Russia to Europe: Let’s have an anti-US alliance

posted at 9:20 am on October 11, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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Somehow, I doubt that Russia’s latest diplomatic project will gain much traction with its closest European neighbors, but it does at least expose the Russians as something other than allies to the US.  Dmitry Medvedev has called on France and other European nations to form an anti-American front.  Nicolas Sarkozy declined direct comment:

THE President of Russia has called on Europe’s leaders to create a new world order that would minimise the role of the United States.

Confident that a row with Europe prompted by Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August was over, Dmitry Medvedev arrived in the French spa town of Evian on Wednesday determined to woo his fellow leaders into creating an anti-US front. …

In a speech delivered to European leaders at a conference hosted by the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, to discuss the international financial crisis, Mr Medvedev sought to show that the US was at the root of all the world’s problems. He blamed Washington’s “economic egotism” for the world’s financial woes and then accused the Bush Administration of taking Europe to the brink of a new cold war by pursuing a deliberately divisive foreign policy.

He also maintained that the US was once again trying to return to a policy of containing Russia.

Small wonder.  Vladimir Putin has tried strongarming former Soviet republics into falling back into Moscow’s satellite system.  He attempted to interfere with elections in Ukraine, with some convinced that the Russians were behind the poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko, who then launched the Orange Revolution and pushed the pro-Moscow Viktor Yanukovych out of power.  The UK believes that the Russians assassinated former KGB agent and Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko, which Litvinenko himself said before he died of radiation poisoning from a dose of polonium.  The attack on Georgia only escalated Putin’s return to empire-building.

Medvedev wants an end to NATO.  Instead, he wants a new European security pact based on the “inadmissibility of the use of force”, which hardly sounds like a security pact at all.  In fact, in light of Russia’s attack on Georgia, it’s staggeringly hypocritical.  Russian forces invaded Georgia — they didn’t ask the West to pressure Georgia to stop attacking separatists who had attacked them, with Russian backing.  The newly militarized Russia wants Europe to end its century-long partnership with the US and disarm itself, and undoubtedly there are enough fools in western Europe that this proposal will get taken seriously — especially in France and Spain.

They should talk to Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Ukraine, Georgia, the Czechs, and others in the former Iron Curtain region.  They know and understand Russia better than anyone else in Europe, and they understand the nature of the beast Putin has created again in Moscow.  They have lived for centuries under the threat of Russian oppression as well as the reality of it, and they have no desire to experience the latter again.  Russia wants its empire back, and they want Europe as a doormat once again.

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