Word: westernness
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...Western cultural references affect your stories? Seth Satterlee New Orleans When I write that my character is cooking spaghetti for lunch, some Western readers say it's strange: "Why is a Japanese guy cooking spaghetti for lunch?" And when a character listens to Radiohead while driving, some people will say he's too Westernized. But that's natural...
...weekend war in Georgia at the beginning of August is leading, as it should, to a discussion about the future of the relationships between Russia, its neighbors, and the Western powers. More than any recent event in international affairs that I can recall, the war has also provoked an intense debate about the past. Russia's insistence that it has national interests to protect, and that it is willing to resort to the brutal use of force to protect them, has reopened old arguments about the way the West behaved in the years following the end of the Cold...
...Soviet Union collapsed, recall, NATO membership was extended to the East European satellite states of the Soviet Union and to the three former Soviet republics on the Baltic. In 1999, NATO, ignoring Russian objections, went to war with Russia's ally Serbia over Kosovo. Just this year, most Western powers recognized Kosovo's independence, and - while the issue remains unresolved - at the very least considered eventual NATO membership for another two former Soviet republics, Georgia and Ukraine. So the question becomes: Has the West needlessly provoked Russia for more than a decade? Is it somehow to blame for the misery...
...There may be a kernel of truth to both sides. Saakashvili may have thought that his forces could stamp out the South Ossetian defense force in one swift strike without provoking a Russian response; indeed, a mistaken belief that Western allies could intervene diplomatically to restrain Russia might have encouraged him in that calculation. For its part, Russia could well have sought to provoke Georgia into such a response (by urging the South Ossetians to step up attacks on Georgian positions) in order to provide them with a pretext to invade...
...Georgia miscalculated, but so did we all," one Western diplomat in the region said. None of this speaks to the overwhelming force that Russia used after it launched its invasion and the deliberate flouting of international opinion that Moscow has displayed since. The conflict is not over yet, and there is plenty of blame to go around. But when it comes to assigning responsibility, there's no strong case for the U.S. being the first address...