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The new Russian doctrine, recently presented in an article by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, unveils an assertive plan unprecedented since cold war times. Defining as Russia’s “sphere of strategic interests’ virtually whole post-Soviet space, and terming democratization and European aspirations in the post-Soviet states a direct threat to Russia’s interests the article constitutes an openly stated high-level official position acknowledging that Russia still finds difficulty parting with the Cold War logic as a guiding philosophy for its security and military strategy. BACKGROUND: Much has been said lately about Russia’s use of hydrocarbons as a remedy designed to alter the...

BUCHAREST, Romania | “It took them more than 60 years – but better late than never!” This is how 82-year-old Dimitrie Balus greeted the news that the United States would soon station troops permanently in Romania. The Transylvanian villager is one of the many Romanians who after World War II hoped for American troops to come and liberate their country from Russian occupation. Sixteen years after the collapse of the Soviet bloc and three years after former Warsaw Pact member Romania joined NATO, it’s official: the Americans are coming. NO MORE COLD WAR U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and...

Ljubljana, 6 December (RFE/RL) -- The United States has told Moscow that it will not sign a new treaty on conventional military forces until Russia withdraws all its troops and equipment from separatist republics in Georgia and Moldova. The U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, Nicholas Burns, said today at a meeting of the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana that it was impossible to reconcile the continued presence of Russian troops with the arms treaty. "A basic principle of the CFE (Conventional Forces Europe) Treaty is the right of sovereign states...

WASHINGTON – Last weekend, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld visited Moldova, a country where the cold war never ended. His trip highlighted the threat to Western values and interests posed by Russia's ambition to retain control over strategic European enclaves it once ruled as part of the Soviet empire. It is a reminder that despite the success of NATO's Istanbul summit, the West has not completed its grand geopolitical project of building a Europe of secure democracies extending to the borders of Russia. Russia's nostalgia for its imperial past is evident in the pocket empire it maintains among neighboring nations....

ISTANBUL (AFP) Jun 28, 2004 NATO urged Russia Monday to fulfil pledges to withdraw its troops and bases from the ex-Soviet republics of Georgia and Moldova, recalling that ratification of a landmark treaty depends on it. "I sincerely hope that the Georgian and the Russian government can come to an agreement as far as the dismantling of the bases is concerned," Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said. The dismantling of the bases was a "key element of the Istanbul commitments, indeed a precondition for the ratification of the adapted CFE treaty," he said. De Hoop Scheffer spoke after meeting...