in this country is the absence of term limits for the presidency. If there were good term limit restrictions in the Russian Federation, nobody would have to worry about Putin at all or anything him, whatever that is. Furthermore, if we were to restrict the presidency in our country to a single term, we wouldn’t have to worry about a lot of the garbage from our crop of presidents either. Imagine the Obamination were at the end of his one and only term now.
The constant reference to Putin’s KGB past and the Russian Federation’s past in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics is pointless and easily dismissed. Notice what is missing in Putin’s criticism of the US and its foreign policy. Nowhere is the march of communism an issue and nowhere is the US ever condemned in any ideological sense. Putin isn’t saying anything especially radical. He and the Russian Federation isn’t anything like Cuba or Chavez. The Russian Federation has more in common with the US than the US has in common with China, and we are all too happy to do all kinds of business with China. And we treat China with more respect than we do the Russian Federation. China is communist, the Communist Party in China runs the country. Nobody of any note seems to care.
The Russian Federation is coming. They have the potential to replace Germany in terms of productivity and marketability. And the Russian Federation isn’t a looming threat to anyone, despite the way we treat them. China is a more likely menace and only because we are flooding them with money. Our money.
I think its time KGB thug Putin was shown the door. If permanently, I wouldn’t shed any tears. He’s a Commie thug, determined to bring Russia back to a Soviet state with open hostility towards the West, even to the point of arming ITS own Islamic enemies with nukes.
First off, we need to show we mean business by pulling the plugs on the multi-corporations that sprung up in Moscow and St. Petersburg (Putingrad???)in the last 30 years, and curtailing aid, unless it is to pro-Democracy, pro-West camps in the country who won’t bring us back to the brink as Putin and his little puppy dog Medevedev wish to.
Secondly, we need to elect a REAL AMERICAN PRESIDENT. What is currently sitting in the White House is no match for a criminal like Putin, even if that same occupant stood up for this country, which is quite apparent he does not. There never would have been another Arms Treaty agreement especially after curtailing our missile bases in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary by a REAL PRESIDENT unless it was predicated by Russian agreement on Iran, Syria, and documentation that Russia would not brutally invasion its former provinces, as it did in Georgia. What we got, with the supportive signatures of one Scott Brown and other Republican Senators who knew better, was a capitulation to Russian chicanery, and the clear incompetence, if not dangerous, pro-Soviet (yep, you read that right) attitude of Ovomit.
Russia deserves better than Putin. And by the way, so do we and the rest of the world.