Word: russiaã
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...former nemesis. A recent comment made by President Dmitry Medvedev is characteristic of his country’s current attitudes: he states that Russia is not afraid of “the prospect of a new Cold War.” This remark comes in the context of Russia??s recent conflict with Georgia and its threats to bomb proposed U.S. missile sites in Poland. These sites, which would be part of a missile defense system that the U.S. plans to install in Poland and the Czech Republic, would defend Europe against a possible threat from...
...only after the Georgian offensive that Russia intervened. And while Russia??s response was disproportionate, one would be hard pressed to argue that Georgia did not know that their actions would provoke a Russian reaction. As James Traub wrote in The New York Times, Georgia’s Columbia-educated, Western-backed president Mikheil Saakashvili “has played a dangerous game of baiting the Russian bear.” It seems that Mr. Saakashvilli not only may have led his now devastated country into an avoidable war, but also sparked a shift in American political discourse...
...This is not to say that Russia hasn’t acted aggressively to reassert itself as the dominant regional power. In 2006, to cite just one example, Gazprom, Russia??s state-controlled gas conglomerate, cut off supplies to Ukraine to influence domestic Ukrainian politics. But Russia??s actions toward Georgia in August cannot be viewed in a simplistic framework of unilateral Russian bullying...
...embittered examination of the relationship between Russians and Jews—the very dichotomy of its premise reeks of an archaic racial chauvinism. His invectives against the spiritual emptiness of western culture, which he pitted against the fabled purity of the Russian soul, are familiar bromides of Russia??s national mythology, but they barely concealed his contempt for the “atheistic” values of liberal democracy and human rights. As an intransigent Slavic nationalist, he failed to see the roots of Bolshevik violence in the repressive habits of his beloved prelapsarian Romanov Russia...
...political system that no longer has relevance, to the point that it is “harmful and counterproductive.” The antagonism between Russia and NATO also hurts countries like Ukraine and Georgia, whose attempts to reach out to the West have been largely stifled by Russia??s opposition to what it views as the eastward expansion of NATO. NATO has made positive progress in Europe, but it can now be replaced with an organization that does not include the U.S. The EU does not have the same associations with Cold War animosity that NATO does...