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Old 02-09-14, 05:57 PM   #48
Skybird
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Putin wants to install an Eurasian customs union, and a sphere of Russian influence similiar to the former USSR. That's why the Crimea alone is not the decisve issue here. Its not just a local territorial strategic assessment over Crimea that leads the Russians to set up a fight for the Ukraine.

Putin has also not forgotten the years under Yelzin when the West promised to leave a buffer zone of nations between NATO and Russia, and then NATO broke all these agreements and promises and started top move right up onto Russian borders. That lesson sank deep, and it coincides with the change in Putin. Few people remember (or want to be reminded of today) that the young Putin was a much more open-minded man who imagined Russia to benefit from opening the country for stronger European input of knowhow and investment, he was compared (in the West!) to Alexander the great a bit. But then came the Yelzin years, the unscrupulous invasion by Western predators that were a great factor in bringing the Russian oligarchs to powers that Putin later had to fight down so mercilessly because they effectively threatened to take over the state), the sale-out of Russian economic interests because the Russian were not fit to deal with the aggressive Western entrepreneurs who tried to make a quick fortune in Russia, and the betrayal by America-led NATO. That marked a significant change in his thinking about what to do in the future. Granted, the man himself probably also has changed in character over those 25, 30 years. But the Putinistic Russia we have to deal with today last but not least is a consequence of Western policies towards Russia in the early years after the USSR breakdown. Playing soft and polite, Putin saw, brought Russia nowhere and earne donly losses. So he decided to start to play tough. And that'S where we have moved in the past years.

We really did not shine with glory ourselves in all this. It's not all the West's fault that Russia now is what it is. But we did our share to make it that, mostly because the West thought: Russia either runs our way, or no way. That kind of thinking was misled, arrogant, and obviously wrong.

Its like I always say: Russia is neither Europe, nor Asia. Russia is Russia, and Russian people have a different mentality than Americans or Western Europeans.

That mistake has been repeated several timers with regard to other regions of the globe, after the Yelzin years. The Iraq war heavily owes to this misconception. Afghanistan. Western views of the Israeli-PLO conflict, and the Arab uprising of recent years.

Right now, the Europeans snap about the US comment about the EU, and they do not see that they just retrieve the stick that Putin has thrown. And Obama's country balances on its hindpaws, while Putin has pointed the erected pointing finger over Syria.

Really, Western leaders should not complain about Putin, but about their own indifference, reality denial and idiocy.

That Iran de facto has been left off the hook, is no compliment for Western diplomacy either. More a signal that diplomats should urgently be rushed into mental asylums.

The state of Western diplomacy is this: its a mixture of maximum childishness, and self-destruction. Overhearing in the news Germany's new foreign policy punchinello Steinmeier and what he had to say in Afghanistan, made me feel sick and burst in laughter at the same time. It's all a ball of narcissistic operetta stars. Everybody wants to wear a golden livrée, and everybody wants to sing his own aria. The noise is just breathtaking, and the sight is petrifying the eyes.
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