Continuing with our global coverage of President Obama’s decision to scrap Bush-era missile shield plans for Eastern Europe (more from Poland, Germany and France later this evening), we just posted something by Alexander Golz of Russia’s Yezhednevniy Zhurnal that is likely to surprise many American cable news viewers.
What people of the neocon persuasion are calling the mistake of an amateur is being described by some Russian news outlets as a monumental foreign policy coup for the young president.
For the Yezhednevniy Zhurnal, Alexander Golz writes in part:
“Now, let the happiness commence. The Americans have decided to abandon the type of missile defense deployment that so irritated Moscow. But it would be interesting to know whether they are drinking champagne in the offices of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Or, perhaps, they are quietly cursing those treacherous Yankees who have once and for all managed to get the ball on our side of the court. … We said, ‘Let the Americans give up their missile defense program first’. And so it has happened – they have given it up. … This major diplomatic ‘victory’ denies Moscow what it had considered its most important foreign policy trump card.”
Proposing a new plan of action for frustrated Russian diplomats, Golz suggests:
“However, another option is possible: we can invent a new reason to be offended by the United States. It’s clear that in principle, the U.S. won’t abandon its anti-ballistic missile program (and that it will continue with two sites – in Alaska and California). All that will change is its structure. There is, for example, talk of making the main element of the program AEGIS-equipped ships with “Standard-3″ missile interceptors. Why not announce that the inevitable concentration of U.S. naval power “near our borders” is a threat? We could the complete dismantlement of the U.S. ABM program. We could demand the closure of American bases in Bulgaria and Romania. Many things could be invented if there is a desire to do so.”
By Alexander Golz
Translated By Yekaterina Blinova
September 18, 2009
Russia – Yezhednevniy Zhurnal – Original Article (Russian)
Fear to dream, because dreams sometimes come true. The disgraced are those who for the past few years have asserted that Moscow has had no foreign policy successes, but rather an increasing number of failures. Just recently, Russia did indeed have a great diplomatic victory. Judging by press reports, the American administration will declare the indefinite freeze (and even abandonment) of plans to install elements of a global anti-missile shield in Poland and Czech Republic. For the past few years, the prospects of a so-called “third missile defense site” in the immediate proximity of Russia has been the main splinter in Moscow-Washington relations.
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