Posted on 12/15/2005 2:18:59 PM PST by sergey1973
Against the backdrop of rapidly deteriorating U.S.-Russian relations - prompted by revelations of Moscow’s missiles sale to Iran and the State Duma’s passage of dubious legislation restricting nongovernmental Organizations - (NGO) activities - Aleksandr Voloshin’s surprise trip to Washington last week seemed more than mere coincidence.
Aleksandr Voloshin, former head of the Yeltsin and Putin administrations, spent almost three days on a private visit in Washington and New York. In the U.S. capital, he clarified the Kremlin’s grievances vis-à-vis the White House to a small group of nonplussed Russia experts, who sought to understand the country’s latest erratic behavior. He also promised that the final version of the law governing NGOs would be more civilized.
Accompanying Voloshin was Russia’s wealthiest oligarch still residing in the country, Oleg Deripaska, whose requests for a visa to enter the U.S. had been turned down for almost ten years.
Deripaska’s visit and attendant speculation about how he managed to pull it off, thus, effectively eclipsed Voloshin’s presence in the U.S.
(Excerpt) Read more at cdi.org ...
Oh...thought this was about Wesley Clark.
If Putin goes much further with his provocations, the Cold War will be back on again.
If you ever thought it really was over you'd better rethink.
"If Putin goes much further with his provocations, the Cold War will be back on again."
And as Romans would say, "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst" -:))))
I have a faith that there won't be Cold War Round II. For Russia it would be a catastrophe. For the Western World facing Jihadists it would be unacceptable diversion of attention and the drain of political, economical and military resources.
Maybe the Polish would like to buy a few ICBM's and a coastal Boomer at a great price.
I wonder what old Putz head Putin would think of that
My thought too. They just went undecover and adopted an economic model that had a better chance for financing their survival. So far too many see through that to invest and make the economy viable. A pig is a pig is a pig.
LOL...The Poles and the Ukranians. Let's really get Putty's panties in a twist.
It makes no sense to me. I happen to support working with Russia as an ally, because Russia is a natural counterweight to the potential threat of China, and Russia and the U.S. have a common interest in fighting Islamic terrorists.
Bush and Putin started out with a very warm relation. But for the past year, Putin has acted as if he wants to put together a new version of the Soviet Union, pulling all sorts of fast stuff in Ukraine, Georgia, Rumania, and the Baltic countries, while he supplies Iran with nuclear materials and missiles, and sends weapons to Hugo Chavez.
None of this is in Russia's national interest. Russia's first priority should be to get the economy going, get the population implosion turned around before Russians are outnumbered by their neighbors, and start making Russia healthy again. The last thing Russia needs is to get into a spitting match with the U.S.
Putin has a chance to go down in history as a great leader, but not if he turns into a cynical, machiavellian power-grabber. He already has power. He should use it for the benefit of his country.
"It makes no sense to me. I happen to support working with Russia as an ally, because Russia is a natural counterweight to the potential threat of China, and Russia and the U.S. have a common interest in fighting Islamic terrorists. "
Unfortunately, rational thinking is not the dominant force behind world politics, and it was hardly ever the hallmark of Russian/Soviet leadership. In a history of Russian Politics, rationality was completely overshadowed with false pride, insatiable ambitions, messianic vision, etc. I hope to see some change in this arena, but I'm not too optimistic in a short term.
Gazprom is seeking a foothold in the U.S.
BERLIN Gazprom, the giant state-owned Russian energy company, on Tuesday announced ambitious plans to become a major player in the United States and China as it starts to diversify its export markets beyond Central Asia and Europe.
Alexander Medvedev, deputy chairman of Gazprom, said during an interview that the company's long-term strategy involved establishing a foothold in the U.S. market.
"Our aim is to gain more than 10 percent of the U.S. market share by 2010, increasing to 20 percent," he said.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/12/13/business/gazprom.php
At one time I read a lot of Checkov's short stories. It seems to me that in the last days of the Czar Russia had some of the same problems of anomie and nihilism that America has had under the label of Postmodernism. They were trying to get themselves straightened out with reforms, when Lenin moved in and took them on a 70-year detour. Now they are more or less back where they were, but with the Orthodox Church much weaker than it was.
There's not much we can do about it. We should be allies, but it won't happen unless Putin and the Russian leadership want it, and they don't seem to at this point.
Russia is much weaker than it was in conventional weaponry and armed forces, but they still have more than enough ICBMs to destroy the world, which is a bit worrying.
The russians are a little to close to china now. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is the new military bloc we should be wary of.
The politics is art of possible. It's still possible to prevent Russian-Chinese alliance by working with Russian leadership and showing all the dangers of getting cozy with Communist and Expansionist China.
BUMP.
Notice its the Kremlin's grievances...not ours that gets talked about in the above article:
In the U.S. capital, he clarified the Kremlin’s grievances vis-à-vis the White House to a small group of nonplussed Russia experts, who sought to understand the country’s latest erratic behavior.
If they are "nonplussed" by the predictably Soviet/Russo betrayal, then they aren't...and never were...true "Russia experts".
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