Putin rails against US foreign policy

Putin rails against US foreign policy

By Stephen Fidler and Demetri Sevastopulo in Munich

Published: February 10 2007

Vladimir Putin threw down the gauntlet to the west in a confrontational speech on Saturday, attacking what he called “illegal” US unilateral military action and arguing it had made the world more dangerous.

In a speech that stunned most of the audience at an annual security conference held in Munich, Mr Putin also railed against US plans to build anti-missile defences in Europe, the expansion of Nato to include countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union, and a host of other western policies.

To an audience that included Robert Gates, US defence secretary, John McCain, US presidential contender, and a group of Washington lawmakers, Mr Putin declared the end of the unipolar world, which he described as a failure for the world and the US itself.

In a presumed reference mainly to the war in Iraq, Mr Putin said, “unilateral illegal actions have not resolved any single problem,” emphasising the many more people who had been killed as a result of US military action.

He added: “We don’t have enough force to resolve anything comprehensively.” He said that only the United Nations – not Nato or the European Union - could authorise the use of military force around the world, and even then it should be as a last resort.

Mr Putin also called into question a nuclear missile disarmament treaty that formed the bedrock of arms reduction efforts during the Cold War. He said he was concerned about the spread of medium range missiles around the world to countries such as North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and India.

In a worrying development for arms control advocates, he said that only the US and Russia had made commitments not to build such weapons – and said these commitments had to be revisited to ensure security.

Under the 1988 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty agreed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the US and Soviet Union agreed to eliminate and renounce nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500-5,500km.

The Russian president said the treaty was outdated because it prohibited the US and Russia from possessing such weapons while other countries were not restricted in developing them.

“We are forced to think about guarantees of our security,” Mr Putin said.

In 2005, Sergei Ivanov, the Russian defence minister and potential successor to Mr Putin, asked Donald Rumsfeld, then US defence minister, how the Bush administration would respond if Russia quit the INF treaty. US-based experts at the time were divided over whether he was representing the Kremlin, or just the views of the Russian defence ministry.

Mr Putin’s attacked Washington’s missile defence plans, which he suggested could trigger an arms race. “We can’t be happy with plans to deploy elements of anti-ballistic missile defences in Europe,” he said. He cast doubt on the justification for such defences in Europe, saying no “problem state” had missiles capable of reaching European soil.

The US has long said its missile defences were aimed not at major nuclear powers, such as Russia or China, but at “rogue” states with just a handful of missiles.

Speaking in Seville earlier this week, Mr Gates said the rudimentary US missile defence system was not aimed at Russia.

“We have made quite clear that it is not directed at them,” said Mr Gates. “In India, deputy prime minister [Ivanov] acknowledged that it posed no threat to Russia or its strategic interests.”

Asked whether Washington would be prepared to sign a binding agreement saying the system was not intended as a defence against Russia, Mr Gates responded: “I don’t know if that would be appropriate.”

Mr Putin said Russia’s decision to deploy new Topol M long range missiles in Russia were to ensure that Moscow’s nuclear deterrent remained potent in the face of more developed US missile defences.

“If you say that your ABM system is not directed at us, our missiles are not aimed at you,” he said.

He said militarisation of space could have unpredictable consequences for world security and was unacceptable. To deal with this, Russia had drafted a treaty to prevent the placing of weapons in space, which it would send to its international partners in the near future, he said.

He was critical of western countries for not ratifying a treaty signed in 1999 to reduce the number of conventional forces in Europe – and of US construction of so-called forward operating bases in Romania and Bulgaria.

Even in the investment field, Russia was discriminated against, he said. Foreign companies were responsible for the extraction of 26 per cent of Russian oil. But Russian companies faced obstacles when they wanted to invest abroad: the ratio of inward investment by foreign companies in Russia to outward investment by Russian companies abroad was 15:1.

In almost the only conciliatory remarks in his presentation, he described President George W. Bush as a “decent man”.

“One can do business with him…when I talk to him I assume Russia and the US will never be enemies and I agree with him.”

Mr Putin also provided a glimmer of hope that Russia might put more pressure on Iran to respond more positively to efforts by the International Atomic Energy Agency to force Iran to resolve the standoff over its controversial nuclear programme.

In his speech, Mr Putin said: “I don’t understand why Iran has not responded positively and constructively to these [nuclear] concerns and the proposals by [IAEA chief Mohamed] El Baradei that would address these concepts”.

The international community should provide incentives, he said, to show Iran that “cooperation is better than confrontation”.

John McCain, the influential Republican senator and potential candidate for the 2008 presidential race, hit back at Mr Putin’s suggestion that the US was operating unilaterally under the assumption that the end of the cold war had produced a uni-polar world.

“Today’s world is not unipolar,” Mr McCain said “The US did not single-handedly win the Cold War in some unilateral victory. The transatlantic alliance won the Cold War, and there are power centres on every continent today. Russian leaders’ apparent belief to the contrary raises a number of difficult questions.”

While criticising Mr Putin for making the “most aggressive remarks by a Russian leader since the end of the Cold War”, Mr McCain welcomed his comments on Iran as a “positive note”.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

This is the best article I could find, but you should definitely try and get your hands on the speech itself. It was epic! This speech is on par with state of the union addresses by your presidents, and some famous ones at the UN.

3 hurrahs for Putin for speaking up! We haven't had a guy with balls since Brezhnev.

It would be a shame if Putin was given some radiological poison.

Putin is pushing for a return to the old USSR. This is posturing. Though you have to wonder how many others near him will end up mysteriously dead.

No Putin is pointing out the US's problems. It's always easy to point out other's problems and it's a good way to distract attention from your own. There is no chance in hell the USSR will get back together. An economic union with heightened security, maybe, but nobody's going back to a socialist system.

Putin is much more the fascist than the communist. But for all that he'll still have problems excising the socialist disease that 70 some years of communism infected the people with. Even worse he'll have problems with people who have tasted freedom and aren't easily going to shut up when he tells them.

Putin will probably be whacked by the Russkie "mafia" if he puts any more crimp on their profits.
Russia is still run by gangs of thugs. Nothing has changed since the Czar as far as that goes

Russia has been called many different names and ruled by many different titles, but it is still a land of corrupt thugs who make a mockery of civilization.

Buzzy wrote:Putin is much more the fascist than the communist. But for all that he'll still have problems excising the socialist disease that 70 some years of communism infected the people with. Even worse he'll have problems with people who have tasted freedom and aren't easily going to shut up when he tells them.

why are you speaking in the future tense he already has problems with opposition.

Joahob wrote:Russia has been called many different names and ruled by many different titles, but it is still a land of corrupt thugs who make a mockery of civilization.

take that back, you can't say that just on the basis of our politics, we have one of the richest cultures in the world, civilization isn't just how you run a country, and we've had our share of good leaders over the years as well.

Popov wrote:

Joahob wrote:Russia has been called many different names and ruled by many different titles, but it is still a land of corrupt thugs who make a mockery of civilization.

take that back, you can't say that just on the basis of our politics, we have one of the richest cultures in the world, civilization isn't just how you run a country, and we've had our share of good leaders over the years as well.

No, the culture is corrupt. You've just been blessed with a few very talented artists.

iluvfreebeer wrote:

Popov wrote:

Joahob wrote:Russia has been called many different names and ruled by many different titles, but it is still a land of corrupt thugs who make a mockery of civilization.

take that back, you can't say that just on the basis of our politics, we have one of the richest cultures in the world, civilization isn't just how you run a country, and we've had our share of good leaders over the years as well.

No, the culture is corrupt. You've just been blessed with a few very talented artists.

yeah, i don't buy it, the city of St.Petersburg alone is basically one of the contemporary wonders of the world, with all of the architectural masterpieces that it contains.

Russian literature is one of the richest the world has to offer, both in poetry and prose- Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are prime examples but these are just a few great men in a sea of talent.

Our classical music is amongst the world's finest, with names like Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Balakirev, Borodin, Stravinksy, Prokofiev etc etc

Our balets and operas have toured the world, names like Bolshoi don't even need clarification.

Art - Kandinsky, Malevich, Chagall, and a handful of other avant garde artists are well known by all art connoisseurs. Rublev - one of, if not THE greatest icon painter (s) ever and a household name in the business. Fabergè... I don't even need to explain this name.

Heck let's even throw in traditional song and dance - another well known export, and figure skating for kicks.

And this is off the top of my head, there are few nations in the world who can boast anywhere near this amount of culture. France is a possibility, Italy if you account for all of their history, but that's about it. Great MEN come from all kinds of places, but great cultures as vast as ours are basically unique.

You're talking about Leningrad, right?
How amazing is Stalingrad?

Besides, you don't even live there. And almost never have.

iluvfreebeer wrote:You're talking about Leningrad, right?
How amazing is Stalingrad?

Besides, you don't even live there. And almost never have.

So ? What's your point ? I'm Russian by heritage, I'm defending my own culture, what's wrong with that? As for St. Petersburg I'm a native of the city and know it quite well from living there for several years and visiting once or twice a year when i was younger.

i finally got the joke
Stalingrad doesn't exist anymore, it's Volgograd now (related to the fact that they had to rebuild it from scratch after ww2) but nice one anyway

Popov wrote: As for St. Petersburg I'm a native of the city and know it quite well from living there for several years and visiting once or twice a year when i was younger.

That's like saying you're an expert at repairing Fords because you rode in a Rented Pinto in the 1970s.