Forget Israel, Befriend Russia

March 17, 2007

By Charley Reese

A little more than half of the U.S. population lives in 75 metropolitan areas. Russia has 4,399 nuclear warheads deployed. Except for 624 to be carried by bombers, they are all land-based and submarine missiles.

Furthermore, this past week Russia test-fired a land-based missile, the RSM54, and a submarine-launched missile. Both were intercontinental. Both hit their targets dead-on. The sub launch was, by the way, the sixth such test-firing conducted this year.

In the meantime, Iran has no nuclear weapons and no intercontinental ballistic missiles or long-range bombers. North Korea might have two or three nuclear missiles. Yet the administration, and most of America's news media, seems obsessed with Iran, no doubt because Israel is obsessed with Iran. A story by the Jewish Telegraph Agency reported that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee played a lobbying role in deleting a provision in the defense bill that would have required the president to get Congress' OK before launching a war against Iran.

So what's my point? First, when assessing threats, all but fools look at capability, not intentions or rhetoric. Russia has the capability of wiping us out. Iran would be hard-pressed to sink one destroyer. Therefore, it would behoove us to put good relations with Russia very high on a diplomatic agenda. Yet, on the contrary, the Bush administration goes out of its way to insult Russia and to interfere in what Russia sees as its internal affairs.

Secondly, because of the cowardice of Congress, the U.S. government has allowed a little country in the Middle East (Israel) to distort our priorities. Our first priority should be getting along with Russia. Iran is a small country we can squash anytime. Russia is not small, and it can squash us anytime. How darn stupid does one have to be not to realize that?

We've already blundered by not seizing the opportunity of the collapse of the Soviet Union to disband NATO and seriously pursue helping Russia join the West. Instead, we sent some financial sharpies in to help a few Russians steal most of the country's wealth. Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, is 100 percent correct to go after the oligarchs who bought up the state's resources for pennies on the dollar and became overnight billionaires. One is in jail, another fled to England, and several others have sought refuge in Israel.

When you hear Putin being maligned by people in the West, whether they're in government, journalism or academia, just remember that money buys whores, and whores service their customers.

Future historians may view the failure to bring Russia into the West, when the opportunity was there, as one of history's all-time strategic blunders.

The only legitimate interest we have in the Middle East is access to oil. Notice I said access, not control. It doesn't matter who controls it, because whoever does will be willing to sell it, since oil is inedible. Other than that, we have no – I repeat, no – legitimate interests, national or otherwise, in that region of the world.

American politicians need to get over their fear of the Israeli lobby and attend to America's business. Israel is a sovereign state with one of the world's most powerful military machines and a higher per capita gross domestic product than some of our NATO allies. We should cut the strings, stop the tax giveaways, repeal all of the special legislation and tell the Israelis they are on their own.

But, as John Wayne once said, that'll be the day.

The totalitarian streak in the US

During the Cold War, the economies and cultures of the two great protagonists were not that different. The US adopted a "totalitarian" mobilization of resources to win the struggle. The fragmentation of US society today, the departure from the healthy "semi-totalitarian" arrangements of the 1930s-1950s, makes the US increasingly unable to prevail in any new struggle.

Central Asia
Mar 1, 2007

COMMENT
By Dmitry Shlapentokh

Russian President Vladimir Putin's speech at the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy was among the very few of his speeches that have attracted world attention. Putin attacked the West, mostly the United States, and the strength of his speech led a number of Russian and Western observers to believe that Russia and the US have engaged in a new cold war. But a close analysis indicates that neither Russia nor the US actually has such plans.

The hedonistic and corrupt Russian elite who keep their capital in US dollars and euros - and who would gladly discard friendly Belarus because it demands cheaper oil - hardly are in a confrontational mood. But while this point is too apparent to be discussed, the possibility of the US engaging in a new cold war requires further scrutiny.

The Cold War has been studied for a long time, and quite a few pundits have promulgated it as a mortal struggle between "communists" and "capitalists", with ideology the key. This explanation does not account for the actual US-communist military alliance in China, starting with US president Richard Nixon's 1972 visit.

Another approach notes the small difference between the US and the USSR in geopolitical posture, suggesting that the Cold War was not so much an ideological conflict as a traditional power struggle between two empires. But the similarities, usually ignored, between the US and the USSR go much deeper and are related to socioeconomic and political practices. It is the US totalitarian streak that made it possible for the US to stand against the Soviet Union.

The Cold War evolved not just from World War II but from the entire socioeconomic culture of the 20th century. Modern war is a long exercise that puts pressure on all aspects of society and requires massive government engagement in both political and economic life. It requires emphasis on the "real" economy - production of goods, not profitability (mostly the interests of private shareholders), and even less what is called "service", the foundation of the economic "bubbles" of today.

It requires a socioeconomic discipline where the state's interests are paramount but there is a broad social-security net. The rudiments of this system emerged in various European states during World War I, with no Marxist or Bolshevik influence after 1917. The Great Depression reactivated the trend and led to the rise of states with many similarities with totalitarian regimes; Franklin D Roosevelt's USA was one of them.

Especially in the left and liberal American mind, there were two Roosevelts. One was the benign president who started a policy that would be developed by liberals and the left: regulation of financial institutions, subsidies for agriculture, the minimum wage, Social Security. The other was a madman who made "mistakes" such as sending hundreds of thousands of innocent Americans of Japanese descent to camps.

But this was one Roosevelt, and his policy was similar to that of other totalitarian rulers of the era. Indeed, the Nazis had a centralized economy, discarded profits for "real" production, and engaged in long-term planning for permanent war. They also combined repression, not just for outsiders but for insiders - ethnic Germans - with an increasing safety net for a majority of the people.

The vast majority of Western pundits would proclaim that the masses demonstrate special vigor fighting for regimes that guarantee "liberties". But the opposite is true. It is not regimes of Western liberal "liberties" - the policemen of property that have little or no interest in the well-being of the majority - but regimes that play the role of a tough but protective parent who, regardless of abuses, would never abandon its "children". This feeling pushed the army of the Reich to the suburbs of Moscow; the same feeling pushed Russian and American soldiers to Berlin.

The basic socioeconomic arrangements of World War II survived during the Cold War era. In the US, the state continued to be actively engaged in economic arrangements. Business emphasis was on the "real" economy and continuous, actually planned, improvement of quality of goods. This continued to be combined with continuous state control and harsh repression; in fact, McCarthyism was not much different from Stalinist policies. The same "totalitarian" streaks in US political/economic culture provided the state with the support and dedication of the majority. This made it possible to sustain the bloody Korean War and a range of crises and plans for generations ahead to stand against Soviet pressure.

The very similarities between socioeconomic elements of the United States and the Soviet Union provided the US the strength to confront its major Cold War adversary. But the collapse of the USSR was seen not as a great lottery win with the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev but as a legitimate reward for the differences between the US and the USSR, not the similarities.

So the aspects that made the US similar to the USSR and 1930s-1950s America were discarded or minimized. And this makes the repetition of the Cold War, the generation-old conflict that required the exertion of efforts of an entire nation, impossible.

Most clear is the virtual disappearance of long-term planning and often the ignoring of actual results. Energy self-sufficiency has been regarded as essential for geopolitical/economic viability. But practically nothing is done about it despite years of talk. Concern with "real" production has almost disappeared.

The struggling automobile industry, a cornerstone of America's "real" economy, tries design, promotion campaigns, reduction of workforce and, of course, pressure on the government to protect it from "unfair competition". No real effort is made toward mass production of cars whose "real" characteristics would make them competitive.

Nor has there been planning to improve the quality or quantity of goods in most other segments of the economy. The emphasis is not on production but on profit, which could rise even if production declined. The stress is not on long-term planning but on immediate gratification, a stockbroker mentality, and rewards or punishment for playing with stock "bubbles". In fact, the rise and fall of stock "bubbles" are often unrelated to actual production.

This emphasis has also produced a US society with group but not national interests, where concern for the majority of the poor is ignored not just by the Republican right but by the liberal left. In fact, the attempt to change "affirmative action" preferential treatment based on race and gender to a policy based on low income is constantly rejected by the left as well as the right. The reason is simple: "affirmative action" benefits mostly middle-to-upper-class blacks and females; a change would benefit the poor and lower-middle classes regardless of race.

The fragmentation of US society, the departure from the healthy "semi-totalitarian" arrangements of the 1930s-1950s, makes the country increasingly unable to withstand a prolonged "cold war" struggle, either in the economy - consider the precipitous decline of competitiveness of US industrial goods despite the decline of the dollar vis-a-vis major currencies or even the "wooden ruble" - or in military affairs.

National stamina for a long conflict continues to decline, from the World War II victory with 300,000 combat deaths; the Korean War, a stalemate with about 38,000 losses; the Vietnam War defeat, with about 50,000 losses; to the present Iraq war, clearly moving to defeat, with only 3,000 losses and a mercenary army increasingly absorbing in its ranks anyone it can attract, including ex-criminals.

Carl von Clausewitz rightly noted a strong correlation between internal and foreign policy. Indeed, US survival in the Cold War was possible only because it accepted the enemy's socioeconomic arrangements - state involvement in economic activity; concern with real production more than profit; combining toughness and repressiveness with a broad security net not for "minorities" but for the majority of the poor; and, above all, planning for a generations-long economic and military struggle. None of these elements can be found in the present US, which is based on social fragmentation and a "bubble" economy of financial speculation and stock-market games.

This does not mean that the enemies of the US should be pleased. The "bubble economy" has produced a "stock-market war" - a war of quick and reckless adventures in which all available "cash" can be used for the mirage of a quick geopolitical profit, even if this "cash" is nuclear weapons. In fact, in sharp contrast with the calculating foreign policy of the Cold War era, the present elite - like many on Wall Street - preach the motto "shoot first, think later".

Dmitry Shlapentokh, PhD, is associate professor of history, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Indiana University South Bend. He is author of East Against West: The First Encounter - The Life of Themistocles, 2005.

Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd.

When cowboys don't shoot straight

RUSSIA AND THE NEW COLD WAR When cowboys don't shoot straight Forget about "rogue states" such as North Korea or Iran. America's building of a missile defense system and deploying it in places like Poland (!) is aimed at achieving just one thing - nuclear primacy over the one other nuclear power in the world that still has the capability of destroying the US. - F William Engdahl (Feb 28, '07)

Russian-U.S. ties hit new low

By Steven Lee Myers
Friday, February 16, 2007

MOSCOW

The good news about President Vladimir Putin's acerbic assault on American foreign policy in Munich last weekend is that the bad old days of global ideological confrontation — of blocs and proxy wars, dissidents and spies, arms races and mutually assured destruction — will probably remain in the dustbin of history.

The bad news is that Cold War II could be just as messy.

For all the talk of strategic partnership and even personal friendship between Putin and President George W. Bush, the relationship between Russia and the United States has reached its lowest point since the Soviet Union collapsed a decade and a half ago. And with presidential elections in both countries coming in 2008, it is unlikely to get better, since candidates rarely score points at home by being conciliatory abroad.

The two countries are now openly competing for influence in Europe, in the Caucasus and in Central Asia, where access to natural resources and military bases has become paramount for both.

--MORE--

Persecuting Putin

Posted by Daniel Larison on February 14, 2007

Since his rise to the Russian presidency in late 1999, Vladimir Putin has represented to the Western media and political class an infuriating obstacle that needs to be removed and a kind of politics that they regard as utterly abhorrent. Increasingly savage criticisms of Putin and his regime have over the past 4-5 years flooded the pages of a certain kind of putatively conservative magazine and newspaper—periodicals which evinced little interest in Russia when it was being misgoverned by the inebriated Boris Yeltsin, and looted by the Communist kleptocrats he put in charge of “privatizing” (i.e. confiscating) its massive state enterprises.

The new preoccupation with how well Russia is being governed, and how freely its smaller political parties can express their opinions is relatively new—and, I would argue has little or nothing to do with any particular concern about Putin’s heavy-handed and admittedly increasingly populist-authoritarian rule. Writers really concerned about human rights have much more serious matters with which to concern themselves than the fortunes of a few imprisoned or otherwise thwarted oligarchs—whose Swiss bank accounts are stuffed with money stolen from Russia’s citizens, monies they use to fund “opposition” movements which are little more than front-groups working for special interests. One hears little from such writers about the virtual genocide in Darfur or the persecution of Christians in China—much more atrocious abuses by far more reprehensible regimes.

Then what is it that motivates the new “Russia hawks” who populate the British and American press with grim warnings of the “threat” posed by an allegedly resurgent Russian bear? There are several factors at work, I would argue. In no particular order, I would cite:

• A lingering post-Cold War suspicion of Russia.
• A not-so-latent Russophobia cultivated in America and in most Western European countries.
• The geostrategic designs of proponents of activist foreign policy in the United States.
• The schemes treasured by Europeans who wish to expand the social democratic project of the European Union eastwards to the Urals.

Media objections to the moves by Putin against billionaire oligarch Khodorkovsky and his oil company, Yukos—to take one famous example, did not center on whether they were damaging Russia or retarding her development (though they might be)—but that Putin’s moves were making the Russian state strong and capable of resisting the preferred policies of his critics.

Something that became perfectly clear early on to most Russians was that Western backers of privatization, liberalization and “reform” and their Russian counterparts were supremely uninterested in the well-being of Russia and Russians. Rather, like the transnational elites in the West who were supporting these policies and whose example Russian “liberals” sought to follow, the “reformers” desired to exploit Russian resources in the name of abstract “growth” that never included reinvestment and real development of any part of the Russian economy. The insidious and self-serving collaboration between the oligarchs who raped Russia during the ‘90s under the guise of “privatization” and the proponents of Russian liberalism (or, more often, the advocacy of “liberal democratic” reforms by the oligarchs themselves) had two goals:

• To diffuse political power away from the center, which would work to the advantage of the oligarchs’ building up their own fiefdoms free from central interference.
• To conceal the predatory and criminal practices of men who are scarcely better than mobsters under the sacred mantle of “the free market,” whose attempted regulation would automatically be denounced as a return to the bad old days of the USSR.

Because a relatively strong, assertive Russia poses an unacceptable threat to the ability of Washington and Brussels to dominate their desired spheres of influence in post-Soviet space, every policy from Moscow that appears to advance the interests of such a relatively strong Russia is viewed as hostile in Western capitals and receives almost unremittingly negative coverage in the Western press. The anti-Russian view, as a matter of U.S. foreign policy, enjoys a wide range of bipartisan support (as do most of the positions tied up with current American aggressive interventionist foreign policy).

This is true even of politicians whose views are otherwise largely admirable—captive as many of them are to the neoconservative fantasy that all the earth must be remade along American lines. Think of former Sen. Rick Santorum, who routinely listed Russia on his list of America’s enemies—alongside North Korea, Iran and Venezuela during his pretentious “gathering storm” speaking tour and afterwards. Earlier this year, the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joe Biden (D-DE), stated bluntly that he believed President Bush should have a “direct confrontation” with Putin over his international consolidation of power. Rather than being examples of extreme or unrepresentative fringes in their thinking about U.S. foreign policy, Santorum and Biden represent different parts of what is very much a consensus view about the Russian government. Ideologues who imagine that U.S. foreign policy should (or could) serve to democratize the planet and spread “American values” work together with cold-eyed nationalists who seek to ensure that that the U.S. remains the unchallenged, single superpower in the world—a goal which was frankly admitted in the infamous 2002 National Security Strategy. Members of each group share a common antipathy to Putin’s Russia because it represents one of the single greatest barriers and potential threats to their goals.

Every action undertaken by the Putin regime, whether at home or abroad, has been fitted into a pessimistic narrative of the re-freezing of Russo-American relations and revived geopolitical rivalry, and this narrative has served as a self-fulfilling prophecy as it has poisoned American and European minds against Russia. Every apparent reaction against Putin at home or in Russia’s near-abroad in the former Soviet republics has been hailed by the Western press and Western political leaders as evidence of “pro-Western,” “liberal,” “democratic” and “capitalist” resistance against resurgent authoritarian statism.

It is for this reason that the appalling, corrupt nationalist, Viktor Yushchenko, whose bigoted supporters make Bolivian President Evo Morales’ voters appear liberal and cosmopolitan, was made into a hero and near-martyr of liberal democracy in Ukraine during the so-called “Orange Revolution.” Looking at the politics of the leading members of the 2004 Orange coalition, it would have been more accurate to call it a red-brown revolution.

As this supposed resistance has weakened or disappeared in the past two years with the collapse of the Orange governing coalition over Yushchenko’s appointment of his former rival, Yanukovych, to be prime minister, and the economic and political isolation of Saakashvili’s Georgia last year, Western scrutiny and criticism of the Putin regime have increased—as if to take up the slack. 2006 saw a number of events in Russia or in some way related to Russia that Western journalists, pundits and politicians have used to increase suspicion of the Putin regime and force Russia into increased isolation from and opposition to the West, such as Moscow’s recent decision to off gas supplies to Belarus>(and, thus, to countries farther west as well), its embargo imposed on Georgia, the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the radiation poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. The exploitation of these events to fan the flames of anti-Russian sentiment (and thus encourage an equally irrational anti-Western backlash in Russia) serves the interests of neither country. However, it certainly does conform very well to the policy aspirations of different interested parties in the West that would like to see Russia cut off, cornered and on the defensive.

The most well-known of those recent episodes was the radiation poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB operative and long-time Putin critic with ties to the exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Posing as an independent journalist, Litvinenko helped propagate Berezovsky’s fairly outlandish tale that the Moscow apartment bombings of September 1999, which the Russian government blamed on Chechen terrorists, had been the work of the FSB (formerly the KGB) security and intelligence service. Once Litvinenko became ill from his poisoning and died, after garnering tremendous media attention in Britain and throughout the West, the predictable accusations that Putin had ordered his death began flying. At the time of this writing, the investigation is still ongoing and it remains unclear exactly what role Litvinenko’s allies and rogue FSB agents may have had in Litvinenko’s death, but so far nothing substantive has been made public that corroborates the reflexive reaction of blaming the Putin regime.

Regardless, thanks to six years of a steady drumbeat of warnings about Putin’s authoritarianism and the supposed menace a “new Russian imperialism” poses to Europe, the former Soviet republics and, ultimately, the entire world, the unsubstantiated claim that the Kremlin authorized the exceedingly clumsy, public murder of Litvinenko seemed only too plausible to people who have been conditioned to think of Putin as a new Stalin.

What of the truth of Berezovsky and Litvinenko’s claims? According to the government, the 1999 Moscow bombings had been masterminded by Amir Khattab, a Saudi Arabian Salafist jihadi who had taken up the Chechen cause in the name of Islamic radicalism, and given Khattab’s previous history and the increased Islamicisation of the Chechen cause in the 1990s this remains the most plausible explanation for the attacks. The bombings led directly to the resumption of open hostilities in Chechnya. The Moscow bombings had come shortly after Chechen rebels had begun to infiltrate neighboring Dagestan where a bombing earlier in the month had prompted Russian military action. It was the potential destabilization of Dagestan, which was and is, like Chechnya, a part of the Russian Federation, that represented the real provocation to Moscow to resume the war against Chechen separatists—not the Moscow attacks. Because of the very real human rights abuses that have occurred during the prosecution of the Chechen wars—as they have happened in Iraq, by the way—Western public opinion has tended to look favorably on reports that cast the Russian government’s methods and motives in the worst possible light, which has played very well into the hands of anti-Russian forces.

This brings us to Western agitation about Chechnya. Chechnya has been a preoccupation of certain influential and prominent American Russophobes in particular at least since the start of the Second Chechen War. Sen. John McCain, one of the leading candidates for the Republican nomination in 2008, was already on a tear about Russian depredations in Chechnya in his 2000 campaign and gave indications during the campaign that he considered it an important priority to intervene in Chechnya in some manner to bring an end to the war there. As some will recall, Sen. McCain was at that time the poster boy for aggressive, neoconservative foreign policy activists inside the Republican Party, and his hard line on Chechnya matched the long-running neoconservative interest in encircling, containing and weakening post-Soviet Russia that recurred throughout the ‘90s. Beginning with the infamous 1990 Wolfowitz Memo, which laid out a proposal for massive military buildups and interventions in the non-Russian republics, it continued throughout the decade and included brazen, full-throated neoconservative support for the U.S. and NATO bombings of Yugoslavia in 1995 and 1999 respectively. Praise for the Chechen cause, descriptions of Chechnya’s “president,” Aslan Maskhadov, as a freedom fighter, and apologias for Chechen terrorism (which none of the writers would have accepted on behalf of, say, Palestinians or anti-American terrorists), became regular staples of neoconservative commentary for a decade. Their most frequent outlet was the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, a veritable fountain of pro-oligarch and anti-Putin articles. Many prominent neoconservatives, such as Midge Decter, Robert Kagan, Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen and Bill Kristol, among many others, joined together with others after the start of the second war in Chechnya to continue their blatant anti-Russian campaigning by forming the euphemistically-named organization, American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus.

Much as many of these same people were eager to break Kosovo off from Serbia proper as a way of weakening a state whose government they wanted to see brought to heel, the ACPC’s goal of aiding Chechen separatism and terrorism has the clear goal of increasing political fragmentation inside Russia and inciting ethnic resentments of minority groups against Russia in an effort to foment internal disorder and achieve the eventual break-up of the Russian Federation.

It is in the context of such dangerous and provocative anti-Russian Western activism that Americans and Europeans need to view the inevitably heavily biased reporting, frequently excessive criticism and ideologically and politically driven commentary that seek to make Putin’s regime appear somehow uniquely abominable and seeks to make Russia, a natural ally against jihadis, once more into an implacable enemy. This does not require us to endorse all of the Putin regime’s actions, nor does it mean that Americans should ignore when legitimate American interests do conflict with those of Russia, as will sometimes happen, but it does require us to be wary about trusting the obsessive vilification of another nation and another government when tension and conflict between America and Russia serve the interests of neither great nation.

Daniel Larison is a doctoral candidate in Byzantine history at the University of Chicago. He blogs at Eunomia

Giants meet to counter US power

February 15, 2007

Jeremy Page in Delhi

India, China and Russia account for 40 per cent of the world’s population, a fifth of its economy and more than half of its nuclear warheads. Now they appear to be forming a partnership to challenge the US-dominated world order that has prevailed since the end of the Cold War.

Foreign ministers from the three emerging giants met in Delhi yesterday to discuss ways to build a more democratic “multipolar world”.

It was the second such meeting in the past two years and came after an unprecedented meeting between their respective leaders, Manmohan Singh, Hu Jintao and Vladimir Putin, during the G8 summit in St Petersburg in July.

It also came only four days after Mr Putin stunned Western officials by railing against American foreign policy at a security conference in Munich.

The foreign ministers, Pranab Mukherjee, Li Zhao Xing and Sergei Lavrov, emphasised that theirs was not an alliance against the United States. It was, “on the contrary, intended to promote international harmony and understanding”, a joint communiqué stated.

Their formal agenda covered issues ranging from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East and North Korea to energy security, nuclear non-proliferation and trade. The subtext, however, was clear: how to use their growing economic and political muscle to prevent Washington from tackling such issues alone.

“In the long term, they feel that the whole structure of international relations has to shift in their direction,” said Vinod C. Khanna, of the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi. “What has happened is that quite independently they’ve reacted very similarly to recent international events.”

Mr Mukherjee said: “We agreed that cooperation rather than confrontation should govern approaches to regional and global affairs. We also agreed on the importance of the UN.”

Diplomats say that it is premature to talk of a strategic axis between the world’s largest and two most populous nations because they still have more in common with the West than with each other.

Delhi was close to Moscow in Soviet times, but has forged a new friendship with Washington. Chinese relations were soured by its border wars with India in 1962 and the Soviet Union in 1969, and by its arms sales to Pakistan. Russia appears keener than China or India to challenge American hegemony. But there has been a convergence of interests as each struggles to make the transition from a command economy to free markets. Since 2003 they have found further common ground in opposing the US-led invasion of Iraq.

One area of agreement is opposition to outside interference in separatist conflicts in Chechnya, the northeast of India and the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang.

Another is energy. India and China are desperate for Russian oil and gas, and Moscow is worried about its dependence on Western markets. But their most significant common ground is opposition to US military intervention in Iran. The joint statement did not mention Iran, but the three countries have taken a common stance in calling for a negotiated solution through the International Atomic Energy Agency. None of them wants a nuclear-armed Iran, but Russia sells Tehran nuclear technology and India and China need Iranian gas.

Tensions are the Empire’s Coin of the Realm

Related
Putin's NATO Beef
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Wednesday, February 14, 2007

by Jacob G. Hornberger

Conservatives are upset over critical remarks made by Russian President Putin about the U.S. Empire and its interventions and abuses all over the world. Not surprisingly, they’re resorting to attacking Putin for hypocrisy rather than considering the distinct possibility that what he is saying about the U.S. government might be true.

After all, let’s not forget that the U.S. government has attacked and occupied a country that never attacked the United States, killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of people in the process, and is threatening to do the same to Iran and North Korea. It is a government that claims the right to attack any other country on earth as the self-proclaimed enforcer of the GBOT (global war on terror). And that it claims the right to torture, abuse, and execute any suspected terrorist found anywhere in the world, regardless of citizenry, without any judicial involvement.

The Los Angeles Times pointed out in an editorial yesterday a classic case of U.S. foreign-policy double-dealing and double-cross.

The Times points out that at the end of the Cold War, a deal was struck between Russia and the U.S. in which Russia would accede to German reunification and a withdrawal of troops from Eastern Europe in return for the U.S. commitment to not expand NATO to Russia’s borders.

As the Times editorial points out, “That is precisely what followed…. Within a few years, the U.S. turned vindictive victor in the eyes of Russia, allowing former Warsaw Pact members into NATO, including the formerly Soviet Baltic republics. The humiliation, and seeming encirclement, of Russia continues relentlessly to this day, with talk of someday bringing Georgia and Ukraine into the club.”

How many Americans are aware of this? I’d bet 0.01 percent (about the same number that know about the CIA’s secret, illegal ouster of Iran’s democratically elected prime minister in 1953 and the installation of a brutal dictator that tortured his people until extremist Iranian revolutionaries succeeded in ousting him from power in 1979). It’s how the U.S. Empire has operated for decades — in secrecy so that they can “play the innocent” when there is retaliatory blowback.

Why wasn’t NATO, whose mission was to protect against a Soviet attack, dismantled after the dismantling of the Soviet Union? Good question! Maybe because if it was dismantled, it could not be used to increase tensions with Russia.

After the Cold War, U.S. officials turned on their old partner and ally Saddam Hussein and made him the bad-guy poster child of the 1990s to scare Americans to death. Throughout the 1990s, they poked hornet’s nests in the Middle East with their Persian Gulf intervention, their brutal sanctions against Iraq, their stationing of troops on Islamic holy lands, their no-fly zones, and their foreign aid to both Israel and Arab governments.

That produced terrorist strikes on American ships abroad, U.S. Embassies, the WTC in 1993, and of course the 9/11 attacks.

By increasing tensions abroad, the Empire had finally provided the Pentagon with its new mission — the GWOT — and its new justification for ever increasing budgets (and debt, inflation, and taxes) for the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us against.

Will Americans finally see through the big-government, big Empire foreign-policy scam before it’s too late?

Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Russian Bear Growls At U.S. Hypocrisy

Feb 14, 2006

By K Gajendra Singh
Indian ambassador (retired)


" The war in Iraq is a historic strategic and moral calamity undertaken under false assumptions-- undermining America's global legitimacy --collateral civilian casualties, -- abuses, -- tarnishing America's moral credentials. Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability." Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser to US President Jimmy Carter



At the 43rd annual International Security Conference held in Munich on 10 February, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke on the importance of the role of United Nations , U.S. missile defense, NATO expansion, Iran's nuclear program and the Energy Charter. He accused Washington of provoking a new nuclear arms race by developing ballistic missile defenses, undermining international institutions, trying to divide modern Europe and making the Middle East more unstable through its clumsy handling of the Iraq war.

Ever since Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev ended the cold war in 1989 , more out of naiveté than misplaced goodwill which after USSR's collapse the US ruling elite claimed as the victory of the capitalist West over Socialist Russia ,this is the first blunt criticism of US unleashed rampant forces trying to coerce the whole world to its will for total domination while using brazen lies and illegal , brutal and inhuman means .

While calling a spade a spade Russian leader Putin was only articulating what a majority of peoples in the world think of US policies .A BBC poll covering more than 26,000 people in 25 countries, including the U.S., held in November - January, found that 49 % believe U.S. playing "mainly negative" role in the world, compared to 32% who said it was "mainly positive." In 18 countries asked the same question earlier , which had called U.S. influence positive, it fell from 40 % in 2005, to 36 % last year, to 29 % in 2007. In Germany and Indonesia, nearly 3 out of 4 respondents had a mainly negative opinion of U.S. influence while it was 69 % in France and Turkey.

Nearly 73 % disapproved of Washington's role in the Iraq war. In Egypt, France, and Lebanon where more than 3 out of 4 respondents "strongly disapproved" , while more than 68 % said the U.S. military presence in the Middle East provokes more conflict than it prevents."

Even in US , 57 % disapprove of their government's handling of the Iraq war and of the Israeli-Hezbollah war; while 60 % disapproved of its handling of Guantanamo detainees; and 53 % believed the U.S. military presence provokes more conflict than it prevents. A plurality of 50 % in U.S. disapprove of the government's handling of Iran's nuclear program,

"These days the U.S. government hardly seems to be able to do anything right," said Steven Kull, director of the University of Maryland who co-ordinated the poll.

In last November elections US electorate trashed Bush's policies by trouncing his Republican party in the Senate and the House and disapprove of Bush's policies by 2 to one .But instead of course correction , also recommended by Baker –Hamilton Iraqi Study Group, there is now the so called policy of "surge" in Iraq , with only a massive surge in deaths and destruction in Iraq , specially Baghdad , where the new policy would be implemented .

Then there are multifarious accusations against Tehran without proof and threats to use force , even nuclear weapons .Such an irrational and immoral attack if carried out, most experts and people believe would plunge the world into hell like turmoil for decades. You just have to look at the quagmire in Iraq with daily massacres and almost total destruction of the Iraqi state with a burgeoning civil war triggered by Washington .

Putin's speech marks a new era in Russia's new found confidence after 7 years of his rule which has brought stability and economic strength .He is now visiting Saudi Arabia ,Qatar and Jordan , first ever visits by a Russian head of state. With Middle East in a state of flux and USA bogged down in Iraq with no clear cut exit policy , Saudi Arabia and others in the region are looking elsewhere to counter irrational US policies.

"I see in -- Putin a statesman and a man of peace and fairness," Saudi King Abdullah

Unlike 1991 , when Gorbachev's peace initiative to help resolve the problem of Iraqi occupation of Kuwait , was brushed aside by Washington ,Moscow is now better positioned to play a vital and constructive role in the region. Exchange of Presidential visits with Syria two years ago , writing off of old Syrian debts of almost $10 billion and supply of missiles to deter arrogant Israeli jets buzzing the Presidential Palace in Damascus have almost restored the old relationship . Historical enemies Russia and Turkey have made up and have booming economic exchanges

Moscow is now ready to play a role of reliable and honest broker in Arab Israeli dispute with its excellent relations with Tel Aviv and PLO and even Hamas which was received in Moscow , soon after it was elected to power. Moscow's strengthened relations with Tehran with its support at the UN , supply of missiles and arms and building of nuclear power plants and possibly create an informal gas OPEC give Russia an important role .And Putin has worked towards it assiduously.

"I see in ... Putin a statesman and a man of peace and fairness," said Saudi King Abdullah according to official Saudi Press Agency. "That's why the kingdom of Saudi Arabia extends a hand of friendship to Russia." Qatar has the world's third-largest natural gas reserves after Russia and Iran while Russia is second largest exporter of oil after Saudi Arabia. They could consult each other on oil and gas prices.

Putin's warm reception in Riyadh ,Qatar and Amman is harbinger of Russia's growing influence in the region and desire of the unnerved states in the region for a bulwark against USA's destructive policies , which could unleash a terrible Shia-Sunni conflagration in the region and beyond .The Arabs and Muslims have seen through US policies!

Middle East and the Muslim world is learning to trust Putin's Russia It was granted observer status in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in 2005, and in 2006 the Russia-Muslim World Strategic Vision Group was established.

Before embarking on his tour of the Middle East , in an interview with Al-Jazeera TV , extremely popular in Arab and Islamic world , Putin said that the new U.S. strategy in Iraq will work only if a date for withdrawal of foreign military forces was agreed upon .The U.S. has officially declared that it plans to hand over full authority, primarily in the law enforcement and security areas, to Iraqi agencies.

Putin said, "But I think this won't work if we don't decide beforehand when the foreign contingent should be withdrawn. Because, as it happens in any conflict and in any country, people should know that they have to be prepared to take on full responsibility inside the country by a certain date. When they do not have a definite date and when it is unclear when the maturity of relevant organizations in this country should reach a certain appropriate level, then everything is shifted off to the foreign contingent."

Putin's Munich Discourse;

Putin's audience in Munich comprised of dozens of Western ministers and policy makers , including the new US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, and the hawkish Republican Presidential contender, Senator John McCain.

Putin stated ; "Today we are observing unrestrained, hypertrophied use of force in international affairs, a force that plunges the world into an abyss of recurring conflicts." "I am convinced that the UN Charter is the only legitimate decision-making mechanism for the use of military force as a last resort," he said.

"The UN must not be replaced either by NATO or the European Union," declared Putin.

On NATO's eastward expansion , Putin said that it has nothing to do with its modernization and would affect Moscow's relations with the Alliance.{Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, and Baltic states - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - joined NATO in 2004. Georgia and Ukraine , which saw US franchised street gangs, financed , trained and supported by Washington and its so called democracy promoting institutions and NGOs , install US puppets in power ( both are in trouble now ) are being encouraged to join NATO .Russia strongly objects to the deployment of NATO bases on the territory of newly admitted member nations. Reports suggest that Romanian and Bulgarian bases could be used if Iran was attacked. }

"It is evident that the process of NATO expansion has nothing to do with modernizing the alliance or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it is seriously eroding mutual trust," the Russian leader said. "Why do they have to move their military infrastructure closer to our borders?" Putin wondered, "Is this connected with overcoming global threats today?"

Putin added that the main threat facing Russia, the U.S. and Europe derives from international terrorism, which can only be fought jointly.

"What is a uni-polar world? No matter how we beautify this term it means one single centre of power, one single centre of force and one single master," clarified Putin .

He stated that deployment of a U.S. missile defense system in Central Europe could trigger a new spiral of the arms race. US reasons for deploying a missile defense system in Europe are not convincing enough, since launching of North Korean ballistic missiles against the U.S. across western Europe would be in conflict with the laws of ballistics. " Or, as we say in Russia, it's the like trying to reach your left ear with your right hand," he clarified.

Putin pledged to amend Russia's military strategy. "All our responses will be asymmetric, but highly effective," he said.

This riposte was in response to US plans to install a radar system in the Czech Republic and a missile interception system in Poland,' to protect itself against a potential threat from Iran.' Recently Washington has also shifted its largest sea-based missile defense radar in the Pacific from Hawaii to the Aleutian Islands, not far from Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula.

Putin affirmed that Moscow is committed to its obligations on the reduction of nuclear warheads by 2012. The Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, signed on May 24, 2002 by Putin and Bush in Moscow, and expiring December 31, 2012, limited both countries' nuclear arsenals to 1,700-2,200 warheads each. The treaty has been criticized for a lack of verification provisions and the possibility of re-deploying stored warheads.

Putin hoped that "our partners will also act in a transparent manner and will not try to stash away an extra couple hundred nuclear warheads against a rainy day."

Moscow has prepared a draft treaty on preventing the deployment of weapons in outer space. Putin said , "It will be submitted to our partners as an official proposal in the very near future."

He also called on the international community to resume dialogue on nuclear non-proliferation. "Russia speaks for the resumption of dialogue on this most important issue. It's necessary to preserve stability of the international legal disarmament base, and ensure the continuity of the nuclear arms reduction process," he said.

"We are seeing increasing disregard for the fundamental principles of international law," said Putin. The United States had repeatedly overstepped its national borders on questions of international security, a policy he said had made the world less, not more, safe.

"Unilateral, illegitimate actions have not solved a single problem; they have become a hotbed of further conflicts,"

"One state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way ," asserted Putin.

Putin added that force should only be used when the option is backed by the United Nations Security Council. "This is very dangerous. Nobody feels secure any more because nobody can hide behind international law," he said.

Putin also said the increased use of force was "causing an arms race with the desire of countries to get nuclear weapons." He did not name the countries but quite obviously these are north Korea, even Iran and many Arab states to counter Israel's arsenal of hundreds of nuclear bombs and means to deliver them . [While sanctions were passed against India and Pakistan in May, 1998 , after they went nuclear ,any enquiry forget any action against Israel is regularly vetoed by USA in New York and Vienna.]

Energy Charter

Russia is already cooperating with European countries on the basis of principles agreed in the Energy Charter, a mechanism for cooperation between Western and Eastern Europe on energy issues and signed at The Hague in 1991. [West now wants its investors free access to Russia's vast oil and gas deposits and export pipelines , but is unwilling to grant similar facilities to now petro dollar rich Russia to invest in European downstream business .Remember how US refused China , which has saved one trillion dollars by over exporting to US , investment in UNOCAL or a Dubai company a contract for handling of US ports .US led West wants only one way freedom in investment. }.

On Energy Charter Putin declared, "We have stated on numerous occasions that we are not against coordinating the principles of our relations with the European Union in the energy sphere. But we find the [Energy] Charter itself hard to accept." He said Russia's EU partners themselves are not observing the Charter, citing the nuclear materials market, which is still off limits to Russia. "No one has opened it up for us. There are also other issues that I would not like to bring up just now," he said.

Putin stated that Russia-EU energy relations should not be included in a new basic agreement replacing the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement. "I do not think we should [include these relations in the basic agreement], as there are other [important] spheres in our interaction with the European Union, besides energy," he said.

Russia and the EU were to begin talks on a new framework at the Russia-EU summit in Helsinki in November 24 last year, but Poland vetoed the negotiations over Russia's ban on its meat exports and Moscow's refusal to sign the Energy Charter. [Vice President Dick Cheney accused Moscow of using its energy resources as "tools of intimidation or blackmail." Many members in the Bush Administration belong to the energy interests to which they will revert back and are cheesed off that Russia does not allow freedom to exploit they have in Saudi Arabia , Gulf kingdoms and elsewhere.]

Putin recalled that Germany shortly after the end of the Cold War had sought to reassure Moscow (its historic enemy) that it would never send its military forces outside its borders. Berlin now has troops in the Balkans and Afghanistan. "Where are those guarantees now?" Putin demanded , arguing that Europe was attempting to set up new "virtual" barriers to replace the Berlin Wall.

Rubble from the Berlin Wall was "hauled away as souvenirs" to countries that praise openness and personal freedom, he said, but "now there are attempts to impose new dividing lines and rules, maybe virtual, but still dividing our mutual continent."

Putin rightly dismissed European complaints about Russian threats last year to cut off energy supplies to its neighbors, saying Moscow was only seeking market prices and stable, long-term contracts with countries including Ukraine and Georgia, which in the past had received subsidized supplies. Even friendly Belarus had to agree to market related prices. [US does it every day .It wants India to vote against Iran on the nuclear question and not have an energy security agreement either .Why ! because it is signing an agreement on nuclear power cooperation .India had its first nuclear explosion way back in 1974 and needs nuclear deterrent to protect its 1.1 billion citizens against nuclear blackmail. So does north Korea .And so think many others now that the biggest proliferators and violators of NPT are the 5 nuclear armed NPT members, also wielding veto power in UNSC}

Human rights;

Putin rebuffed criticism of his country's human rights record by the head of the New York-based Human Rights Watch , who said the world was seeing an "increasingly uni-polar government in Russia, where competing centres of influence are being forced to toe the party line."[US leaders routinely denounce HRW's critique of Abu Ghraib , Guantanamo and other violations.]

Putin responded that Russia was taking steps to stop foreign governments clandestinely using Russian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to influence Russian policy.

On the killings of a few Russian journalists during his Presidency, Putin retorted that it was in Iraq that most journalists were killed doing their job.

Kosovo and Serbia;

Putin declared "Only the Kosovars and Serbs can resolve this." "Let's not play God and try to resolve their problems."

Serbia and Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership have failed to reach agreement on the province's future. Serbia demands that the province remain its part, while Kosovo's ethnic Albanians want independence. U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari last week unveiled a proposal, backed by the U.S. and European Union, for an internationally supervised statehood for Kososvo. The plan — which needs U.N. Security Council approval to take effect — does not explicitly mention independence, but spells out conditions for self-rule, including a flag, anthem, army and constitution, and the right to apply for membership in international organizations. Kosovo's Serb minority would have a high degree of control over their own affairs.

Serbia has rejected the plan, while Kosovo's leaders welcomed it.

Moscow has said a solution imposed against Serbia's consent could serve as a model for other separatist provinces elsewhere in the world. Washington maintains that the Kosovo situation is a "one-off" because the province has been under U.N. rule since 1999, when Serbian forces were ejected after a two month NATO 's illegal war on Yugoslavia, which destroyed its industry and infrastructure. Yugoslavia, a nation of southern Slavs and closer to Russia was broken up by USA and West Europe . Orthodox Serbia has close ethnic and religious affinities with Russia. But West opposes independence for South Ossetia, Abkhazia and the Transdneister .

Iran;

On Iran , Putin stated that unlike many countries including in Europe ,Russia did not pass missile technology to Iran. "I have no evidence to show that Russia, in the 1990s, helped Iran create its own missile technology. Other countries acted there. Technology was transferred through different channels. We have proof, and earlier I passed it directly to the U.S. president," Putin said.

"Technology is coming from Europe, from Asian countries. Russia has nothing to do with this," he said. "Russia supplied much less weaponry there than the U.S. or other countries did," he said, Russia has provided Iran with air defense systems with an effective range of 30 to 50 kilometers. "We did that so that Iran would not feel driven into a corner," he explained.

But Putin clarified that Iran has no missiles that could threaten Europe. "As regards [fears that] Iran has missiles that could threaten Europe, you are wrong. Iran has missiles with a range of 1,600-1,700 km. Calculate how many kilometers it is from the Iranian border to Munich," he asked.

Iran has been under US led campaign after it resumed uranium fuel enrichment in January 2006, which some Western countries claim is part of a covert nuclear weapons program. Moscow shares the concerns of the Vienna based International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog, but the agency has not found a nuclear weapons program. Although Tehran has repeatedly affirmed its program is peaceful, the UN Security Council under US pressure did adopt a resolution in December imposing sanctions on Tehran ,but much diluted under insistence from Russia and China.

Russia, Iran's neighbour and a key economic partner has consistently supported Tehran's right to nuclear power under NPT. On February 23, the IAEA would report on the UN resolution on Iran's nuclear program. IAEA's chief El Bardai has asked all sides 'to take time out' and cool down and revert to negotiations. Bush Administrations accusations have not been taken seriously by newly empowered Democrats and many others , who accuse Bush administration of having used similar ratcheting tactics before invading Iraq , when all its accusations on WMDs, Iraq's connection with Al Qaeda and efforts to obtain Uranium ore were proved to be lies.

During the question period after the address, Putin made some soothing gestures and remarks.
Putin said President Bush had told him that the U.S. assumed the two countries would "never be enemies again, and I agree with him." "I really consider the president of the United States my friend." "He's a decent man, and one can do business with him," Putin said.

Inter-fax quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov telling state Russian TV Channel that the building of a good relations between Moscow and Washington was "not easy-- probably the most difficult partner."

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the President's speech in Munich was not "confrontational" and attributed his blunt words to the sense that the number of conflicts fomented by Washington "was constantly growing" and that international law was being undermined by such actions.

"It is in the interest of the United States, the European Union and other countries that international law is upheld, not further destroyed," Peskov stated.

Before Putin's sermon ,Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany , which holds the European Union's rotating presidency had praised Russia, saying it would be a reliable energy supplier to Europe. She called for closer relations between the EU and Moscow to enhance stability on the continent.

"How relations between the EU and Russia evolve will have a crucial impact on how security in the region will develop," said Merkel She also said that the international community is determined to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Tehran needed to accept demands made by the U.N. and the IAEA , she added.

On the sidelines of the conference, Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani defended his country's nuclear program as peaceful, saying: "We are no threat to our region or other countries," while indicating a willingness to return to negotiations.

Western reaction;

Having seen Putin being lectured to even by leaders of pidddling Baltic states ,now part of EU ; US and European leaders were stunned at the candour of his speech .While US officials mostly played it down as empty rhetoric divorced from the real world,( Did not US Sen Barbara say recently, "The president[Bush] is living in a dream world.'') but European leaders are worried and felt that West must square up to a brash and combative new Russia.

"We should take him at his word. This was the real Russia of now, and possibly in four or five years time it could go further in this direction," declared Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt in Munich." We have to have a dialogue with Russia but we must be hard-nosed and realistic. We must stand up for our values."

Karl Schwarzenberg, the new Czech Foreign Minister, said it was none of Moscow's business whether Prague hosted the radar facilities for the US missile shield. "We have to thank President Putin [who] clearly and convincingly argued why Nato should be enlarged," he quipped to applause. "Some people have not noticed that the Soviet Union no longer exists."

"I do not see how we can negotiate a new partnership pact on this basis," said German Green Angelika Beer, a member of the European Parliament. "We need Russia for energy and Kosovo. He knows that - but perhaps he is going over the top," she said.

The European Union wants to negotiate a new partnership agreement with Russia but its hand is weakened by its dependence on Russian energy supplies. The other alternative is Iran. Any takers!

"This Munich conference is normally about the Americans and Europeans bitching at each other," said Ron Asmus, executive director of the Transatlantic Centre think tank in Brussels. "It will be interesting to see whether Putin actually managed to bring us together."

US & Europe need Moscow's support in UN to resolve the dispute over Iran's nuclear question and in securing independence for the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said he was disappointed by Putin's statement that alliance enlargement was "a serious factor provoking reduced mutual trust." "I see a disconnection between NATO's partnership with Russia as it has developed and Putin's speech," he said.

"Who can be worried that democracy and the rule of law are coming closer to somebody's border?" Scheffer asked. [ Yes, de Hoop Scheffer. USA and NATO are spreading democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan and international law by illegal invasion of Iraq.]

Putin's Munich growl came a day after a similar speech by Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov - a possible successor to Putin ,to his NATO counterparts meeting in Seville, Spain.

"One Cold War was quite enough," US Defence Secretary Robert Gates .

Robert Gates sat through Putin's speech stone faced. A former CIA chief , as is the usual US trait when demonizing Putin they refer to his KGB background ( rarely mentioned when George WH Bush , a former CIA chief ,was Vice President or President ) Gates replied next day, "As an old Cold Warrior, one of yesterday's speeches almost filled me with nostalgia for a less complex time," He paused for effect before adding, "Almost."

"And, I guess, old spies have a habit of blunt speaking," Gates said. "However, I have been to re-education camp — spending four and half years as a university president and dealing with faculty." His remark drew laughs and applause.

"Russia is a partner in endeavors," Gates added. "But we wonder, too, about some Russian policies that seem to work against international stability, such as its arms transfers and its temptation to use energy resources for political coercion." [ Really , What about invading Iraq to grab energy ?]

"All of these characterizations belong in the past," Gates said, and he listed some of them: "The free world versus those behind the Iron Curtain. North versus South. East versus West, and I am told that some have even spoken in terms of 'Old Europe' versus 'New.'" (It referred to remarks by his predecessor Donald Rumsfeld on Europe)

"The distinction I would draw is a very practical one — a realist's view perhaps," Gates said. "It is between alliance members who do all they can to fulfill collective commitments, and those who do not." He urged NATO allies to increase their military spending to meet the benchmark of two percent of gross domestic product set by the alliance; only six of NATO's 26 members fulfill that standard.

Digging old ghosts ie NATO's success in facing the Soviet threat, Gates stated that "it seems clear that totalitarianism was defeated as much by ideas the West championed then and now as by ICBMs, tanks and warships that the West deployed," Gates said. The alliance's most effective weapon, he said, was a "shared belief in political and economic freedom, religious toleration, human rights, representative government and the rule of law. These values kept our side united, and inspired those on the other side."

Gates added that the interceptor missiles and radar installations planned for Poland and the Czech Republic were not directed against Russia - it offered no protection against the Kremlin's arsenal of nuclear-tipped intercontinental rockets. Article continues

"This umbrella of protection unifies the alliance rather than divides it," he said.

Throughout his reply to Putin's commanding performance , Gates asked how America's European allies must help rebuild Afghanistan ( There are few takers for South Afghanistan.) and remain vigilant in the fight against global terrorism. He mentioned Putin only once by name ,to say he had accepted his invitation to visit Moscow.

Gates also referred to China, saying, "Looking eastward, China is a country at a strategic crossroads. All of us seek a constructive relationship with China, but we also wonder about strategic choices China may make. We note with concern their recent test of an anti-satellite weapon."

If the United States and its partners fail in Iraq, and chaos tears the nation apart, Gates warned, "every member of this alliance will feel the consequences" of regional turmoil and terrorism. He acknowledged the damage done to America's global standing by its conduct in the campaign against terrorism.

Sen. John McCain who was present in Munich described Putin's remarks as "the most aggressive speech from a Russian leader since the end of the Cold War." During his formal remarks later, McCain echoed the sentiments of several Americans in attendance, that Russia appeared to be turning more autocratic and its foreign policy was standing increasingly in opposition to Western democracies.

"Today's world is not unipolar," McCain said, disputing Putin's main theme. "In today's multipolar world, there is no need for pointless confrontation." [Sen. McCain remains a hawk on Iraq war ]

Reaction in Washington;

US spokesman Kurt Volker said he listened to Putin with a sense of disconnect from reality. "That was like a parallel universe. The rest of us were in there talking about common challenges," he said. Gordon Johndroe, President Bush's national security spokesman was "surprised and disappointed" by Putin's remarks. "His accusations are wrong," said Johndroe. But "We expect to continue cooperation with Russia in areas important to the international community such as counterterrorism and reducing the spread and threat of weapons of mass destruction," added Johndroe.

Stephen Sestanovich, Clinton's ambassador-at-large to states of the former Soviet Union said ;"Most Americans are not aware of how heated and agitated the Russians' discussions are about their relationship with the West." He added, "It may come as a surprise to Americans, but for the Russians, the rhetoric on these questions tends to be pretty grim, among the experts and regular folks, about the deterioration of the relationship.

"The theme is, 'We're tired of American hegemony, we're tired of being treated like a former superpower doormat, and we're back, and we're mad,' " Sestanovich said.

Prof Charles A. Kupchan of Georgetown University remarked "It's not just about U.S. foreign policy." "It's also about growing self-confidence in Russia, and Putin's determined effort to conduct a more muscular foreign policy, which is at least in part a byproduct of oil revenue," he said.

Why Russians dislike Washington;

The Soviet Union's collapse was ruthlessly exploited by US led West when its capitalist controlled media sang praises of economic reforms and democratization bringing economic disintegration and ruination to Russia .The worst kind of depression in modern history with economic losses more than twice those suffered by USSR in World War II. Russian GDP was trimmed to half and capital investment fell by 80 percent. People were reduced to penury and misery, death rates soared and the population shrank. And in August 1998, the Russian financial system collapsed.

Putin was appointed Prime Minister in 1999, then acting president. In the 2000 election, Putin took 53% of the vote in the first round and, four years later, he was re-elected with a landslide majority of 71%. After Putin took charge he arrested the decline , brought stability and security and consolidated the disintegrating core of the Russian state . The rise in energy prices , natural and a consequence of Iraq war has benefited Russia immensely .

Since 1999 Russian economy has averaged 6 to 7 annual growth, its gold and foreign currency reserves are the world's fifth largest. Moscow is booming with new construction, frenzied consumption of Western luxury goods , but over 60% Russians live below the poverty line. Still Putin's rule has brought stability and restored some sense of pride , and he remains very popular.

Stephen F. Cohen in an article "The New American Cold War " wrote in 10 July 2006 issue of US Magazine ,'The Nation" that since 1990s ,Washington has followed hypocritical policy of "strategic partnership and friendship," with Presidents being on first name basis but underneath, all US administrations have followed a ruthless policy of undermining Russia " accompanied by broken American promises, condescending lectures and demands for unilateral concessions. USA has been even more aggressive and uncompromising than was Washington's approach to the Soviet Communist Russia."

" A growing military encirclement of Russia, on and near its borders, by US and NATO bases, which are already ensconced or being planned in at least half the fourteen other former Soviet republics, from the Baltics and Ukraine to Georgia, Azerbaijan and the new states of Central Asia. The result is a US-built reverse iron curtain and the remilitarization of American-Russian relations.

" A tacit (and closely related) US denial that Russia has any legitimate national interests outside its own territory, even in ethnically akin or contiguous former republics such as Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia." Richard Holbrooke, Democratic a democrat Secretary of State in waiting roundly condemned Russia for promoting a pro-Moscow government in neighboring Ukraine, where Russia has centuries of shared linguistic, marital, religious, economic and security ties and declared ' that far-away Slav nation part of "our core zone of security."

"Even more, a presumption that Russia does not have full sovereignty within its own borders, as expressed by constant US interventions in Moscow's internal affairs since 1992. They have included an on-site crusade by swarms of American "advisers," particularly during the 1990s, to direct Russia's "transition" from Communism; endless missionary sermons from afar, often couched in threats, on how that nation should and should not organize its political and economic systems; and active support for Russian anti-Kremlin groups, some associated with hated Yeltsin-era oligarchs.

It was even suggested that Putin be overthrown by the kind of US-backed "color revolutions" carried out since 2003 in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, and attempted this year in Belarus. US corporate media 'increasingly call the Russian President "thug," "fascist" and "Saddam Hussein," one of the Carnegie Endowment's several Washington crusaders assures us of "Putin's weakness" and vulnerability to "regime change." (Do proponents of "democratic regime change" in Russia care what it might mean destabilizing a nuclear state?)

" Underpinning these components of the real US policy are familiar cold war double standards , condemning Moscow for doing what Washington does - such as seeking allies and military bases in former Soviet republics, using its assets (oil and gas in Russia's case) as aid to friendly governments and regulating foreign money in its political life.

"More broadly, when NATO expands to Russia's front and back doorsteps, gobbling up former Soviet-bloc members and republics, it is "fighting terrorism" and "protecting new states"; when Moscow protests, it is engaging in "cold war thinking." When Washington meddles in the politics of Georgia and Ukraine, it is "promoting democracy"; when the Kremlin does so, it is "neo-imperialism."

" And not to forget the historical background: When in the 1990s the US-supported Yeltsin overthrew Russia's elected Parliament and Constitutional Court by force, gave its national wealth and television networks to Kremlin insiders, imposed a constitution without real constraints on executive power and rigged elections, it was "democratic reform"; when Putin continues that process, it is "authoritarianism."

US has attempted by exploiting Russia's weakness, to acquire the nuclear superiority it could not achieve during the Soviet era. Washington unilaterally withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, in order to create a system capable of destroying incoming missiles and thereby the capacity to launch a nuclear first strike without fear of retaliation. US coerced Russia to sign an empty nuclear weapons reduction agreement without actual destruction of weapons or verification , but allowing US development of new ones, which Washington has announced.

" The extraordinarily anti-Russian nature of these policies casts serious doubt on two American official and media axioms: that the recent "chill" in US-Russian relations has been caused by Putin's behavior at home and abroad, and that the cold war ended fifteen years ago. The first axiom is false, the second only half true: The cold war ended in Moscow, but not in Washington."

"The crusade to transform Russia during the 1990s, with its disastrous "shock therapy" economic measures and resulting antidemocratic acts, further destabilized the country, fostering an oligarchical system that plundered the state's wealth, deprived essential infrastructures of investment, impoverished the people and nurtured dangerous corruption. In the process, it discredited Western-style reform, generated mass anti-Americanism where there had been almost none - only 5 percent of Russians surveyed in May (2006) thought the United States was a "friend" - and eviscerated the once-influential pro-American faction in Kremlin and electoral politics."

US leaders and media pretend that Washington has a "well-intentioned Russian policy," but "a Russian autocrat ... betrayed the American's faith." After a decade of broken US promises and Yeltsin's boozy compliance, Kremlin declared four years ago, in a Radio commentary "The era of Russian geopolitical concessions [is] coming to an end." (Looking back, the commentator remarked bitterly that Russia has been "constantly deceived.")

In the undeclared cold war now there are no structures for any substantive negotiations and cooperation, .The "dialogue is almost non-existent ," in regard to nuclear weapons after US's abandonment of the ABM treaty and real reductions, its decision to build an antimissile shield, and talk of pre-emptive war and nuclear strikes which had kept the nuclear peace for nearly fifty years are now open . Reportedly, Bush's National Security Council is contemptuous of arms control as a "baggage from the cold war." US editorial pages are dominated by resurgent cold war orthodoxies, with incessant demonization of Putin's "autocracy" and "crude neo-imperialism". It reads like a bygone Pravda on the Potomac.

So the discourses at Munich should surprise no one except hypocritical US leaders , its media and its Trojan horses in EU like, UK , Poland and the Czechs. Those in the Baltics and East Europe ,who decry past Soviet domination , would they have preferred Nazi victory and rule .In any case USA was not prepared to expend men and material to liberate East Europe and the Baltics from the Nazis. It were the Soviet people and its armed forces which destroyed 80% of Nazi military machine and sacrificed tens of millions of its citizens and military men. Hollywood only makes films of great US victories.

Arabs welcome Putin's Middle East visit;

Arab world has welcomed President Putin's Middle East visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan .Arab experts feel that the primary aim is to "send a message" to the US that Moscow has a key role to play in this vital region and that it is high time for Washington to give up its policies of domination and destruction.

"By carrying out this exceptional trip, I believe Putin is at pains to dispatch a message to the United States that the Middle East is not a backyard for Washington, but a vital area for the whole world," Faisal al-Rofou, head of the political science department at the University of Jordan, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. (In Jordan and most Arab countries such comments have the governments' approval)

Al-Rofou remarked that the Russian leader's Munich comments indicated Moscow was "fed up with the domination polices of George Bush. "

"Putin is heir to the legacy of a great state - the Soviet Union - and although Moscow's role has receded over the past few years, the Russian leader wants to say that it is high time for Moscow to play that great part again in the affairs of the Middle East and the world at large," he said. "Therefore , his Middle East trip seeks to drive the idea home that we are present in this part of the world and the United States should recognize others' interests in the region," he added.

Putin's visit would "add significance" to the agreement concluded in Mecca with Saudi brokerage between the key Palestinian factions of Fatah and Hamas. (Against Israeli protests Moscow had received a Hamas delegation , soon after it won in a free democratic election.)

"I believe the accord will figure largely in Putin's talks with Saudi leaders and the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas," he said. Abbas is scheduled to meet with Putin in Amman on 13 February. Palestinian diplomats expected the Mecca declaration to be high on the agenda during the meeting.

"We count on the Russian support for ensuring a lift of the Western embargo that was imposed on the Palestinian Authority in March" in the wake of the landslide victory scored by Hamas , al-Rofou said.

During the last Mideast Quartet meeting in Washington at the beginning of this month, the Russian delegate urged a speedy end of the boycott of the Hamas-led government which he said came to office through the ballots. [US led West remains opposed to Hamas as only pro-West puppets are acceptable. So much for Western proclaimed love for democracy.] Besides Russia, the quartet also includes the US, the E U and the U. N.

Qadri Saeed, at the Cairo-based al-Ahram Strategic Studies, believes that Moscow "stood a good chance of influencing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through its balanced ties with both Fatah and Hamas on one side and between the Palestinians and Israel on the other".

"In face of the receding US influence in the region due to setbacks in Iraq and other areas, the Russians now feel they can occupy the ensuing vacuum in the region," he concluded.


K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador (retired), served as ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan from August 1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served terms as ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal. He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies. Copy right with the author. E-mail: Gajendrak@hotmail.com

Unilateral force has nothing to do with global democracy: Vladimir Putin

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Speech at the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy 02/10/2007
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The US has overstepped its borders in every way. We must build a new world order to ensure security and prosperity for all

Vladimir Putin
Tuesday February 13, 2007
The Guardian

The universal, indivisible character of security can be expressed as the basic principle that "security for one is security for all". As Franklin D Roosevelt said at the onset of the second world war: "When peace has been broken anywhere, the peace of all countries is in danger."

These words remain relevant today. Only two decades ago the world was ideologically and economically divided and it was the huge strategic potential of two superpowers that ensured global security. This global standoff pushed the sharpest economic and social problems to the margins of the world's agenda. And, just like any war, the cold war left behind live ammunition, figuratively speaking. It left ideological stereotypes, double standards and other remnants of cold war thinking.

What then is a unipolar world? However one might embellish this term, at the end of the day it describes a scenario in which there is one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making. It is a world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And this is pernicious, not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within. And this, certainly, has nothing in common with democracy. Because democracy is the power of the majority in the light of the interests and opinions of the minority.

We, Russia, are constantly being taught about democracy. But for some reason those who teach us do not want to learn themselves. I believe that unipolarity is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today's world. The model itself is flawed: at its root it provides no moral foundations for modern civilisation. But witnessed in today's world is a tendency to introduce precisely this concept into international affairs, the concept of a unipolar world. And with which results?

Unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any problems. Moreover, they have caused new human tragedies and created new centres of tension. Judge for yourselves: wars as well as local and regional conflicts have not diminished. And even more are dying than before. Many more.

Today we are witnessing an almost unrestrained hyper-use of force - military force - in international relations, a force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts. As a result we do not have sufficient strength to find a comprehensive solution to any one of these conflicts. Finding a political settlement also becomes impossible. We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. One country, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations.

This force's dominance inevitably encourages a number of countries to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, threats such as terrorism have now taken on a global character. I am convinced that we have reached that decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security. And we must proceed by searching for a reasonable balance between the interests of all participants in the international dialogue. Especially since the international landscape is so varied and is changing so quickly.

The need for principles such as openness, transparency and predictability in politics is uncontested and the use of force should be a truly exceptional measure, comparable to using the death penalty in the judicial systems of certain states. However, today we are witnessing the opposite tendency, namely a situation in which countries that forbid the death penalty even for murderers and other dangerous criminals are airily participating in military operations that are difficult to consider legitimate. And yet the fact is that these conflicts are killing people - civilians - in their hundreds and thousands.

At the same time we face the question of whether we should remain unmoved by various internal conflicts inside countries, authoritarian regimes, tyrants, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Can we be indifferent observers? Of course not. But I am convinced that the only mechanism that can make decisions about using military force as a last resort is the charter of the United Nations. The use of force can only be considered legitimate if the decision is sanctioned by the UN.

Another important theme that directly affects global security is the struggle against poverty. On the one hand, financial resources are allocated for programmes to help the world's poorest countries - sometimes substantial financial resources (which tend to be linked with the development of that same donor country's companies). And on the other hand, developed countries simultaneously retain their agricultural subsidies while limiting some countries' access to hi-tech products.

And let's say things as they are - one hand distributes charitable help and the other hand not only preserves economic backwardness, but also reaps the profits thereof. The increasing social tension in depressed regions inevitably results in the growth of radicalism, extremism, feeds terrorism and local conflicts. And if all this happens in, say, a region such as the Middle East, where there is increasingly the sense that the world at large is unfair, then there is the risk of global destabilisation.

It is obvious that the world's leading countries should see this threat. And that they should therefore build a more democratic, fairer system of global economic relations, a system that would give everyone the chance and the possibility to develop.

Russia is a country with a history that spans more than a thousand years and has practically always exercised its prerogative to carry out an independent foreign policy. We are not going to change this tradition today. At the same time, we are well aware of how the world has changed and we have a realistic sense of our own opportunities and potential. And of course we would like to interact with responsible and independent partners with whom we could work together in constructing a fair and democratic world order that would ensure security and prosperity not only for a select few, but for all.

· This is an edited extract from a speech delivered on Saturday by the Russian president at the 43rd Munich conference on security policy securityconference.de

Does Putin Not Have a Point?

by Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted 02/13/2007 ET

"A soft answer turneth away wrath," teaches Proverbs 1:15.

Our new secretary of defense, Roberts Gates, seems familiar with the verse. For his handling of Saturday's wintry blast from Vladimir Putin at the Munich security conference was masterful.

"As an old Cold Warrior, one of yesterday's speeches almost filled me with nostalgia for a less complex time," said Gates, adding, "Almost." A former director of the CIA, Gates went on to identify with Putin: "I have, like your second speaker yesterday ... a career in the spy business. And I guess old spies have a habit of blunt speaking.

"However, I have been to re-education camp, spending the last four-and-a-half years as a university president and dealing with faculty. And as more than a few university presidents have learned in recent years, when it comes to faculty it is either 'be nice' or 'be gone.'"

Gates added he would be going to Moscow to talk with the old KGB hand, who will be retiring as Russia's president around the time President Bush goes home to Crawford. Excellent.

For one of the historic blunders of this administration has been to antagonize and alienate Russia, the winning of whose friendship was a signal achievement of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. And one of the foreign policy imperatives of this nation is for statesmanship to repair the damage.

What did we do to antagonize Russia?

When the Cold War ended, we seized upon our "unipolar moment" as the lone superpower to seek geopolitical advantage at Russia's expense.

Though the Red Army had picked up and gone home from Eastern Europe voluntarily, and Moscow felt it had an understanding we would not move NATO eastward, we exploited our moment. Not only did we bring Poland into NATO, we brought in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and virtually the whole Warsaw Pact, planting NATO right on Mother Russia's front porch. Now, there is a scheme afoot to bring in Ukraine and Georgia in the Caucasus, the birthplace of Stalin.

Second, America backed a pipeline to deliver Caspian Sea oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey, to bypass Russia.

Third, though Putin gave us a green light to use bases in the old Soviet republics for the liberation of Afghanistan, we now seem hell-bent on making those bases in Central Asia permanent.

Fourth, though Bush sold missile defense as directed at rogue states like North Korea, we now learn we are going to put anti-missile systems into Eastern Europe. And against whom are they directed?

Fifth, through the National Endowment for Democracy, its GOP and Democratic auxiliaries, and tax-exempt think tanks, foundations and "human rights" institutes such as Freedom House, headed by ex-CIA director James Woolsey, we have been fomenting regime change in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet republics and Russia herself.

U.S.-backed revolutions have succeeded in Serbia, Ukraine and Georgia, but failed in Belarus. Moscow has now legislated restrictions on the foreign agencies that it sees, not without justification, as subversive of pro-Moscow regimes.

Sixth, America conducted 78 days of bombing of Serbia for the crime of fighting to hold on to her rebellious province, Kosovo, and for refusing to grant NATO marching rights through her territory to take over that province. Mother Russia has always had a maternal interest in the Orthodox states of the Balkans.

These are Putin's grievances. Does he not have a small point?

Joe Lieberman denounced Putin's "Cold War rhetoric." But have we not been taking what cannot unfairly be labeled Cold War actions?

How would we react if China today brought Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela into a military alliance, convinced Mexico to sell oil to Beijing and bypass the United States, and began meddling in the affairs of Central America and Caribbean countries to effect the electoral defeat of regimes friendly to the United States? How would we react to a Russian move to put anti-missile missiles on Greenland?

Gates says we have been through one Cold War and do not want another. But it is not Moscow moving a military alliance right up to our borders or building bases and planting anti-missile systems in our front and back yards.

Why are we doing this? This country is not going to go to war with Russia over Estonia. With our Army "breaking" from two insurgencies, how would we fight? By bombing Moscow and St. Petersburg?

Just as we deluded ourselves into believing this war would be a "cakewalk," that democracy would break out across the Middle East, that we would be beloved in Baghdad, so America today has undertaken commitments, dating to the Cold War and since, we do not remotely have the resources or will to fulfill. We are living in a world of self-delusion.

Somewhere in this presidential campaign, someone has to bring us back to earth. The halcyon days of American Empire are over.

Patrick J. Buchanan (more by this author)

Putin blasts U.S. for its use of force

By DAVID RISING, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 37 minutes ago

Russian President Vladimir Putin blasted the United States Saturday for the "almost uncontained" use of force in the world, and for encouraging other countries to acquire nuclear weapons.

In what his spokesman acknowledged were his harshest attacks on the U.S. since taking office in 2000, Putin also criticized U.S. plans for missile defense systems and NATO's expansion.

Putin told a security forum attracting top officials that "we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations" and that "one state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way.

"This is very dangerous, nobody feels secure anymore because nobody can hide behind international law," Putin told the gathering.

Putin did not elaborate on specifics and did not mention the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.

But he voiced concern about U.S. plans to build a missile defense system in eastern Europe — likely in Poland and the Czech Republic — and the expansion of NATO as possible challenges to Russia.

On the missile defense system, Putin said: "I don't want to accuse anyone of being aggressive" but suggested it would seriously change the balance of power and could provoke an unspecified response.

"That balance will be upset completely and one side will have a feeling of complete security and given a free hand in local, and probably in global, conflicts..." he said. "We need to respond to this."

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (news, bio, voting record), D-Conn., said the charge that the U.S. "aspired to get unipolar power or acted unilaterally is just not borne out by the facts."

"Even our involvement in Iraq, certainly Afghanistan, is pursuant to United Nations resolutions," Lieberman said at the conference. "So that was provocative and wrong."

Asked if he had any reaction to Putin's charges, Defense Secretary Robert Gates just shook his head and said no.

Putin's spokesman Dimitry Peskov said the Russian leader did not intend to be confrontational, but acknowledged it was his harshest criticism of the United States since he was elected in March 2000.

Putin also criticized NATO expansion.

"The process of NATO expansion has nothing to do with modernization of the alliance or with ensuring security in Europe," Putin said. "On the contrary, it is a serious factor provoking reduction of mutual trust."

Putin's comments to a weekend forum attended by 250 officials, including Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, came after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the international community is determined to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Merkel said Tehran needed to accept demands made by the U.N. and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

"There is no way around this," Merkel said. "What we are talking about here is a very, very sensitive technology, and for that reason we need a high degree of transparency, which Iran has failed to provide, and if Iran does not do so then the alternative for Iran is to slip further into isolation."

Merkel, whose country holds the rotating European Union presidency, emphasized the international community's support for Israel and said there was a unified resolve to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

"We are determined to prevent the threat posed by an Iranian military nuclear program," she said.

The annual Munich Conference on Security Policy, now in its 43rd year, is often used as an opportunity for officials to conduct diplomacy in an informal setting.

Some 3,500 police were on hand to provide tight security for the conference and kept the usual throng of demonstrators away. This year, several thousand protesters were expected, protest organizers said.

Heading in to the conference, Larijani, who is scheduled to speak on Sunday, said he planned to use the conference as an opportunity to talk about Iran's nuclear program. Those would be the first talks with Western officials since limited U.N. sanctions were imposed on the country in December, which fell short of harsher measures sought by the United States.

Larijani was expected to meet with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Javier Solana, the EU's chief foreign policy envoy.

At the opening dinner on Friday, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni urged international solidarity in putting pressure on Iran to prevent it from producing a nuclear weapon.

"It is a regime that mocks the Holocaust while threatening the world with a new one, while trying to develop a weapon to do so," she said. "Iran is a threat not only to Israel ... but to the world. The international community cannot show any hesitation ... Any hesitation on our part is being perceived as weakness."

The conference this year focuses on "Global Crises — Global Responsibilities," looking at NATO's changing role, the Middle East peace process, the West's relations with Russia and the fight against terrorism.

Merkel opened the conference telling the delegates that one of the major threats facing the world today is global warming, urging a combined effort to combat it.

"Global warming is one of the major medium- to long-term threats that could have a dramatic effect," Merkel said.

Gates, who planned to talk Sunday on trans-Atlantic relations, was expected to press allies for more troops and aid for a spring offensive in Afghanistan.

He delivered the message Friday to a NATO defense minister's meeting in Seville, Spain, but got a lukewarm response.

France and Germany are questioning the wisdom of sending more soldiers, while Spain, Italy and Turkey have also been wary of providing more troops.