| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| A War of Values With Russia |
| 2015-04-21 |
| COPENHAGEN – Russian authorities recently threatened to aim nuclear missiles at Danish warships if Denmark joins NATO’s missile-defense system. This was obviously an outrageous threat against a country that has no intention of attacking Russia. But it also reflects a more fundamental factor in the Kremlin’s foreign policy: desperation to maintain Russia’s strategic influence at a time of unprecedented challenges to its authority. Of course, Russia’s leaders know very well that NATO’s missile defense is not directed at their country. When I served as NATO Secretary General from 2009 to 2014, we repeatedly emphasized that the purpose was to defend Alliance members from threats originating outside the Euro-Atlantic area. Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of physics and engineering – two subjects at which Russians excel – can see that the system is designed to do precisely that. Russia’s nuclear threats, against Denmark and others, are the hallmark of a weak country in economic, demographic and political decline. NATO has not aggressively victimized Russia, as Kremlin propaganda claims. The current conflict between Russia and the West – centered on the crisis in Ukraine – is, at its core, a clash of values. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #2 interesting and well-thought piece. Yes, Russia does know that nothing is directed at undermining its sovereignty, if NATO or the US had wanted to do that, it had the entire decade of the 1990s when the Berlin wall had fallen and it was in a weakened state. So it is not just a lie but a knowing lie - a deliberate propaganda falsehood. however this does expose also the problem that we cannot any more lay claim to be liberal democracies. This was the very great danger of that nasty web of legislation that has been rammed through the parliaments of all the five-eyes alliance countries in the last year, under the pretense of fighting Islamofascism (it was not mentioned or targeted). That legislation was a response to edward snowden. It criminalised journalists. It criminalised whistleblowers. It gave unlimited powers to spies, police and affiliates and subcontractors to knowingly break the law but to enjoy immunity from prosecution. In Australia that became law last October - once the Minister declares a Special Intelligence Operation, they can break the law with full legal immunity. They will not even appear in a court. If you are the victim you cannot even tell your lawyer what happened to you. You go to court and they won't appear to be cross-examined instead ASIO will present an "evidenciary certificate" that the court is forced to accept as prima facie evidence. The court also lost the power to reject evidence that was illegally obtained in the SIO. goodbye right to a fair trial - that is more like what we think of when we think of Putin's Russia. But it was oassed here in Australia in October, with similar laws passed in Canada, Britain, New Zealand and I'm betting the US, too. This was the same tranche of legislation that legalised wholesale government spying of all your emails and phonecalls, without a warrant. And to track your whereabouts also without a warrant. No judicial oversight. So we have turned our liberal democracies into panopticon spy states. This is what edward snowden was warning us that the government was doing illegally - well they've just rammed through the legislation to make it all legal. How can you have a functioning liberal democracy? You cannot. If any politician looks like they are getting popular, forming a party, and the spy community doesn't like them or their politics, they will simply create a dirt file on them and leak it and do the same for their key lieutenants. Nobody would ever know and if they did it would be illegal to tell anyone. So we now only get the rulers that have been pre-approved for us by the bureaucrats and spies. We are no more free than Putin's russia - it's just the bars are well-hidden. This was the very great danger that came of those rights-destroying laws. And let's not forget where it came from: the original lie that we were only fighting "terrorists" and not "Islamofascists". Because we could not name the enemy we all of us every one became an equal suspect. This is why "profiling" is so necessary - but now it is too late, we've already self-destructed. |
| Posted by: anon1 2015-04-21 06:23 |
| #1 Of course, Russia’s leaders know very well that NATO’s missile defense is not directed at their country. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2015-04-21 01:48 |