by Jerome a Paris
Wed May 16th, 2007 at 08:46:06 AM EST
One president of a UNSC veto-wielding country:
"Our relations is cool, if not to say cold. I'm the first to say to recognize that the Americans are partly responsible for this. They tend to think they are on the side of good and thus that everyone else is on the side of evil. They lack curiosity about and appetite for a world that, for many of them, stops at their own borders. They are certain that they are always the best. All this can certainly be irritating."
Another president of a UNSC veto-wielding country:
"Moreover, in our time, these threats [to peace] are not diminishing," he said. "They are only transforming, changing their appearance. In these new threats, as during the time of the Third Reich, are the same contempt for human life and the same claims of exceptionality and diktat in the world."
1) Nicolas Sarkozy
2) Vladimir Putin
And let's not forget their treasonous friends the Germans:
The spectacle of Germany taking the side of Russia against one of the new EU entrants – which Berlin had pledged to treat “equally” with other EU members – raised eyebrows across the room.
The spat not only exposed a widening rift in the EU over how to handle an increasingly authoritarian Russia. It also called into question the ability of Germany, current holder of the EU presidency, to remain neutral in a whole range of disputes between Russia and its former Soviet-era satellites in eastern Europe. Nor was this the first time that Germany had upset the European status quo in favour of its relationship with Moscow.
(...)the latest crisis shines an awkward light on the extent of Germany’s dependence on Russia and how it is affecting its foreign policy.
Translation note: "European status quo" = Europeans standing unquestioningly on the US line
Look for signs of disobedience and disagreement and you'll find them. Take these as personal offenses and relationships will quickly deteriorate. Require absolute obedience even from your friends and they'll eventually drift away or snap.
Paranoid control freaks do not make good diplomats. Journalists toeing their line unquestioningly do not make good journalists.
