http://tinyurl.com/7usrk8 Putin, Russia and <http://www.jbs.org/index.php/jbs-news-feed/4395> the Ukraine Written by Yuri N. Maltsev Tuesday, 20 January 2009 10:59
The only lesson of history ... is that it doesn't seem to teach us anything. In the eyes of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, the Ukraine is not an independent nation. During a private meeting with President Bush at the NATO summit in Bucharest in April of 2008, Putin said that the “Ukraine is not even a nation! What is Ukraine? Part of her territory is Eastern Europe, and part, a considerable part, was given by us!” The fate of Ukraine and Georgia was sealed by Germany and France at the Bucharest meeting of NATO in April of 2008. Merkel and Sarkozy blocked their applications to be included in the NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP), sending Putin the message that the West is eager to repeat the Munich accord of 1938 for the sake of good relations with him. Putin picked Georgia as the first victim, placing the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and Southern Ossetia under his protectorate — with the silent approval of the West. Now Putin uses the phony Ukrainian “threat” to gas supplies as a pretext to initiate a process of incorporation of the Russian-speaking regions of eastern Ukraine and Crimea into Russia, possibly by force. With the help of European politicians, he has prepared public opinion in the West to sell out the Ukrainians by way of Georgia’s betrayal. I am not going to discuss the technicalities of the Russian sabotage of gas supplies to Eastern and Western Europe – it was a trivial KGB job. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller is an alumnus of the same KGB as Putin and most other members of his government; the only exemption is Putin’s press secretary “president” Medvedev whose life expectancy can drop drastically with the new “constitutional” arrangements stamped by Putin’s “parliament” a.k.a Duma, providing Medvedev’s successor (make a wild guess who that would be!) with powers unknown to the czars. President Putin, a son and grandson of Stalin's admirers (his grandfather was one of Stalin's cooks), whose professional life revolved around the infamous KGB where he was a career spy, has definitely made the restoration of Russia’s superpower status a priority, as he has stated on several occasions. Under President Putin’s leadership, any hopes for freedom and prosperity in Russia are being betrayed as he has effectively wiped out all voices of dissent, and established authoritarian rule in all spheres. He has raised toasts to Stalin, and in his Statement to the Federal Council he referred to the collapse of the USSR “as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” Putin is a typical problem profiteer – he thrives on problems whether real, imaginary, or fabricated. His attacks on the West and its allies in Eastern Europe provide him with an excuse to crack down on the freedom of speech, unleash unprecedented campaigns of racism and xenophobia, intimidate his political opponents, and increase the power of the state, as well as his own. Putin has taken advantage of the Western preoccupation with the war on terror, Iraq, and Afghanistan to distract world public opinion from the burning issue of freedom in Russia. Putin declared the West "colonialist" for its criticism of his autocracy. For Putin and his power structure based on the infamous KGB/FSB, it is more important to keep the monopoly on power rather than to improve relations with the West. When NATO and the EU opened their membership to former Soviet satellites, Moscow's ruling elite was scared that Russians would follow the path of the “colored revolutions” in Georgia and Ukraine. Thus, an ongoing intimidation campaign by the Kremlin controlled media opinion against Georgians, Ukrainians, Baltic nations, and Poles. Russian foreign policy remains anti-Western and anti-American. Putin sold advanced missiles to Syria, provides weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah, and military aircraft to Sudan, Myanmar, and Venezuela, while continuing to fuel the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea. Russian experts are servicing the largest Russian-built Bushehr nuclear reactor in Iran. Russian policy in the Middle East is based on weapons supplies and have spurred terrorism and armed conflicts. The amount and intensity of hatred by the Russian ruling elite toward individualism associated with the West is comparable only to that of the Islamic fundamentalists. Thus, it is not surprising to learn that Russian espionage activities in Western Europe and the United States tripled under Putin. Economic disaster facing Russia today is due to the absence of free, open and transparent markets, rather than falling oil prices which Putin & Co. are trying to jack up by heightening international tension. Return of government control over mass media and information is fundamentally at odds with the transparency that efficient markets require. Political and economic freedoms are two sides of one coin — you cannot have one without the other. It is clear that President Bush's efforts at personal diplomacy with Putin have not produced any visible results and have only been followed by further cynical curtailment of human rights in Russia and the policy of open thuggery and intimidation in the post-Soviet space. How willing will be President Obama to deal effectively with Putin’s threat to Ukraine, Baltic States, and Poland, and his mischief in the Middle East and almost everywhere else? Yuri Maltsev is professor of economics at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Before coming to the United States, Dr. Maltsev was a member of a senior team of Soviet economists that worked on President Gorbachev's reforms package of perestroika. Professor Maltsev has taught at the Luigi Bocconi University in Milan, Italy, Moscow State University, Russia, Lithuania International University in Klaipeda and Baltic Management Institute in Vilnius, Lithuania, University of Caen in Cherbourg, France and University of San Diego, California. He is on the advisory boards of Foundation for Economic Education in New York; Heartland Institute in Chicago; and the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. Author of this article: Yuri N. Maltsev It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier. - Robert A. Heinlein [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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