Katrina vanden Heuvel: Destabilizing Europe

[marmar]

from The Nation:



BLOG | Posted 10/29/2007 @ 10:38pm
Destabilizing Europe



If you want to know how stupid Bush's decision to push ahead with building a missile defense system in Eastern Europe really is, check out what Vladimir Putin said last week--comparing the US proposed missile shield to the Cuban missile crisis of the 1960s. Barely reported in the US media, the Russian President told reporters at a press conference at the end of a Russian-European Union Summit in Portugal that "Analogous actions by the Soviet Union, when it deployed missiles in Cuba, prompted the 'Caribbean crisis."

Though he doesn't mention Putin's remarks, Joseph Cirincione--an expert on National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress--provides cogent evidence against the Administration's allegation that an American radar in the Czech republic would not threaten Russia's nuclear posture, and he presents some excellent policy proposals that and sane Presidential candidate should consider seriously.

The longest article about the many eminent scientists who believe that Russia's fear of missile defense in the Czech Republic and Poland is well-founded is an AP story by Desmond Butler. I read Butler's article in The Moscow News, #39, October 5/11, 2007--an English-language paper published in Moscow. Whether or not it was published widely in the US I do not know, though it's sort of alarming that I had to read this important story in a newspaper published in Russia.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?bid=7&pid=246931

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

1. It's silly to deny the administration's proposal is anything other than threatening to Russia.

Clearly, the U.S. is behaving as a global force rather than engaging in the power-sharing scheme which helped to keep peace. Well, this administration clearly believes itself justified in taking on the role of a world-wide force. Incredibly, it also believed none of the nations of the world would reject such a role.

[tom_paine]

2. If America was still a Free Nation, I would have less problem with this.

But it is, like Russia, a BushPutinist State and what we are seeing here is kind of an intramural dust up between very similar tyrants.

Hard to decide which lying murderous tyrant to believe, eh?

[moondust]

3. Transparent.

When did Bushco become so concerned about protecting Europe? Ha! It's just an excuse for expansionism. Hard-line cold war Republicans have dreamt of planting themselves on Russia's doorstep for decades as they'll never trust the former commies. And they want to Americanize "New Europe" and drive a wedge between it and Russia. Putin's no dummy.