[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Abraham

Everybody will have to live with realities that we don't always like. If you can't stand reality, try to change it, which is exactly what Putin tries to do and is entitled to do, by the way.

So why did you tell him that he has to live with reality...

That really depends on how you compare the Western lifestyle with the Russian one. It is my conviction that most people will reach a different conclusion than you, Skybird. I for one find more fairness, justice and wellbeing in the Western lifestyle.

You may talk about lifestyles, maybe. I talked about the mechanism by which power that leads and influences a state is being projected, and legitimated. And here the madness of allowing political party policies overruling the interests of the whole community, the massive lobbying and the inextricable sleaze of politics and industry, the turning of democracies into effective plutocracies (US) or ruling of (corrupt) bureaucracies under heavy PC and socialistic influence (Europe) hardly can be seen as the shining democratic alternative that it claims to be. And the EU: when observers and insiders say that every member of parliament in Brussel is being workd on by a mean of roughly two dozen lobbyists, then you may think that democracy may still be there and is immune to that massive attack on it. I don't - and see that proven in the way the EU has developed over the last 5-10 years, if not longer. these gremias are not elected by the european people, but nevertheless forge rules which elected governments are expected to follow. If such governments (like Merkel said it for Germany) are accepting to obey rules that are outlined to them, without having the ability to reject them, that this turns the idea of elections and democratic procedures on national level into an absurdity, and probably in most European countries also violates constitutions, constitutional rights for sovereignity, and puts these constitutions very much out of effect. All this because of bureaucratic bodies that are not elected, and are not democratically legitimised. There must be a reason why founding fathers of the early EEG (EWG), namely Helmut Schjmidt and Giscard d'Estaing, today are talking so bitterly against the course the EU has set in the past years. Schmidt say it very clearly: this is not the Europe the intentionback then was aiming for, and the accumulation ofunlegitimised power in Brussell's institutions is highly threatening for the national democracies of europe. He also does not hide that in his opinion the new idea of what the EU shall be is doomed to fail, and will become obsolete and inefficient. Quite some old politicians who had resposnebility in the late 70s and 80s agree with that view. The EU is being turned into a dictatorship of bureaucrats who outsit the coming and going of politicians and governments, having the power to influence the process of turning political goals into realities by hindering or helping them when processing them in the internal bureaucratic procedures. that is nothing else than ursurping of power, to a degree that compares to the dominance of the courtly bureaucrats and minstre in acnient china who very much hollowed out the institution of the emperor and turned him into their puppet. It led china to a century-long status of stagnation, in which the country almost got suffocated and prooved to be unable to flexibly respond to the new challenges of changes when the Westerners arrived. Thus it was overthrown.

I would like to rephrase this in: "If decades long oppressed countries decide to prefer freedom and choose to become members of an Alliance to guarantee that freedom... it is not only hurting to your pride. It is an open provocation etc. etc."
One of the realities that Putin has to face is that his foreign policy carries the burden of the heritage of a totalitarian communist regime that suppressed its neighbour countries...

Then I recommend you throw out Germany of NATO and the EU.

And btw, NATO has no obligation whatever to accept every Peter and Paul as a member - simply because Pauls wishes to become a member, btw. His wish is not NATO's command. The West, and Russia are two huge political spheres, and I also say that the US compares to the historical examples of empires (I mean that as a fact-oriented argu,ment, not a provocation). Empires do not simply stop at this artificial line on a map, or that river. the power and influence they project degrades, the farther away you are from their centre. Beyond the teritory they claim to be theirs, they nevertheless project some influence: border traffic, trade traffic, habits of people living in "the outback", languages being spoken, knowledge of their habits and laws affecting local conditions outside their territories, but close to the border, currency, etc. Between two such spheres or empires therefor it is wise to have a bufferzone of territories not officially belonging to any of them. Else every movement of the one necessarily will immediately affect and force to react the other. the margin for misunderstabndings or errors becomes extrmeely thin that way. Best example: the iron curtain through europe. thatwas such a no-bufferzone-contact between two huge blocks.
Your rephrasing is pathetic in choice of words, but you know that yourself - you picked it nevertheless, because suggestive phrasing like this serves your cause.

Wasn't that Soviet influence in those days of the Cold War an "open provocation" in Cuba, Bolivia, Guatemala, Angola etc.? Every revolutionairy agitator with a "democratic peoples movement for the liberation of..." who claimed to be "Marxist" - either in Azia, Africa or South and Middle America - could count on the full diplomatic and military support of the Soviet Union, no matter how dictatorial the regime was.

I am sure that after the example of cuba - Nicaragua, Honduras, San Salvador, Peru, Chile and Argentina, Panama were doomed to become very lethal, incredible threatening challenges for the mere existence of the US, and the West. Reason enough to launch hidden wars, direct interventions, and support dictatorships that costed the lifes of hunrdeds of thousands. Not to mention the Souteastasian domino... Well, Vietnam was lost. And still we have not Neo-USSR-like nations in that region. Northkorea is an artefact from even earlier times.

I can't argue that much pessimism.

A weak reply. NATO is a bright-weathert alliance. Go arguing with that in the face of the political rifts about Afghanistan and troop contributionsd for it.

I'll confidently await the judgement of history on NATO.

Here it is: it served it's purpose well duzring the cold war, but with the end of the Soviet Union it failed to reach agreement on it'S future role - the one camp wishing to turn it into a deputy helping to push global ambitions of the major dominant player in the team, the other camp allowing to be intimidated by that demand, but passively refusing to support that by substantial contributions, blocking that agenda indirectly. The age of self-deception sooner or later must come to an end. Really, the Afghanistan controversy is telling much. and as a matter of fact, countries like France, Germany, Italy, probably Spain as well, and smaller ones hiding behind these, will never support a global role for NATO in deeds, not just words. That is diplomacy: to say No, without using the word.

And I think you are a little bit too much focussed on the line: "Mine is longer than yours". I never heart Jaap De Hoop Scheffers use that phrase to explain NATO policy.

Please don't tell us you are surprised that he has not.