Putin issues sharp warning to US, vows to counter 'imperialism'

[Cheetah786]

MOSCOW (AFP) - President Vladimir Putin issued an acerbic warning Thursday to the United States, saying the recent test of a new Russian missile was a direct response to US actions and condemning "imperialism" in world affairs "Our American partners have quit the ABM Treaty," Putin told reporters after meeting his Greek counterpart, referring to the landmark 1972 US-Soviet treaty limiting the missile defenses of the Cold War superpower foes.

"We warned them then that we would come out with a response to maintain the strategic balance in the world. Yesterday we conducted a test of a new strategic ballistic missile with multiple warheads, and of a new cruise missile, and will continue to improve our resources."

The United States informed Russia in 2001 that it was exercising its option to withdraw unilaterally from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) pact. It has since stepped up controversial plans, fiercely opposed by Russia, to deploy a missile defence shield in eastern Europe.

Putin warned Wednesday that the US missile defense plan would turn Europe into a "powder keg" and he repeated on Thursday previous assertions that the planned deployments would ignite a new Cold War-style arms buildup.

"We are not the initiators of this new round of the arms race," Putin said.

The Russian president's comments came a week before he meets US President George W. Bush and other leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations at a summit in Germany.

He is also scheduled to hold one-on-one talks with Bush in the United States at the beginning of July.

In a thinly disguised attack on US foreign policy in recent years, Putin warned there had been attempts by actors -- he did not name any country or bloc explicitly -- in international affairs to impose their will on others.

"In our view, it is nothing other than diktat, than imperialism," the Russian leader stated.

"Problems have arisen because the world changed and there was an attempt to make it unipolar. There was a desire among several international actors to dictate their will to each and everyone and to act not in accordance with the norms of international life and law," Putin said.

He added: "This is very dangerous and unhealthy. The norms of international law have been altered for political expediency. What is this political expediency and who defines it?"

Tensions between Russia and the United States have risen dramatically in the past year amid sharpening differences over the US missile plans, the state of democracy in Russia and concerns over energy supplies.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice repeated on Wednesday the US assertion that the planned missile defense system in eastern Europe poses no threat to Russia and that Moscow's concern over it is "ludicrous."

Her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, countered at a meeting of G8 foreign ministers outside Berlin that "there is nothing ludicrous about this issue because the arms race is starting again."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070531/ts_afp/russiauspolitics_070531140349

 

[genmirajborgza786]

President Vladimir Putin zindabad!

 

[Bull]

Putin is in his last term...i think he wants go out all guns booming.

 

[niaz]

There is another reason for Russian resurgence. Russia went thru a very long period of economic dwonturn and was dependent on US for assistance. However Russia exports as much crude as Saudi Arabia. Doubling of the oil prices from late 2004 onwards has benefited Russian economy greatly. It is about time that Russia regains her status as another Super Power.

Bipolar world is never good. Hope that whoever comes after Putin adopts policies in the best national interest of Russia and we again have the stable era of three super powers, that is US, Russia and China.

 

[Cheetah786]

It almost seemed this rainy week in Paris, the City of Light, that the dramatic days of Cold War had returned.

On Tuesday, Russia launched with great fanfare a new RS-24 intercontinental ballistic missile that it claimed could penetrate any U.S. anti-missile defences. President Vladimir Putin warned the Bush Administration’s plans to deploy anti-missile radars and missiles in the Czech Republic and Poland would turn Europe into a “powder keg.”

Moscow accused the Bush administration of violating international law, following double standards, and being a violator of human rights.

This was pretty rich stuff coming from the crushers of Chechen human rights.

Washington fired back, accusing Putin of extinguishing democracy and free enterprise, condoning criminal activities, and, without blushing, “meddling” in the Mideast. To this writer, who harbours a certain nostalgia for the Cold War, it was all a welcome breath of hot air.
What’s really going on is that Russia is finally returning to being Russia, as this column has long predicted. Russia the lap dog is gone.

The Russian bear has awakened from a hibernation of two decades and is both hungry and ill-tempered.

In the 1980s, the reforming Mikhail Gorbachev sought to humanize and modernize the crumbling Soviet Union. Gorbachev ended his nation’s confrontation with the west and sought accommodation with Washington — far too much, claimed Russian critics. Gorbachev’s well-intentioned efforts failed, producing chaos, bankruptcy, and the U.S.S.R.’s collapse.

Boris Yeltsin, Gorbachev’s successor, allowed criminals and shady financers to plunder Russia. His shaky, cash-strapped government was propped up by billions in secret U.S. payments. Washington more or less managed to buy up Russia’s government. In an outrageous, shameful act, the Yeltsin Kremlin even sold the Pentagon the crown jewels of Russia’s military technology.

During this period of weakness and corruption, bankrupt Russia allowed the U.S. pretty much a free hand around the world, particularly in the Mideast. Russia’s defence spending plummeted. Washington hailed Moscow’s “co-operation.”

In 1999, the KGB, renamed FSB and SVR, staged a palace coup. Former FSB director Valdimir Putin became Russia’s new leader. Putin and his hard men set about re-nationalizing Russia’s industrial and resource assets, crushing the robber barons, and restoring Kremlin political control over the nation.

Windfall

Ironically, George Bush’s invasion of Iraq caused worldwide oil prices to surge, bringing Putin’s “new Russia” a huge financial windfall.

Russia, which exports more oil than Saudi Arabia, is flush with cash from its current oil, gas, and mineral bonanza. Canada is experiencing a similar happy phenomena.

Putin long made clear his desire to rebuild the Soviet Union — minus communism — and restore his nation as a world power. This means asserting Russia’s historic interests in Eastern Europe and the Mideast, using energy exports to advance foreign policy, and increasingly standing up to the United States.

There is nothing sinister about this development. The last 20 years of Russian history were an anomaly, and are over. Russia is off its knees and back on its feet. The days of Moscow’s unnatural accommodation with Washington are past.

The U.S. has become too used to Moscow as a vassal. Washington will now have to resume treating the Russians as a great power with legitimate international interests. The Bush administration’s contemptuous and dangerously reckless repudiation of arms control treaties with Moscow must be reversed.

The White House’s stupid, provocative plan to build anti-missile systems and open military bases in Eastern Europe should be cancelled.
Humiliating
Infuriating and humiliating Moscow in order to create a preposterous, technologically iffy anti-missile defences against missiles and warheads that Iran does not even possess is the latest arrogant folly of the Bush administration’s ideological crusaders.
The U.S. is going to have to eventually share some of its world power with a renascent Russia and surging China. Treating both great powers with dignity and respect is a good way to start.

http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Margolis_Eric/2007/06/03/4230565.html

 

[Bull]

There is another reason for Russian resurgence. Russia went thru a very long period of economic dwonturn and was dependent on US for assistance. However Russia exports as much crude as Saudi Arabia. Doubling of the oil prices from late 2004 onwards has benefited Russian economy greatly. It is about time that Russia regains her status as another Super Power.

Bipolar world is never good. Hope that whoever comes after Putin adopts policies in the best national interest of Russia and we again have the stable era of three super powers, that is US, Russia and China.

Isnt it gramatically wrong. We never had three super powers.

 

[Shabaz Sharif]

USA is at least 10 times ahead of Russia economically and military. So chances of Russia being super power again is very low.

 

[MirBadshah]

Shehz, give it a reading, may be you are able to change your mind.
..........................................................................................

Putin's objective: to control energy
By David Gaddis Smith
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
March 4, 2007

Russia is trying to use its oil wealth to become a superpower again, a former CIA deputy director says.

In a recent speech in San Diego, retired Adm. Bobby Inman said President Vladimir Putin seized control of the Yukos oil firm not just because its owner engaged in politics, but because Putin wanted the Russian state to control the energy industry.



Advertisement “I believe that Mr. Putin has concluded that there is a new path for Russia to again be a superpower. . . . It is for the state to control one of the world's largest supplies of oil,” Inman said.
He said Russia is reassembling “state control of all the energy production distribution processes” and seeking to own “the downstream facilities in the countries that are dependent on Russian foreign gas.”

Inman, 75, spoke as part of the Next Generation Project, hosted by the University of California San Diego's School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. The project concluded last weekend.

“The reality in the world that we live in is that the competition for available fossil fuels is growing far faster than the suppliers are being found,” Inman said.

Also speaking was Anne-Marie Slaughter, a Princeton dean, who some say could become secretary of state in a Democratic administration.

A recent national security project that she co-directed put the price of oil “at over $150 a barrel when U.S. defense spending dedicated to keep oil flowing is factored into the price.”

Oil was trading around $62 a barrel Friday.

Slaughter, dean of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and Princeton professor G. John Ikenberry were co-directors of the Princeton Project on U.S. National Security in the 21st Century.

She pushed for a more multilateral approach to the world and said the U.N. Security Council should be expanded. She also advocated the creation of a global “Concert of Democracies,” whose members would “commit to not attack one other” and “(to) uphold the institutions of liberal democracy.”

The “concert” could approve the use of force to counter world threats when institutions such as the United Nations do not act. It would include “new democratic partners like India, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico,” according to the Princeton project's blueprint.

Inman also spoke about Mexico and Brazil. He said he had been pleased and surprised with Mexican President Felipe Calderón's “immediately attacking crime and abductions,” although Inman said this was “high risk” because the military that Calderón is using to fight drug traffickers could be corrupted.

Inman said he had been worried about Brazilian President Luiz Inacio da Silva because of his leftist background. But, Inman said, “to my great amazement, he proceeded to do a better job of implementing his predecessor's economic policies than they had.”

The Next Generation Project, part of the American Assembly at Columbia University, is an effort to bring together people from across the country to generate ideas about the direction of U.S. foreign policy.

The project is headed by Francis J. Gavin of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, where Inman holds the Lyndon B. Johnson Centennial Chair.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20070304-9999-1n4inman.html

 

[Shehz]

Mir, surely you jest yaar.
See, I don't go into news too deep, as the spokesperson talking to media are seasoned technocrats, and know how to emphasize on what, and subdue the other. I have adapted to filter media releases, and do my own analysis.

US has so much untapped energy and oil reserves, not to forget Canada's unexplored resources.

What Putin is doing, is shooting arrows in the dark, nothing more.

Let's go back a little, The Bush-Putin Moscow treaty of 2002;
On May 13, 2002, President Bush proposed a treaty to cut U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals that he proclaimed would 'liquidate the legacy of the Cold War.' A closer look at the treaty shows that it is so riddled with loopholes that it actually would prolong the U.S.-Russian nuclear standoff for years to come, and encourage nuclear proliferation.

Bush's treaty reportedly only limits the number of nuclear warheads mounted on operational missiles and bombers 10 years from now, and only for one day -- December 31, 2012. Before and after that date, the number of deliverable nuclear warheads could exceed the treaty's maximum 'limit' of 2,200 'operational' warheads. Both countries would be free to keep thousands of 'reserve' warheads in storage, which could be remounted on delivery systems within weeks or months.

The treaty's lower limit of 1,700 warheads is entirely voluntary. It appears to have been added solely to permit the Bush White House to claim that its arms control initiative is bolder than the 2,000- to 2,500-warhead range that Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin agreed to at Helsinki in 1997 for the proposed START III treaty.

The treaty imposes no additional limits on either side's nuclear forces, and does not require the destruction of a single nuclear warhead, missile, silo, bomber or submarine. Moreover, the treaty does nothing to constrain or eliminate large stockpiles of nonstrategic, or tactical, nuclear weapons deliverable by shorter-range systems, such as cruise missiles, battlefield missiles, artillery, torpedoes and tactical aircraft. Russia has more that 8,000 tactical nuclear weapons, many at poorly secured military bases.

The treaty imposes no schedule for removing warheads from missiles, bombers or submarines. As mentioned above, the United States and Russia must comply with the 2,200-warhead limit on operational nuclear weapons only on the last day of 2012, after which the treaty expires. Until then, either side reportedly could give three months notice and withdraw from the treaty. This provision hardly seems necessary, given the lack of any provisions binding upon the parties in the interim. Finally, the treaty's lack of detailed binding limitations and inspection protocols will do nothing to dissuade other countries from concluding that they, too, must prepare to live in a nuclear-armed world for the indefinite future. In other words, it invites proliferation.

While attempting to take credit for 'liquidating' the legacy of the Cold War, President Bush is in fact ensuring that through 2012 the United States will retain more deployed strategic nuclear warheads than it had in 1956. That arsenal would have the explosive yield equivalent of 42,000 Hiroshima bombs.

 

[niaz]

Isnt it gramatically wrong. We never had three super powers.

China has been following policies to suit her best national interests and independent of Russian and US influence, for almost half a century. Even during pre Gorbachov era, China may not have been a super power, but she was definitely a very major regional player and challenging both US and Russian interests in the Far East, South Asia and Africa. After collapse the of Soviet Union, US emerged as the sole super power, but todate China has resissted US dictats and done whatever China considers suits her long term goals and vetoed US designs.

If we have a triad of US, Russia and China, we would have a far more stable world.

( English is still a foreign language and I beg forgiveness if at times I have difficulty in putting my point across with clarity).

 

[Officer of Engineers]

China has been following policies to suit her best national interests and independent of Russian and US influence, for almost half a century.

That is not even remotely true. China aligned (not allied but aligned) herself with the power that best suited her interests. First it was the USSR, then it was the US, and now halfway between Russia and the US. China has never taken the lead on any issue.

Even during pre Gorbachov era, China may not have been a super power, but she was definitely a very major regional player and challenging both US and Russian interests in the Far East, South Asia and Africa.

You joking me? Mao begged Nixon to visit China to sidetrack the Soviet attack.

After collapse the of Soviet Union, US emerged as the sole super power, but todate China has resissted US dictats and done whatever China considers suits her long term goals and vetoed US designs.

Hogwash! Walmart mean anything to you. The US gave China the money she needed to develop.

If we have a triad of US, Russia and China, we would have a far more stable world.

Never seen it from my side of the Fulda Gap.

 

[zraver]

China has been following policies to suit her best national interests and independent of Russian and US influence, for almost half a century. Even during pre Gorbachov era, China may not have been a super power, but she was definitely a very major regional player and challenging both US and Russian interests in the Far East, South Asia and Africa. After collapse the of Soviet Union, US emerged as the sole super power, but todate China has resissted US dictats and done whatever China considers suits her long term goals and vetoed US designs.

If we have a triad of US, Russia and China, we would have a far more stable world.

( English is still a foreign language and I beg forgiveness if at times I have difficulty in putting my point across with clarity).

Modern China has never been a super power, although she will reach that status shortly, and long before Russia does. Oil and gas alone will not keep Russia rich her committments and obligations internally and the wreckage of the Soviet collapse are simply to great for rapid recovery. China enjoys a modern high tech industrial economy, massive cash reserves and suprisingly to some the US's blessing.

The big threat to Wolrd peace is not the US, but the seemingly imminent US fall from grace. The signs are building that the US is headed for meltdown at least a short term one. The War in Iraq and Bush's domestic give aways have created a situation where the dollar hegemony is bound to fail. The US is now caught betwen a rock and a hard place. China, Japan, and Germany are propping up the US Dollar for now..... But how long that can last is debatable.

Into this mix steps Putin, and his macho-commie-cowboy routine saved America. Thanks Vald we owe ya one buddy........

All three countries (Ger,Jpn, PRC) need the US like a fish needs water and in the short term they will keep up thier tribute payments.But that was changing as the EU grew in power. Germany would normally be the first to drop out, but Russia keeps her toeing the US Linein trade for US military commitments. Germany and the EU without US legions nare at Russia's mercy. Thanks to Putin they will keep buying dollars.

Japan will never stop paying, she may deny the ghosts of her past- but anyone can hear them calling mourfully from China. Both Germany and Japan will keep propping the dollar as long as they face a signifigant threat.

The off country is China, in a weird twist she is headed for Super Power status beucase she pays tribute. China buys US dollars (which are worthless) in order to sell goods (that are nearly worthless) to American consumers (who have no sence of worth) in order to make sure that the CCP (which values only itself) stays in power by providing the Chinese people with jobs.

How long this lasts depends on a single Island. Taiwan is the one place in the world that could cause a cascading failure of Pax Americana, and also kill off the Chinese economic miralce at the same time. No two countries at any time in history have been so thourghly dependant on each other for each others continued survival. And neither really has a way out. Euopre can't buy enough goods to sate China's factories, and although in a pinch Asia can buy more dollars it is not a long term solution. India offers the best new market for America but it is decades away from being a Chinese replacement and will never be able to buy dollars fast enough to prop up the US economy.

here again Mr Putin has done the US a favor, he may see China as a possible foil vs the US. But evnetually the Russian Army and politicians are goign to demadn that he or his sucessor do something about the slow invasion of he reastern territories by China. And when China once again sees Russia as a threat she will be even more inclined to prop up US power to keep Russia focused west instead of east.

If Russia had played dead for 10 more years America would ahv elsot her ability to compete in a new Cold War. Thankfully for my country stupidity on the national stage isn't an exlcusively Bush trait.

 

[niaz]

Thanks Hon Zraver for a Vista into the way the world looks like when looked thru US eyes. Obviously non US citizens look at it in a different way. You do have a point; that nearly every major economy in the world is based upon "Dollar Reserves" . Japan and China and OPEC countries and also India owe the health of their economy to their export surplus to the US ( It is the IT/software in case of India).

However the world keeps changing and with the rise of BRIC nations world would be less dependent on the US market.

I have major disagreement on other points of your theory. Taiwan is no more than a pinprick compared to PRC. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, "Raison D'etre" of NATO has disappeared and Germans after unification are no longer in the danger of being run over by the Russians and therefore dont really need the presence of US troops. However their contribution goes a long way towards defraying expenses of the US forces worldwide.

I wish and hope that Russia reasserts its position as a world power. Collapse of Soviet Union had made a beggar of a great nation. Sooner she regains her her pre-eminent place, the better it would be for the world peace. I like US and would rather live there than in Russia or China; but it is hard to deny that sole super power status has gone to the US head. Unilateral action against Iraq and now threatening Iran are the prime examples. If it was not for the unending and unjust support of Israel by the US, we would have had peace in the Middle East a long time ago.

Anyway, only future will tell which way the 'Cookie Crumbles'.

 

[Bull]

( English is still a foreign language and I beg forgiveness if at times I have difficulty in putting my point across with clarity).

Please i wasnt mocking at you. English is a foreign language to me too.

 

[zraver]

Niaz, a couple of points

1- Iraq wasn't unilateral, more nations soigned on for OIF than did Desert Sheild/Storm

2- The US isn't acting unilaterally in Iran, the US has been taking a back seat to the EU on this issue.

3- Given Russia and Germany's history with each other the Tueton will always fear Russia, they have fought more wars than almsot any two other peoples on earth.

4- US support for Israel has stopped a second Holocaust, the Arabs were dead set on wiping Israel out, Arab politicians even said they were going to finish what Hitler started. Now after decades of defeat peace is finally close becuase the military option has failed for both sides and all that remains once both parties come to thier senses is to talk and make honest piece. In a sense US support has prevented the Arabs from disgracing Islam with a modern holocuast.