[Scape]

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Quote:

By Oleg Shchedrov - Analysis

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A keen sense the West cheated Moscow out of promised warmer ties after the Cold War explains why Russia, recovered from post-Soviet collapse, has refused to be cowed over Georgia and demanded its views be heard.

"It could have been Georgia or something else, but some kind of 'last straw' was waiting to come along," one Kremlin official commented.

"We cannot endlessly retreat with a smiling face."

Russia's military response to Georgia's bid to retake its Moscow-backed breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and their subsequent recognition by Moscow, has fuelled Western speculation of a reborn Soviet empire striking back.

But things look totally different from Moscow, frustrated at what it sees as the West's failure to put their relations on an equal footing and its attempts to encircle Russia with a new "cordon sanitaire".

The bitterness dates back to 1990, when reformist Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, keen to launch a new age in ties with the West, agreed to pull out troops from East Germany and give the green light to German unification.

Russia says NATO reneged on a crucial promise.

"Moscow's only condition was that NATO did not station troops in East Germany," a top Russian diplomat who took part in talks said. "The promise was given, but soon forgotten."

Some NATO officials challenge this, saying no such undertaking was given.

In the ensuing years relations with the West were further strained by NATO giving membership to Moscow's Soviet-era satellites in Eastern Europe as well as to the ex-Soviet Baltic republics -- Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.

Poland and the Baltic states have since become vociferous critics of Russia within the U.S.-led alliance.

In 1999 Russia protested in vain against NATO's bombings of Belgrade in a military campaign which ultimately led to the West recognizing the independence of Serbia's breakaway province of Kosovo earlier this year.

"We cannot base our actions on the opinion of a state whose budget falls within the statistical error of the U.S. budget," a senior U.S. diplomat in Moscow told reporters at the time.

Top Russian officials have complained that Moscow's cooperation with the West on key international issues like the fight against terrorism, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea have failed to translate into a qualitative change in relations.

"There is a feeling that the West treats Russia merely as a loser in the Cold War, which has to play by the winners' rules," Vladimir Putin, Russia's president for eight years until this May, once told reporters.

NEW REALITIES

In the 1990s, when Russia's economy was in ruins, Moscow hid its pride. But in the last eight years an economic boom has allowed a resurgent Russia to play a more assertive role in the global economy and international diplomacy.

Russia, a vital energy supplier for Europe and a lucrative investment location, decided it had sufficient levers and resources to speak in a different tone of voice.

The West failed to notice the change.

Putin and his successor Dmitry Medvedev have urged the West to treat Russia as an equal partner in a broader European context and review security arrangements that take account of its interests.

But Russian protests were waved aside again, Moscow says, when Washington decided to station elements of its missile defence system in Eastern Europe.

The move was seen by Moscow as a direct threat to its security despite U.S. insistence that the project is design to repel any potential attack by Iran and represents neither a political nor military threat to Russia.

The United States has also pushed heavily for NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine -- something anathema to Russia because of its deep historical ties with these countries with whom it shares direct borders.

Russia has sent many signals that its patience was running out but the West dismissed as a rhetoric a tough speech by Putin in Munich in 2007.

Similarly, the West failed to react to other warning shots by Moscow, such as resuming flights by its strategic bombers over the Atlantic and the freezing of Russia's obligations under a key pact limiting conventional arms in Europe.

Russia's intervention in Georgia has clear signaled that Moscow has finally drawn a red line.

"The 'entente cordiale' did not work," Russia's NATO ambassador Dmitry Rogozin has said, referring to accords between Britain and France signed in the early 20th century that put a line under centuries of hostility and conflict.

"Relations should now be pragmatic," he said.

"The good performance of our army in Ossetia has already impressed our partners," he added. "We should do everything to uphold this impression and end once and forever any temptation by our partners to resolve any problems by force.."

[BartSimpson]

I understand the Russians getting tweaked about the West stealing Kosovo away from the Serbs. It was not something we should have been involved in and the payback for Kosovo was Georgia.

[DerbyX]

The west is dead wrong in Iraq, dead wrong in Afghanistan and lo and behold the Russians (who at least had a legitamite argument for their Afghanistan) are very much justified in Georgia.

Who would ever have guessed that bush would reverse the entire cold war perspective with one disaterous blunder after another.

[Scape]

BartSimpson wrote:

I understand the Russians getting tweaked about the West stealing Kosovo away from the Serbs. It was not something we should have been involved in and the payback for Kosovo was Georgia.

Just Kosovo? I think Russia has a litany of issues and 1992 is almost a generation ago now. You can't treat Russia like some loser nation that has to play by the winners rules and not expect blow back. Clinton had nothing to do with that, that was on Rices/Powells watch.

[DerbyX]

Scape wrote:

BartSimpson wrote:

I understand the Russians getting tweaked about the West stealing Kosovo away from the Serbs. It was not something we should have been involved in and the payback for Kosovo was Georgia.

Just Kosovo? I think Russia has a litany of issues and 1992 is almost a generation ago now. You can't treat Russia like some loser nation that has to play by the winners rules and not expect blow back. Clinton had nothing to do with that, that was on Rices/Powells watch.

Russia's jealousy began in 1972.

[BartSimpson]

Scape wrote:

BartSimpson wrote:

I understand the Russians getting tweaked about the West stealing Kosovo away from the Serbs. It was not something we should have been involved in and the payback for Kosovo was Georgia.

Just Kosovo? I think Russia has a litany of issues and 1992 is almost a generation ago now. You can't treat Russia like some loser nation that has to play by the winners rules and not expect blow back. Clinton had nothing to do with that, that was on Rices/Powells watch.

Read your own post. Kosovo was the tipping point for them. I'm not denying that they feel pissed on and for a lot of reasons (some of those reasons I support - but that's a different topic).

[BartSimpson]

DerbyX wrote:

Scape wrote:

BartSimpson wrote:

I understand the Russians getting tweaked about the West stealing Kosovo away from the Serbs. It was not something we should have been involved in and the payback for Kosovo was Georgia.

Just Kosovo? I think Russia has a litany of issues and 1992 is almost a generation ago now. You can't treat Russia like some loser nation that has to play by the winners rules and not expect blow back. Clinton had nothing to do with that, that was on Rices/Powells watch.

Russia's jealousy began in 1972.

Nope. Try 1918. The modern Russians still hold quite a grudge about the West intervening in their 1918 civil war and a lot of them see the fall of Communism and the Soviet Empire as the result of Western meddling. As if they had a right to an empire anyway.

[DerbyX]

BartSimpson wrote:

Nope. Try 1918. The modern Russians still hold quite a grudge about the West intervening in their 1918 civil war and a lot of them see the fall of Communism and the Soviet Empire as the result of Western meddling. As if they had a right to an empire anyway.

Do you need a hint about the date?

PS. Why did the west intervene in yet another affair that wasn't their affair.

[ShepherdsDog]

next, some numbnuts will be saying that the West had no right to intervene when Germany invaded Poland.

[DerbyX]

Next some sheepshit will tell us it was perfectly OK for Germany to invade Poland.

[BartSimpson]

DerbyX wrote:

Next some sheepshit will tell us it was perfectly OK for Russia to invade Georgia.

[Thanos]

Considering that the Cold War didn't end in a bloodbath with the loser rendered competely helpless, applying winner's justice and the accompanying foolish attitude towards Russia might not have been the most intelligent thing to do. Russians are a proud and strong people, whatever their Yeltsin-era problems might have shown otherwise. A simple reading or recent history would have been sufficient to show everyone that, but it's no surprise the way things are going these days that studying history isn't exactly popular anymore in the contemporary Western world.

[DerbyX]

BartSimpson wrote:

DerbyX wrote:

Next some sheepshit will tell us it was perfectly OK for Russia to invade Georgia.

Was it OK for Georgia to invade Ossettia?

It certainly wasn't right for us to invade Afghanistan or the US to invade Iraq.

How can bush possible decree that in the 21st century you can't invade a country and topple its govt (something russia didn't do) when he did just that in not one but 2 countries?

All Russia is doing is exactly what you yourself would support if it was, oh I don't know, a christian enclave breaking away from a muslim enclave that had broken away from some other country.

Georgia broke away and used military force to prevent an enclave breaking away from them. fair is fair. They are wrong. The west is wrong. Rissia is right.

Sorts makes sense that nobody should be invading anybody else eh?

[BartSimpson]

DerbyX wrote:

Was it OK for Georgia to invade Ossettia?

Actually, yes, it was. Ossetia is Georgian territory and Georgia has the right to assert sovereignty over it just the same as Yugoslavia (Serbia) had the right to assert sovereignty over Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo.

[DerbyX]

BartSimpson wrote:

DerbyX wrote:

Was it OK for Georgia to invade Ossettia?

Actually, yes, it was. Ossetia is Georgian territory and Georgia has the right to assert sovereignty over it just the same as Yugoslavia (Serbia) had the right to assert sovereignty over Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo.

A matter of opinion which many do not share.

I guess you are by default agreeing entirely with me that we had no right or justification to invade Iraq or Afghanistan.