Reading Putin's mind over Crimea

[unhappycamper]

http://atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/CEN-01-050314.html



Reading Putin's mind over Crimea
By Mikhail A Molchanov
Mar 5, '14

Western pundits cry foul over Russian intervention in the Crimea and deplore a purported resurrection of 19th-century power politics by President Vladimir Putin. They forget he learned his tactics from the US's and North Atlantic Treaty Organization's constant reliance on brute force.

Why exactly is NATO still in existence 23 years after the end of the Cold war? Back in the 1990s, Russia's liberal reformers expected it to go the way of the Warsaw Pact. This hope was bluntly defeated by Western proponents of global interdependence and co-prosperity. Instead, the Euro-Atlantic alliance started an eastward creep, with plans to encircle Russia and gobble up Moscow's former allies.

Perhaps NATO means to include Russia as well? This is what Putin suggested in an early 2000 interview with the BBC: "We believe we can talk about more profound integration with NATO, but only if Russia is regarded as an equal partner." Not so fast, was the response from Brussels. No equality between the Cold war "winners" and "losers" was ever on the cards.

Putin was the head of Russia's Federal Security Service when the NATO bombs were falling on Belgrade. Russia could do nothing at the time. In 2003, the United States led the so-called "coalition of the willing" in the unlawful invasion of Iraq in clear violation of the UN Charter. Again, Russia could do little.