MOSCOW, Nov. 24, 2008
Russia's Medvedev's Tough Guy Act
CBS News: New Russian President Seems To Be Reviving Adversarial Relations With The U.S.
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Reviving The Cold War?
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has been working to extinguish his liberal image and, to some, revive memories of the Cold War, but what will this mean for the future of U.S./Russia relations? Alexei Kuznetsov reports.
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Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev gestures during a welcoming ceremony at the government palace in Lima, Peru, Nov. 24, 2008. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)
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Appearances can be deceiving. Six months ago, when Dmitry Medvedev was inaugurated as Russia’s new president, many hoped there would be a thaw in U.S.-Russia relations.
The soft-spoken lawyer has never worked for the KGB. His reputation as a liberal seemed to contrast sharply with his predecessor, Vladimir Putin.
However, for the past six months it seems that President Medvedev has been working hard to dismantle his liberal image and revive memories of the Cold War.
Putin had a reputation for being tough, but it was under Medvedev that Russia used excessive force against Georgia, occupying part of its territory and crushing its military. Medvedev then defied world opinion by accusing the United States of instigating the war and by recognizing the independence of Georgia's two separatist regions.
The Cold War rhetoric continued with the Kremlin blaming the United States for the global financial crisis.
"Russia has warned many times of the potentially negative situation that had built up in the American financial system, and that has now transformed into a full-scale international financial crisis," Medvedev said.
Moscow has pursued close ties with countries like Venezuela and has even sent warships to the Caribbean for joint naval exercises.
The latest from President Medvedev is a threat to deploy missiles on the border with Poland as a response to the U.S. missile-defense program in eastern Europe. It is the first time in decades that Russia's leader has officially announced his readiness to target a NATO country with tactical weapons.
"The Iskander missile system will be deployed in the Kaliningrad region in order to neutralize, if necessary, the missile defense system," he said.
Medvedev's ultimatum was widely acclaimed, not only behind Kremlin walls, but also in the streets. Many Russians see this as an opportunity for the country to expand its military influence over Europe.
"It gives Russia a perfect pretext to deploy its missiles in Kaliningrad, so that we could blanket Europe if need be," said one Russian.
Russia’s parliament also fully supports the president on this issue.
"You need two to dance a tango," said Konstantin Kosachyov, Chairman of the International Affairs Committee in the Russian Parliament. "And in case the other side continues to be assertive - we have no space to be more liberal, more cooperative. We have to protect our national interests."
Iskander missiles have a declared range of only 175 miles, but Russian top brass insist that the range could be extended in order to strike the proposed radar installation in the Czech Republic.
Medvedev’s message was delivered just hours after Barack Obama was elected - an unmistakable signal to the incoming U.S. administration.
The two leaders are certain to discuss the possibility of a new arms race when they have their first meeting. Whether or not Obama decides to go ahead with missile defense in Europe, the outcome of the summit will set the tone for the next chapter in U.S.-Russian relations.
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See all 308 CommentsSearingTruth
A Future of the Brave
However, for the past six months, it seems that President Medvedev has been working hard to dismantle his liberal image and to revive memories of the Cold War.
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Medvedev is nothing but a puppet for Putin. If he is speaking, it is Putin putting the words in his mouth. And no one should be surprised by Putin, you know the "good guy" so proclaimed by Bush looking into his soul.
Medvedev would have to be dead to not see the threat, and you can expect him to act on it. This is more Bush ''unintended consequences'', like Iraq and the national debt. Bush is a Cat 5 catastrophy, not just to America but to the world at large. He clearly is hoping to jumpstart Armageddon. I hope, after he leaves office, the American people ask him to leave the country. He''s not a true American.
Wow, this is a propoganda piece, pure and simple.
By modern standards, Russia used excessive restraint.
They didn''t go to the country and occupy it for years, a-la Iraq.
And the war was started by the U.S. regime in Georgia, not by Russia.
It''s a real eye opener, having followed this story from the beginning to see how the U.S. media just keeps repeating stories over and over, trying to make them into truths.
I''ve never been so ashamed of my country, as I am now, to see how much we lie about things.
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Posted by AJMarine111 at 01:44 AM
No. Obama is just going to throw nuclear weapons at them and wait for a nuclear winter. Won''t you be happy then?
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Posted by DeckardBR at 12:52 AM :
Yawn. How did you guys ever afford a computer? You''re not intelligent enough to put water in ice trays.
No. Obama is just going to throw nuclear weapons at them and wait for a nuclear winter. Won''''t you be happy then?
Posted by frankfurt200 at 01:47 AM : Nov 25, 2008
I wish he would tell Russia and China that they can be the World''s Super Powers now and they can take care of things. We are going on vacation.
What we wanted was a peaceful world full of democracies,Peace and lasting values of healthy free trade and human rights to all world citizens.
Yet what i deduce above are insunuations of war.
Take it from me we have entered an era of constructive international diplomacy.
Obama will not shy away to tell Putin the Prefect of Moscow that Russia is not democratic enough.
He will not deceive former soviet republics that Russia has no influencein the region.
He will not urge or engage in activities that will lead to war.
Without a single bullet been fired, we hope we will also live to see a free Russia that will be the apple of the worlds eye just as the US is today.
The US is not a superpower because it seats on a reservoir of nuclear arsenal or just because it is the worlds economic hub. It is because of the fundaments of good governance, equality, human rights and free trade that it displays.
Please contribute as American citizens not biased and egoistic individuals who only seek the domineering side of the US.
You dont seek dominance, you earn it.
No love lost thanks for this window of opportunity.
Hold on a minute CBS, and Alexsei Kuznetsov, the US declares intent to put missiles at their back door, and you say that it is the Russians who are reviving adversarial relations?
"White" people seem to have a cognitive dissociative disorder, ignoring your own wrongs, while castigating those who respond in defense to those wrongs, like calling Native Americans who tried to defend themselves on their own land against genocide "savages", Asians who did the same "Charlie", Iraqis become "terrorists", or "Black" people who struggled for their right to be regarded as full US citizens "militants".
Of course it doesn''t occur to you that people might actually not accept being slaughtered, or having their resources stolen, or being the victims of ethnic intolerance, for your own personal agendas.
Go back, take a remedial course in world history, and try this story again, this paper would get a failing grade, as it is.
Which is just fine with some Russians, content to give Putin a third term if Medvedev would not serve as the equivalent.
Clearly, a jingo nationalism is not confined to Bush-- Russians are just as eager as any "morale-challenged" Weimar Germans to assert their national paranoia.
More worrisome is Russia has no working system of checks and balances comparable to those which (barely) constrained Bush and his minions. What Putin wants, Putin gets-- all in the autocratic manner which apparently endears him to many Russians.
"White" people seem to have a cognitive dissociative disorder... "
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Racial stereotypes do not become you, of all people. Remember, "white people" also had a major role in the first effectively color-blind presidential election in this country. Even Obama''s opponents were forced to use political code, rather than openly express racism, because other whites were among those who overwhelmingly rejected such discourse.
In any case, this news is not about racism, but about jingo nationalism-- this time, in Russia. The Germans had their shot, the English theirs, the French theirs, and so it goes. Albania is surely next.
Jingo nationalism is not a racial cognitive disorder, but demagoguery, and certainly well-represented among most national groups. Recall the racist rhetoric of imperial Japan''s "Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere".
The resolution of the crisis will come when the US, Russia and the EU began to discuss with earnest intent what is "defensive" and "offensive" weaponry. The current understanding of an anti-missile missile does not target anything but another missile. But after that, the issue becomes quite complex.
Whatever happened to your objectivity and belief in publishing truth and facts? Oh yeah. All remnants of that disappeared with the "Great Embedded Journalists Decree"...
Your point is taken, however I refer only in this instance to the well documented history of demonizing a not yet existent "enemy", that usually are the precursors to their becoming an actual adversary.
Throughout our history the use of demagoguery has included as a basis any means of differentiating "them" from "us". In this case it certainly is not ethnically based, but is identical in every other respect to that which has in the past been predicated on ethnicity.
It is why a large number of 30+ year old "Black" Americans didn''t believe the Bush warmongering against Muslims, we had heard all of those same lies directed against us, we recognized a familiar pattern, we were always the ambiguous "threat", we were always the "bad guys", and there was not a peep of recognition that what we protested actually existed, or if it did, that it was proper that it should be so. I am sure you have seen even posters here who posit that racism is something from "way back when", refusing to admit to its continued existence, hence the "code words" used in the campaign.
You are right of course, in correcting me if I said that it was a racial problem, but what I meant to say was that we who have been the victims of it because of racism know BS when we see it, and in this case, US actions against Russian security cannot be dismissed as "them" threatening "us", it is in fact the other way around.
Your, and my understanding of "an anti-missile missile" does indeed fit your description, but how can we expect anyone in the world to believe that it will only be used for this purpose, especially after the lies that caused almost every modern war from Vietnam to Iraq?
I personally don''t trust such promises from people who have as long a history of deceit, abrogation, corruption, and greed as those who have governed this country have.
But then again, I still wonder how, while knowing that stock ratings agencies rate for pay, after Enron, WorldCom, Countrywide, the S and L theft, Paulson and so many others, anyone still trusts the stock market, but I guess that''s just my nature.
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Posted by Neo269 at 04:59 AM : Nov 25, 2008
Look, this is a serious development. No time for fools nor idiots, which you must be both. You have never served in the Armed Forces I bet. Sit home and yell from the safety of you little home while others fight your battles. Am I righ? Like the little Cuban population in Miami.
Now, if was BUSH who said, "I looked into the mans soul" and all that b.s. Then the BUSHs invited PUTIN to their "Dacha" in Crawford with BUSH senior leading the group to close ties. IT DIDNT WORK! He laughed at the BUSHes continuously. Then after attacking Georgia, he PUTIN sat RIGHT NEXT to BUSH at the Olympics in China and PISSED in his face. OVER and OVER again PUTIN read BUSH as MOST READ NEOCONs, a bunch of scared,weak and phony men. GIRLY MEN! COWARDS!
PUTIN has yet to face OBAMA or his team. Intellect will decide this outcome. Not PUFFED up chest and a lot of smoke. INTELLECT! If we had that before, we would have NEVER GONE to IRAQ and we would be in a very powerful POSITION to thrawt PUTINs PLANS.
The Soviets are DEAD and GONE, and Russia is essentially UN-IMPORTANT in a military sense in this hemisphere.
Go ahead and sabre-rattle, you TWITS. Then REMEMBER that you CANT SEE the Stealth fighter, the stealth bomber, new Joint Strike Fighter, NOR the latest class of nuclear submarines which will ANNIHILATE you while you sleep...
This was classic Bushisms.
Americans not knowing ANYTHING about the world around them was not a big problem in the 80s and back but in the year 2000 and ahead, it is ABSOLUTELY CRAZY AND UNACCEPTABLE!
We got TOO PISSY DRUNK and patted our backs after the collapse of the USSR that we got too carried away. And we stretched ourselves way too thin. First with IRAQ, then with the MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD and finally with our internal ECONOMICS of GREED!
Russia was able to make a comeback. How? Our overstreched military and broke financial system!
Now, the Russians are not ONLY threating U.S.A. but Europe as well, with its growing control over ENERGY!
We need to RESTRICT Russian citizens from travel to THE US and EU and put pressure on this regime. Right now? No, but in the next year, yes.
And as far as the MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM is concerned, it is not against IRAN or North Korea. It is a system designed to be used AGAINST a possible conflict projected with the CHINISE in between the years 2020-2030. We have exercises, with real actors like ex-sec tresury Rubbin, for that eventuality.
Americans not knowing ANYTHING about the world around them was not a big problem in the 80s and back but in the year 2000 and ahead, it is ABSOLUTELY CRAZY AND UNACCEPTABLE!
We got TOO PISSY DRUNK and patted our backs after the collapse of the USSR that we got too carried away. And we stretched ourselves way too thin. First with IRAQ, then with the MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD and finally with our internal ECONOMICS of GREED!
Russia was able to make a comeback. How? Our overstreched military and broke financial system!
Now, the Russians are not ONLY threating U.S.A. but Europe as well, with its growing control over ENERGY!
We need to RESTRICT Russian citizens from travel to THE US and EU and put pressure on this regime. Right now? No, but in the next year, yes.
And as far as the MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM is concerned, it is not against IRAN or North Korea. It is a system designed to be used AGAINST a possible conflict projected with the CHINISE in between the years 2020-2030. We have exercises, with real actors like ex-sec tresury Rubbin, for that eventuality.
As 2009 goes on, I hope we get the President we all think we voted for and not a celebrity image concocted by a well funded campaign team that was throwing huge amounts of money to CBS and other media.
Change we can beleive in?
Posted by jedi23231 at 06:29 AM : Nov 25, 2008
I heard that they are going to help the Cubians drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
Posted by jedi23231
yeah, but we''d have a balanced budget....
I herd something like that too. I know that China is already drilling off our coast where we aren''''t allowed to becasue of the wacko green crowd
Posted by jedi23231 at 06:36 AM : Nov 25, 2008
I go to Key West on occasion. It is closer to Havana than Miami.
I wonder what those people will be thinking when they see oil rigs with Cubain flags flying from them and we can''t drill.
This Russian idiot is making a fool out of himself, just like the rest of the violent world leaders. What do they hope to gain, power for their own stupid position?
Maybe you could tell me the other 2nd year Senator who was white that has been president in the last 100 years
Posted by jedi23231 at 06:48 AM
Obama isn''t black. Never has been, never will be. He is half-white, a person of mixed race, but not black by any standards. He played a pretend race card so he could win. Ever seen pics of him with his mother? Yeah, she''s real black isn''t she *eyeroll*
Posted by promaclaura at 07:10 AM
promaclaura = Delusional Denial Syndrome
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Posted by formrusmcsgt at 07:11 AM : Nov 25, 2008
Bologna, Bush played nice with Putin. There isn''t even a missile defense shield up and Russia is already down in Venezuela playing war games today and promising Hugo a nuclear program (just like Iran). So stop projecting that Bush has the kind of power to motivate these Russian idiots, they have their own agenda and Bush doesn''t matter to them.
Posted by promaclaura at 07:10 AM
promaclaura = Delusional Denial Syndrome
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Posted by earache4 at 07:16 AM : Nov 25, 2008
You really need to get a grip, ALL of your thoughts revolve around Bush (and your posts, another article this am also contains BDS), this gives him soooo much power over you. If you hate him so much, stop posting about him constantly, and open your mind that has closed like a steel trap. Time to move on.
Bush is still in a position where he can do damage. He''s already bankrupt America and killed over 4000 American soldiers in an illegal war. I agree with the poster who said take the pen out of his hand. Give him a shiny object to play with for a couple more months...
Bush is still in a position where he can do damage. He''''s already bankrupt America and killed over 4000 American soldiers in an illegal war. I agree with the poster who said take the pen out of his hand. Give him a shiny object to play with for a couple more months...
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Posted by earache4 at 07:26 AM : Nov 25, 2008
Once again, get a grip and drop the BDS. My a$$ he bankrupt America, the mortgage crisis started the roll downhill and we all know that''s a democrat baby called Fannie/Freddie. Frank and Dodd should be held accountable and Wall Street for buying bad paper. Also, Clinton cut our military to nothing to balance the budget, we had to rebuild our military and fight the war on terror. Something Clinton should have been doing instead of sharing maneuvers with interns under his desk.
Wrong again. Lending deregulation was the GOP''s baby, and Bush signed it without question.
Once again, if Bush couldn''t fix the mess left by Clinton in EIGHT years, it doesn''t speak very well for Bush either.
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Posted by promaclaura
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Exactly,So when Bush sticks his nose in there russia sees this as meddling in their affairs and that it is none of our business and you get what we have today,the threat of another cold war.
But This is not the only reason for this. They blame us for the world economic downturn also and this so called defense sheild was a big propagator to the strained relations.
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Posted by demswin08 at 07:33 AM : Nov 25, 2008
Georgia is a little nation with a pipeline. We shouldn''t have to worry about what Russia thinks of us dealing with a country that wants us there. Just like we can''t do squat about their current war games being conducted in Venezuela, which by the way is a much more dangerous country than little Georgia. What, are we supposed to say, "OK Russia, we''ll be good little boys and girls and do what you want to keep you happy"? Russia could care less about how much we kowtow to them, their agenda IS aggressive, and it will keep escalating no matter how sweet Barack is to them.
Since the left wing mjority of the dem party are stuck in the 60''s can we say "s*x, drugs & rock and roll".
Maybe queen nance should get the intersections of Haight/Ashbury in San Francisco back to it''s original glory.
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