"A lot of this has caught the Americans by surprise," says Sabine Freizer, director of the Europe Program at the International Crisis Group in Brussels. "Politicians have been on the project of supporting democracy in the former Soviet Union without thinking of the impact in Russia. Now we're seeing a reaction." Full Story »
Posted by Kaizar Campwala
This piece is one of the most deceptive I have seen, for coverage of the disaster in Georgia. Russia did not attack Georgia in order to discourage construction of further oil (or gas) pipelines. The Bush administration's foolish effort to build a useless ABM system in the Czech Republic and Poland was anything but a "high priority" apart from the neocons and the armaments manufacturers that would be involved (including their lobbyists and lawyers, etc.). Russia had made it more than clear that Georgian admission to NATO was not acceptable. Randy Scheunemann, John McCain's national security adviser, has a long career based on enlarging NATO by including former parts of the USSR, and former satellites. Scheunemann and McCain have been openly hostile to Russia and dismissive of legitimate security concerns voiced by Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders. I recommend Mikhail Gorbachev's excellent essay in the Washington Post for Aug. 12th.
