Горизонт 30/859

RUSSIAN DENVER / HORIZON
8
N30/859 от 08.12.2016 e-mail: info@gorizont.com Simply the best
would be less afraid of their former
imperial master and would
accordingly be better able to set
aside their past grievances to begin
new relationships with Moscow.
Since Yeltsin was instrumental
in achieving relatively peaceful
independence for the Baltic states
by refusing to allow Russian citizens
to participate in any military
action against them, some expected
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
to be especially grateful. Nevertheless,
all these arguments were
either incomplete, superficial or
just plain wrong.
It is true that the George H.
W. Bush administration did not
provide any formal guarantees
that NATO would not expand
further east. That was perfectly
appropriate since neither Gorbachev
nor Yeltsin asked for a
legally binding agreement. Nevertheless,
as their memoirs and
other documents make clear,
President Bush, James Baker and
Brent Scowcroft may not have
considered post-Communist
Russia to be a superpower, but
they did view it as a friendly
power. They intended to treat
Moscow with respect and dignity
and to work to provide it what
they saw as an appropriate place
in the new European security
architecture. This attitude discouraged
Gorbachev and Yeltsin
from insisting on legally binding
David Bromwich
IN THE early 1970s, Hillary
Clinton was a familiar face in the
left-liberal milieu she had cast
her lot with: a volunteer for the
Yale Law School watchdog committee
to monitor fairness in the
guarantees.
With this in mind, the Clinton
administration had every legal
right to proceed with NATO
expansion. What U.S. officials
had no right to do was to think
that they could move NATO’s
borders further and further east
without changing Russia’s perception
of the West from friend
to adversary. The first Bush administration
had no plans to expand
NATO and was hesitant to
involve the United States in the
emerging civil wars in the Balkans.
Clinton-era NATO interventions
in Bosnia (with Russia’s
reluctant consent) and Serbia
(without Russia’s consent or a
United Nations mandate) could
not but shape Moscow’s views.
The Iraq War and 2011 Libya
intervention cemented NATO’s
transformation in Russian eyes
from a nonthreatening organization
to a military alliance
prepared to act without a UN
endorsement and in disregard of
Russian perspectives around the
globe.
Irrespective of NATO, Russia
remained weak for some time,
without real allies or friends,
and eager to integrate itself into
a world order dominated by the
United States and Europe. Dmitri
Medvedev’s term as Russia’s
president was a last-gasp attempt
to realize this goal, but even with
Medvedev’s more amiable leadership,
NATO continued to dismiss
efforts like Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov’s proposal to negotiate
a European security treaty
without much debate. Many
interest exists, and infusing into
ВНИМАНИЮ one the enmities ВЛАДЕЛЬЦЕВ of the other, КРУПНЫХ,
betrays the former into a partici-
anti-Western militarism?
СРЕДНИХ И МАЛЫХ БИЗНЕСОВ!
pation in the quarrels and wars
of the latter without adequate inducement
or justification.» This
and mollifying them outweigh
the danger of provoking Russia’s
Many say that without
Ukraine Russia cannot be an empire.
This is true, to a point. Con-
Закаленный в победах доблестный отряд
should be «particularly alarming
славных to the вебмастеров truly enlightened and газеты independent
о начале patriot.» грандиозного строительства...
"Горизонт"
объявляет
единой русской
In the absence
электронной
of a serious for-общины Колорадо.
in the West feared that it could
versely, however, Russia’s elite
create anxiety among some new
and much of its public believes
members over NATO’s security
that Russia can never be secure
guarantees.
if Ukraine becomes a hostile nation
Yet if Russia was not a threat, eign-policy debate, few Americans
and particularly if it joins a
as Western leaders insisted it
understood what an ambi-
hostile alliance. Russian leaders
was not, why would avoiding the tious project Washington was have already seen how NATO’s
Baltic states’ anxiety be a higher undertaking in allowing NATO’s new members have changed the
priority than stabilizing U.S. and expansion and interventionism character of the alliance in its
European security relations with to proceed blindly until the alliance
dealings with Moscow. A NATO
Russia, a huge country with almost
had incorporated most of influenced by not only Poland
150 million people and a Europe. Yet looking at the last and the Baltic states, but also
massive nuclear arsenal? This two centuries of Europe’s history, Ukraine, may form an existential
is especially difficult to answer a nation or a group of nations
threat for Moscow. This in
when the Baltic states themselves
could not have felt particu-
Europe three times. Napoleon and NATO’s security in terrible
has
Интернет
only attempted
сайты
to dominate
ВСЕХ русских
turn would
бизнесов
place both Ukraine’s
larly threatened since only one Bonaparte, и частных World предпринимателей
War I’s victorious
на одном allies and гигантском the Third Reich портале. America should seek to avoid.
jeopardy–a development that
of them, Estonia, was prepared
to spend 2 percent of its GDP each tried and failed. Napoleon Relations between the two
on defense in line with NATO Все бизнесы and Hitler могут were defeated принять by a участие sides have в проекте deteriorated to dangerous
levels. It’s in the U.S.
guidelines. Latvia was spending countercoalition; the World
1.3 percent and Lithuania 0.8 percent,
all while pursuing polariz-
независимо tainable от security особенностей architecture других in ter видов relations рекламы. with Russia from a
War
СОВЕРШЕННО
I allies created an unsus-
БЕСПЛАТНО
national interest to explore beting
anti-Russian polemics. Europe that contributed to the position of strength, something
Both Bill Clinton and George rise of Nazism and World War that will require both patience
W. Bush ignored George Это Washington’s
II. Новогодний Moreover, while Westerners подарок and realism in acknowledging
famous warning in his may believe that NATO’s east-
that the effort may not succeed.
от газеты "Горизонт"
Farewell Address about the ward expansion has been peaceful
If Moscow refuses to oblige,
and
perils of permanent alliances:
Для этого
voluntary,
надо
Russians
занести
see
информацию
Washington should do whatever
is necessary to protect its
«Sympathy for the favorite nation,
facilitating the illusion
it as inseparable from NATO’s
о
of
своем
European
бизнесе
and
ДО
global
НОВОГО
military
ГОДА
interests.
по
Since
адресу
this is likely to be
an imaginary common interest exploits. How could bringing risky and costly, it should not be
in cases where no real common small www.gorizont.com/letmein
new members into NATO America’s first choice
The Roots of Hillary’s Infatuation with War
An incorrigible belief in the purity of one’s motives is among the most dangerous endowments a politician can possess.
trial of the Black Panther leader
Bobby Seale; a worker for Marian
Wright Edelman’s Washington
Research Project (the precursor
of the Children’s Defense
Fund); a member of the legal
staff of the Nixon impeachment
inquiry. In one cause, however,
she was mostly absent and unaccounted
for: the protest against
the Vietnam War. A friend of
the Clintons, Greg Craig, told
the New York Times reporter
Mark Landler that while others
Все вопросы по тел. 720-436-7613
in their circle were «heavily involved»
in antiwar activism, «I
don’t remember Hillary having
much to do with that.» Clinton
gave two pages to the war in her
memoir Living History. She sympathized
there with the burden
of responsibility borne by President
Johnson for «a war he’d
inherited,» which turned out to
be «a tragic mistake.» Johnson
is her focus: the man of power
who rode a tiger he could not
dismount. On a second reading,
«mistake» may seem too light a
word to characterize a war that
destroyed an agrarian culture
forever and killed between one
and three million Vietnamese.
«Mistake» is also the word that
Hillary Clinton has favored in
answering questions about her
vote for the Iraq War.
Like every Democrat who
has run for president since 1960,
Clinton sometimes talks as if she
wished foreign policy would go
away. A president’s most important
responsibility, she agrees,
is to strengthen the bonds of
neighborhood and community
at home, to assure a decent livelihood
for working Americans
and an efficient system of benefits
for all. Yet her four years as
secretary of state–chronicled in
a second volume of memoirs,
Hard Choices–have licensed her
to speak with the authority of a
veteran in the world of nations.
War and diplomacy, as that book
aimed to show, have become an
invaluable adjunct to her skill
set. Clinton would want us to
count as well a third tool besides
war and diplomacy. She calls it
(after a coinage by Joseph Nye)
«smart power.» Smart power,
for her, denotes a kind of pressure
that may augment the force