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The Russian government has expelled two US military attaches, the US state department said today. A spokeswoman for the state department said the US objects to the action but will comply. The spokeswoman referred further questions to the Russian government. The Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately return a phone call. The action comes after the expulsion from Washington of two Russian diplomats within the last year. One Russian military officer was ordered to leave Washington in November. The second was ordered to leave on April 22.
A spokeswoman for the state department said the US objects to the action but will comply. The spokeswoman referred further questions to the Russian government. The Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately return a phone call.
The action comes after the expulsion from Washington of two Russian diplomats within the last year. One Russian military officer was ordered to leave Washington in November. The second was ordered to leave on April 22.
We're back to the Cold War tit-for-tat.
U.S. promises cannot be trusted - Gorbachev
MOSCOW, May 7 (RIA Novosti) - Promises made by U.S. leaders cannot be trusted, former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph published on Wednesday. "The Americans promised that NATO wouldn't move beyond the boundaries of Germany after the Cold War, but now half of central and eastern Europe are members, so what happened to their promises? It shows they cannot be trusted," he said in Paris. He also said that Washington's claims that a missile defense system it is planning to build in central Europe was aimed exclusively at countering the threat from so-called rogue states could not be believed either. The Pentagon's missile shield deployment plans continue to be a major bone of contention in relations between the U.S. and Russia. Moscow considers the project a threat to its national security. Gorbachev said the missile shield plan jeopardized world peace and could lead to a new Cold War. He continued that that "erecting elements of missile defense is taking the arms race to the next level. It is a very dangerous step". "I sometimes have a feeling that the United States is going to wage war against the entire world," the former Soviet leader said. "The United States cannot tolerate anyone acting independently. Every U.S. president has to have a war," he concluded, also saying that the world had squandered the chance in the decade after the Cold War to "build a new world order."
"The Americans promised that NATO wouldn't move beyond the boundaries of Germany after the Cold War, but now half of central and eastern Europe are members, so what happened to their promises? It shows they cannot be trusted," he said in Paris.
He also said that Washington's claims that a missile defense system it is planning to build in central Europe was aimed exclusively at countering the threat from so-called rogue states could not be believed either.
The Pentagon's missile shield deployment plans continue to be a major bone of contention in relations between the U.S. and Russia. Moscow considers the project a threat to its national security.
Gorbachev said the missile shield plan jeopardized world peace and could lead to a new Cold War.
He continued that that "erecting elements of missile defense is taking the arms race to the next level. It is a very dangerous step".
"I sometimes have a feeling that the United States is going to wage war against the entire world," the former Soviet leader said.
"The United States cannot tolerate anyone acting independently. Every U.S. president has to have a war," he concluded, also saying that the world had squandered the chance in the decade after the Cold War to "build a new world order."
Gorbachev: US could start new Cold War
Mikhail Gorbachev has accused the United States of mounting an imperialist conspiracy against Russia that could push the world into a new Cold War. With Dmitry Medvedev due to be inaugurated today as Russian president, the Soviet Union's last leader said that the White House's claims of peaceful intentions towards its former superpower rival could no longer be trusted. Delivering one of his most scathing attacks on the US, Mr Gorbachev told The Daily Telegraph that a US military build-up was under way to contain a resurgent Russia. From Nato's expansion plans in the former Soviet Union to Washington's proposals for a bigger defence budget and a missile shield in central Europe, the US was deliberately quashing hopes for permanent peace with Russia, Mr Gorbachev said. "We had 10 years after the Cold War to build a new world order and yet we squandered them," he said. "The United States cannot tolerate anyone acting independently. "Every US president has to have a war." (...) "The problem is not with Russia," he said, speaking at a friend's château outside Paris. "Russia does not have enemies and Putin is not going to start a war against the United States or any other country for that matter. "Yet we see the United States approving a military budget and the defence secretary pledging to strengthen conventional forces because of the possibility of a war with China or Russia. (...) For a man hailed as one of the heroes of the 20th century, Mr Gorbachev, now 77, often sounded like the ageing hardliners he struggled against in the Kremlin during the 1980s. He railed against a "military-industrial complex" that he insisted was the "real government" of the US and, quoting a Russian documentary on state television, suggested that Margaret Thatcher had supplied weapons to Chechen terrorists. Still, while Mr Gorbachev may be delighted by the rebirth of what many see as Russian imperialism, many wonder whether he approves of the way in which Mr Putin has eroded freedom of expression to such an extent that some claim glasnost is dead. "I do not think that glasnost is dead in Russia," he said. "There is a phenomenon in the West to criticise Putin's domestic record. But in Russia he has mass support. His popularity ratings are 70 to 80 percent. "Is this not democracy?"
Delivering one of his most scathing attacks on the US, Mr Gorbachev told The Daily Telegraph that a US military build-up was under way to contain a resurgent Russia.
From Nato's expansion plans in the former Soviet Union to Washington's proposals for a bigger defence budget and a missile shield in central Europe, the US was deliberately quashing hopes for permanent peace with Russia, Mr Gorbachev said.
"We had 10 years after the Cold War to build a new world order and yet we squandered them," he said.
"The United States cannot tolerate anyone acting independently.
"Every US president has to have a war."
(...)
"The problem is not with Russia," he said, speaking at a friend's château outside Paris.
"Russia does not have enemies and Putin is not going to start a war against the United States or any other country for that matter.
"Yet we see the United States approving a military budget and the defence secretary pledging to strengthen conventional forces because of the possibility of a war with China or Russia.
For a man hailed as one of the heroes of the 20th century, Mr Gorbachev, now 77, often sounded like the ageing hardliners he struggled against in the Kremlin during the 1980s.
He railed against a "military-industrial complex" that he insisted was the "real government" of the US and, quoting a Russian documentary on state television, suggested that Margaret Thatcher had supplied weapons to Chechen terrorists.
Still, while Mr Gorbachev may be delighted by the rebirth of what many see as Russian imperialism, many wonder whether he approves of the way in which Mr Putin has eroded freedom of expression to such an extent that some claim glasnost is dead.
"I do not think that glasnost is dead in Russia," he said.
"There is a phenomenon in the West to criticise Putin's domestic record. But in Russia he has mass support. His popularity ratings are 70 to 80 percent.
"Is this not democracy?"
Rock on, Gorby.
Hey, how many years does the New Cold War have to go on before it is no longer new? Existential question of the day. "This is nothing compared to how Putin rigged Eurovision."
Oh, puh-lease! When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
"speaking at a friend's château outside Paris."
If anyone takes issue with my "Yes you CAN dress like the elite and still be a real Commie!" shoe diary, I present to you the Louis Vuitton-toting, French chateau-hopping communist, Mikhail Gorbachev! "This is nothing compared to how Putin rigged Eurovision."
It's a shame he's not also endorsing Manolo Blahniks. That would push it well over the edge into top flight performance art.
you are the media you consume.
Here's my ill-informed and biased cliff's note of the situation:
Obviously "things" have "changed" enormously. My litmus test is standard of living and political freedom and I discount changes in ideology, hence (I think) our differences on what "change" means.
The standard of living has improved overall, though in fairness, some of the more rural areas are fairing worse since Communism. But even that is slowly changing. I'm not sure we have a lot of information about the standard of living under Communism. Or how you quantify that. People are buying homes and cars for the first time. There is a "middle class" for the first time...
Political freedom? Just because it is worse than under Yeltsin (though freedom of speech is not high on your list when you are starving) does not mean it is as bad as it was under Communism. Russia has one of the most active Internet communities on the planet. Most of the nationalization of the media has been limited to TV. At this point, there is no possible way they could return to a Soviet-style repression. "This is nothing compared to how Putin rigged Eurovision."
Magnifico said:
I think the New Cold War would need to survive at least one leadership change on both side of the U.S.-Russia equation... Russia has already "changed". So, if relationships do not improve with a new U.S. president in 2009, then it's no longer the New Cold War... it's just Cold War II: The Climate Change.
To which I asked, mostly as an agreement with his post:
Has either country changed significantly at the institutional level since 1990?
The answer, in terms of foreign relations, seems to be no. The US has always been belligerent towards the Soviet Union / Russia, and having "won" the cold war, decided that the rest of the world really does have to do its bidding, and pressed its influence into Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The Soviets were nominally belligerent while in power, but the threat they posed was overstated by the western media outside the nuclear threat, and despite a non-belligerent Russian government today, the nuclear threat still remains, if for no other reason that the continued existence of the missiles.
Somehow this turned into me being insensitive toward the suffering of the people living in the former Soviet Union. Herding cats indeed - we can knick each other with a 1000 cuts, or maybe engage with people who, you know, actually hate Russia, of which there is no shortage.
The fact is that the Soviet Union under Gorbachev was already a sort of regime change, and then you have a couple of constitutional crises: the reactionnary 1991 coup which destroyed the USSR and then the 1993 Russian Constitutional Crisis which changed the constitution of Russia, ended up with prominent politicians in jail and altered the political landscape. Then you had the domestic political ramifications of the Chechen wars, and the transition from Yeltsin to Putin which in my view had the biggest effect in reining in the oligarchy created in the 1990's.
So even if now Russia's international stance looks as confrontational as in the 1980's (though I don't believe for a minute Russia would embark in an imperialist adventure like Afghanistan - and Abkhazia and South Ossetia don't count given that we're talking about ethnic Russians many of which are Russian citizens) it can hardly be said to "not have changed".
On the other hand, the Bush administration is full of cold warriors who cut their teeth in the 1970's fabricating intelligence assesments about the Soviet threat, and even Obama has Zbigniew Brzezinski (who claims to have meddled in Afghanistan to draw the USSR into a war they couldn't win) as foreign policy advisor, so that side hasn't changed. I think Russia finds itself confronting the US despite themselves because of how confrontational the US continues to be. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
I guess it depends on what you mean by "changed significantly at the institutional level". Russia has changed radically several times. Starting with that pesky fall of the Soviet Union bit. (Sorry for the snark.) Yes, Russia has changed. And changed.
The US? No and we're seeing very severe consequences of that refusal to change...
More importantly, their relationship has changed as well. Not nec. in the way either would have preferred... "This is nothing compared to how Putin rigged Eurovision."
But if something like the fall of the Soviet Union is just a "meet the news boss, same as the old boss" scenario on your book, I sincerely do not know what would constitute actual change. And entire empire collapsed. And entire economic system was destroyed. And ideological war was lost. The government was actually disolved at one point. (maybe more.) All the laws on the books became nullified, either literally or through lack of enforcement. Yes, the people in power were from the same elite group as those in Communism, because that was the ONLY system before. It's not as though democrats were waiting in the wings. Communists became democrats. Anyone with any qualifications to run any government entity got those qualifications from going through the Soviet system. People use this fact to suggest that nothing really changed between Stalin and Putin. It's like looking at a family and complaining all the children had the same parents. Where else were they supposed to come from? Outerspace? There were lots of Westerners coming into the country to advise the newly democratic government. And as a result, the bloody country crashed. People starved to death. So you can understand why they don't really trust us to tell them how to run their country. "This is nothing compared to how Putin rigged Eurovision."
Is this a series of interesting typos (And for An), or a literary construction just unfamiliar to me? *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
Also, modern Russia is quite rich, at least in parts. The USSR was always shabby and poor, with a few token exceptions like the occasional marble metro. With its energy reserves Russia has the potential to be richer than either Europe or the US a decade or two from now, and that's not making Washington happy.
So the US needs a Cold War. The first Cold War was started knowingly and deliberately with the usual bullshit massively exaggerated claims of Soviet nuclear capability.
The MilInd people really only have just the one pony, and they keep dragging it out over and over painted a different colour each time. But really - it's always the same animal with different stick-on horns and a dogwhistle around its neck.
So now that Bin Laden has ascended to heaven, or hung up his beard and moved to Florida, or wherever, it's time for a new enemy. Calling out China would be a little too intimate, so Russia makes a good a target as any.
By 1990 the USSR had run out of options, so it wasn't a serious possibility any more.
The US will probably go through the same process, but it's looking more likely it will try to collapse outwards in a very messy way rather than collapsing inwards as the USSR did.
You could probably make a case for suggesting that Iraq and Afghanistan are parts of the process. Aside from the oil, they're about trying to prove that it's still possible to project force successfully.
But that didn't work so well for the USSR in Afghanistan, and it's not working so well for the US either. So if Obama wins I wouldn't be totally surprised to see some serious military cutbacks - especially if he gets a second term.
But Cohen, author of Th New American Cold War, kinda the landmark piece on the topic, has a new article on the topic:
A chilly peace: U.S. presidential candidates must address our strained relations with Russia, By Stephen F. Cohen
Excerpt:
How did it come to this? Less than 20 years ago, the Soviet and American leaders, Mikhail S. Gorbachev and George H.W. Bush -- completing a process begun by Gorbachev and President Reagan -- ended the Cold War, "with no winners and no losers" (as even Condoleezza Rice once agreed), and began a new era of "genuine cooperation." Now, the U.S. policy elite and media contend that Russian President Vladimir V. Putin's anti-democratic domestic policies and "neo-imperialism" destroyed that historic opportunity. You don't have to be a Putin apologist to understand that it is not an adequate explanation. During the last eight years, Putin's foreign policies have been largely a reaction to Washington's winner-take-all approach to Moscow since the early 1990s, which resulted from a revised U.S. view of how the Cold War ended. In that new, triumphalist narrative, the U.S. won the 40-year conflict and post-Soviet Russia was a defeated nation analogous to post-World War II Germany and Japan -- a nation without full sovereignty at home or autonomous national interests abroad. The policy implications of that bipartisan triumphalism, which persists today, have been clear, certainly to Moscow. It meant the U.S. had the right to oversee Russia's post-communist political and economic development, as it tried to do directly in the 1990s, while demanding that Moscow yield to U.S. international interests. It meant Washington could break strategic promises to Russia, as when the Clinton administration began NATO's eastward expansion, and disregard extraordinary Kremlin overtures, as when the George W. Bush administration unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and moved NATO's border even closer to Russia despite Putin's crucial assistance to the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan after 9/11. It even meant the U.S. was entitled to Russia's traditional sphere of security and its energy supplies. Such U.S. behavior was bound to produce a Russian backlash. It came under Putin, but it would have been the reaction of any strong Kremlin leader. Those U.S. policies -- now widely viewed in Moscow as an "encirclement" designed to keep Russia weak and to control its resources -- have helped revive an assertive Russian nationalism, destroy the once-strong pro-American lobby and inspire widespread charges that concessions to Washington are "appeasement," even "capitulationism." The Kremlin may have overreacted, but the cause and effect threatening a new cold war are clear. Because the first steps in this direction were taken in Washington, so must be initiatives to reverse it. Three are urgent: a U.S. diplomacy that treats Russia as a sovereign great power with commensurate national interests; an end to NATO expansion before it reaches Ukraine, risking something worse than cold war; and a full resumption of negotiations to sharply reduce and fully secure all nuclear stockpiles and to prevent an impending arms race, which requires ending or agreeing on missile defense in Europe. Discussions with members of Moscow's policy elite suggest that there may still be time for such initiatives to elicit Kremlin responses that would enhance rather than further endanger our national security.
You don't have to be a Putin apologist to understand that it is not an adequate explanation. During the last eight years, Putin's foreign policies have been largely a reaction to Washington's winner-take-all approach to Moscow since the early 1990s, which resulted from a revised U.S. view of how the Cold War ended. In that new, triumphalist narrative, the U.S. won the 40-year conflict and post-Soviet Russia was a defeated nation analogous to post-World War II Germany and Japan -- a nation without full sovereignty at home or autonomous national interests abroad.
The policy implications of that bipartisan triumphalism, which persists today, have been clear, certainly to Moscow. It meant the U.S. had the right to oversee Russia's post-communist political and economic development, as it tried to do directly in the 1990s, while demanding that Moscow yield to U.S. international interests. It meant Washington could break strategic promises to Russia, as when the Clinton administration began NATO's eastward expansion, and disregard extraordinary Kremlin overtures, as when the George W. Bush administration unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and moved NATO's border even closer to Russia despite Putin's crucial assistance to the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan after 9/11. It even meant the U.S. was entitled to Russia's traditional sphere of security and its energy supplies.
Such U.S. behavior was bound to produce a Russian backlash. It came under Putin, but it would have been the reaction of any strong Kremlin leader. Those U.S. policies -- now widely viewed in Moscow as an "encirclement" designed to keep Russia weak and to control its resources -- have helped revive an assertive Russian nationalism, destroy the once-strong pro-American lobby and inspire widespread charges that concessions to Washington are "appeasement," even "capitulationism." The Kremlin may have overreacted, but the cause and effect threatening a new cold war are clear.
Because the first steps in this direction were taken in Washington, so must be initiatives to reverse it. Three are urgent: a U.S. diplomacy that treats Russia as a sovereign great power with commensurate national interests; an end to NATO expansion before it reaches Ukraine, risking something worse than cold war; and a full resumption of negotiations to sharply reduce and fully secure all nuclear stockpiles and to prevent an impending arms race, which requires ending or agreeing on missile defense in Europe. Discussions with members of Moscow's policy elite suggest that there may still be time for such initiatives to elicit Kremlin responses that would enhance rather than further endanger our national security.
As always, I have some disagreements with Cohen. But as always, I'm more convinced than ever that the world would be a better place if someone, anyone, listenned to him.
Also Winthrop 360 has a post for all your Gorbachev needs, including the Telegraph article, responses to it, and a very sweet list of Gorby quotes on related topics. Check it out. "This is nothing compared to how Putin rigged Eurovision."
My fear is that Obama might inadvertantly continue it by neglect, having too many other urgent problems he may not have the necessary attention to change the policy. keep to the Fen Causeway
again. Have epistemological model of Complex Information environments. Will Travel.
