Posted on 04/18/2014 8:10:22 AM PDT by kronos77
Ukraine is on the frontline of Russia v US superpower tensions, while a major naval base there makes it the bottom line underlying this confrontation, Richard Sakwa, professor of Russian and European politics at the University of Kent, told RT.
RT: Is Crimea becoming a new battleground between East and the West?
Richard Sakwa: Putin describes the things in his speech that he told about on March 18. There is a mixture of two things going on at the moment. There is the enlargement of the EU which in the past was considered fairly benign. What happened is its mixture with the development of the Euro-Atlantic partnership, NATO. Ukraine today is the new Balkans. During the WWI it was these superpower tensions over the Balkans. Today its Ukraine in the frontline. And indeed, there is one significant difference, because the Balkans didnt really have any major naval bases, so this is clearly the bottom line underlying this confrontation - at the moment is concern not so much as President Putin said.
Sevastopol doesnt have the strategic significance it used to have clearly closed oceans, missiles, etc. Nevertheless, its fundamentally important and as Russia has been concerned about since the mid-1990s, NATO is perceived as a major strategic threat. Ultimately, what has to happen in the light of the 4-party talks with Russia, Ukraine, the US and the EU, there has to be a sense of a new security order being discussed for Europe in which NATO enlargement or NATO existence has to take into account very substantively Russias security concerns and it also affects missile defense of course, which has been the bone of contention for many years as well.
(Excerpt) Read more at rt.com ...
All he seems to need is a mustache and he’s a reincarnation of a famous German. JMHO
Maybe Obama will let Putin use his mustache when he is done with it.
China must love this. Western nations continue to batter themselves to gain commercial benefits while China rakes in the pot.
Maybe Obama will let Putin use his mustache when he is done with it.
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Obama has a mustache? I thought he had a beard. And why in the name of all things would Putin want to use Michelle?
What Ukraine needs is Putinism: a weird blend of war socialism, crony capitalism, and autocracy. Oh yeah, that was kind of like Milosevic’s reign in Serbia.
It is now the European Union which is on the offensive against Russia for the purpose of economic dominance, and we Americans are now mindlessly dancing to war drums pounded in Brussels and Strasbourg. How else does one explain the encircling advance of a once-defensive alliance to the western and southern borders of Russia itself? We are the muscle in this economic war for European dominance, and we continue to bankrupt ourselves for the benefit of others. America is being played.
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