MOSCOW – President Barak Obama’s decision to abandon ballistic missile defense in Central Europe will encourage Iranian truculence and will not generate Russian good will or support for the US on Iran sanctions. This is the main take-home lesson from my meetings with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and President Dmitry Medvedev over the last week. It looks like President Obama will abandon ballistic missile deployment against Iran in Poland the Czech Republic, and adopt a different, sea-based system, which has limited application against the Iranian threat. …
MOSCOW – Is the Obama Administration, busy pushing the “reset button” with Russia is about to suffer a geopolitical setback in Ukraine? When talking to the security experts here, it sure looks like it. Ukraine is the key to making Russia an empire and, some here believe, a superpower once again. In the run up to Ukrainian presidential elections in January 2010, the Kremlin has been ratcheting up pressure on President Victor Yushchenko, which Moscow regularly vilifies as pro-American and anti-Russian. . Ties between the two countries have increasingly frayed …
MOSCOW – In meetings with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the leading Russian foreign policy experts one thing becomes blatantly clear: the Obama Administration did not receive any quid-pro-quo for significant concessions it provided to Russia as a part of its “reset button” policy. Since January of this year, the Obama Administration has resumed the START strategic arms talks, and is trying to complete them before the current nuclear weapons agreement expires on December 9th. It looks like it will abandon ballistic missile deployment against Iran …
In the current issue of Foreign Affairs, former-President Carter National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski has a piece titled “An Agenda for NATO: Toward a Global Security Web” that calls for a treaty between NATO and the Moscow-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) as well as a Joint NATO-Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) council. CSTO is a military bloc and includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The SCO consists of China, Russia and several Central Asian states, including Iran as a candidate member. Brzezinski’s proposal echoes then-Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov …
The Obama Administration is ignoring news reports that Russia is planning to sign a contract with Saudi Arabia, in which the Kingdom will receive over US $2 billion in Russian arms and military technology. Most likely, the contract will be signed by the end of this year. Traditionally, the arms market of the Persian Gulf has been the hunting reserve of the American and European defense industries, which both provide up to 90 percent of the weapon needs of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates. The current deal was facilitated …
The Obama Administration managed to open a wide gap with some of America’s most reliable allies, those of Central Europe. In the recent Open Letter to the Obama Administration from Central and Eastern Europe, some of the most magnificent freedom fighters of the region, including former presidents Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic and Lech Walesa of Poland, to mention just a few, have warned that the U.S. should not take their countries and peoples for granted. Authors of the Open Letter, the most pro-American politicians and intellectuals, are warning …
Leading Russian officials are loudly protesting the forthcoming NATO staff exercise in Georgia. The exercises do not involve any armed troops and are essentially a crisis management drill. Yet, as the Bard said, “the lady doth protest too much.” Since March 25, the Russian Federation has significantly increased its military presence in the occupied Georgian territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Moscow built up its forces, Georgia officials say, particularly in the areas adjacent to the troop separation lines in Abkhazia and Tskhinvali region. In parallel with this buildup, there …
Friday night, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had a dinner in Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss US-Russian relations. As a token, Secretary Clinton brought a yellow box with a button and the words “reset” on both sides in English and Russian. Apparently, the State Department got the Russian word for “reset” wrong and instead it said “overload”. This is highly symbolic, as incompetence and haste in foreign affairs are the enemies of wisdom, or as the Russian proverb goes, “Measure seven times before cutting”. …
?he upper house of the Russian parliament will most likely pass constitutional amendments tomorrow, November 26, (article in Russian) paving the way for Vladimir Putin to return to supreme power in the Kremlin President Dmitry Medvedev’s announcement last week that he may change the Russian Constitution to extend the presidential term to six years indicates that the process was orchestrated well in advance. The proposal gained immediate approval in the nation’s parliament and regional legislatures. If this happens, Putin would be in control of the country for up to 24 years: …
The end of on-the-air broadcasts of Voice of America couldn’t come at worse time: Russia is providing an utterly skewed and one-sided picture of the war in Georgia domestically, while the Internet has only 15% to 18% penetration, limited primarily to medium and large cities. Russia’s online audience is mostly young(er), urban and educated, which leaves many people in the aging country clueless as to what’s really going on. There are plenty of pro-government sites in the RU.net universe, many TV channels with plenty of Russian “patriotic” fare and entertainment, …
