Has the United States intentionally undermined the dream of a ‘single economic apace from Lisbon to Vladivostok’ by creating turmoil in Ukraine? For Izvestia, columnist Vladimir Zharkhin accuses an ‘envious’ United States with doing everything it can to keep itself from being sidelined by stoking tensions between Europe and Russia – and President Obama with being overcome by ‘childish’ emotions toward a ‘strong, successful, and very popular’ President Putin.

For Izvestia, Vladimir Zharkhin writes in part:

After centuries of almost continuous warfare among one another and the two global battles of the 20th century that were first ignited in Europe, a half century of respite has allowed Europe to unite and turn into an oasis of relative peace compared to the destruction and instability on other continents.

 

Moreover, the idea of a single economic apace “from Lisbon to Vladivostok” would create an enormous self-sufficient single market and an incomparable concentration of financial, technological, intellectual, and natural resources.

 

That notion, however, suggests that the United States would be sidelined from European affairs and its dominant role in the Atlantic Alliance eliminated, with the American economy consigned to the periphery of world development.

 

The undermining of these plans for European and Eurasian integration was executed by the Americans both precisely and effectively. The Ukrainian state had an inherent weakness associated with the historic clash between its eastern and western regions.

 

Here though, to create a hotspot for many years to come right in the middle of Europe; to halt its industry, render its debts unpayable, and destroy the state of Ukraine, turning it into the Somalia of Europe, all in the name of the long term interests of the United States, is extremely risky.

 

Even in the midst of the Snowden epic, Barack Obama’s childish emotions atracted attention. Snowden, the prodigy, fled to Russia, just as Gordievsky, Suvorov and Kalugin fled from us. These are the kinds of people involved with intelligence activities who from time to time defect to the other side.

 

But it never occurred to our general secretaries or presidents to use such events as a pretext for canceling meetings with American leaders out of anger, or ground and search the aircraft of Latin American heads of state. It is not the way of great leaders to squabble over such trivia and lose face! Further actions by the American administration to discredit the Sochi Olympics, and even more so, in their destabilization of Ukraine, show that a personal and emotional component to Obama’s actions have prevailed over reason and caution.

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WILLIAM KERN (Worldmeets.US)

Founder and Managing Editor of Worldmeets.US

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