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Putin Defends Russian Foreign Policy
by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700
Copyright
December 3, 2014
All Rights Reserved.
Preaching to the choir in the gilded halls of the Kremlin,
62-year-old Vladimir Putin defended Russia’s aggressive foreign policy, seizing
Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula March 1. Presenting Russia as under siege by
the West, while not naming the U.S., Putin justified his action in Crimea,
referring to Crimea as Russia’s ”Temple Mount”—the sacred Muslim site in Eastern
part of Jerusalem’s Old City. Putin’s seizure of Crimea came only one week
after the end of the Sochi Winter Olympics or two weeks after pro-Western
protesters toppled the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukoich Feb. 22.
Calling Crimea “our Temple |Mount,” Putin signaled to Ukraine that under his
rule Russia has no intent of returning the territory to Ukraine. Both
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Prime |Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk
reject Putin’s unlawful seizure of Crimea, violating every known international
principle governing Ukraine\s sovereignty.
Putin's Sevastapol Black
Sea navy base and his intent to control the region are the primary reasons for
seizing Crimea, not some phony link to “Temple Mount.” Calling Crimea “a
necessary condition for the survival” of Russia,” Putin promotes his paranoic
view of Russia’s siege mentality, needed to justify Russia’s growing isolation
with the West. Putin’s pro-Western predecessors, Soviet Premier |Mikhail
Gorbachev and Russian Federation’s First |President Boris Yeltsin, worked hard
for the democratic reforms that eventually led to the end of the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev and Yeltsin were committed to ending Soviet’s totalitarian rule,
opening up Russian markets to the global economy. Since taking office May
7, 2000, Putin’s been committed to one thing: Reestablishing his absolute
power and Russia’s new totalitarian state. Putin’s first order of business
was destroying Russia’s fledgling free press and controlling the national
message.
Since slapped with U.S.
and European |Union sanctions after seizing Crimea, foreign capital investment
headed for the exits, dropping the ruble and Russian stock market, pushing the
country into recession in 2015. Putin takes no responsibility for driving
away foreign investment and harming the Russian economy. His formula for
the Russian economy is exactly the opposite of Gorbachev and Yeltsin:
Become more “self-sufficient,” a euphemism for isolation. Since seizing
Crimea, Putin has tried to ink deals with China, India, Serbia, North Korea,
Kazachstan and a host of other developing countries, hoping to compensate for
potentially lost revenue from breaking off economic ties to the West.
Putin’s biggest client in the EU, Germany, has told Putin in no uncertain terms
to return Crimea and stop meddling in the Ukraine. Putin’s annual speech shows
no signs of heeding German Chancellor Angela |Merkel’s requests.
Controlling the airwaves
through government news sources Tass and Pravda, Putin pushes his pernicious
propaganda that Russia remains under siege from the West. If Russians had
any access to anything other than Putin’s propaganda, they’d know that they’re
under Putin’s siege. He blames all Russian economic failure and national
privation on the West, principally the U.S. Russian citizens old enough to
remember recall the endless Soviet propaganda against the U.S. Today’s
message from Merkel put a crack in Putin’s attempt to blame all of Russia’s
economic woes on the U.S. Speaking at the Brandenburg Gate Nov. 9 on the
25th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, once dividing East [Soviet] and
West Berlin, Merkel asked Germans and the EU to remember the price of freedom
from the former Soviet slave state. Growing up in Soviet East Berlin,
Merkel knows firsthand the impoverished Soviet lifestyle.
Putin’s shared his old
school approach to East-West politics. “If for many European countries,
sovereignty and national pride are forgotten concepts and a luxury, then for the
Russian Federation a true sovereignty is an absolute necessary condition of its
existence,” Putin told Kremlin officials, sounding the same nationalistic cords
at Hitler’s Third Reich. Putin believes the soft societies of the West are
no match for his single-minded focus of Russian military domination.
Looking at the situation in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe, there’s
no counterbalance to Putin’s military, currently intimidating former Soviet
satellites and meddling in Ukraine’s internal affairs. “I want to stress:
Either we will be sovereign or we will dissolve into the world. And, of
course, other nations must understand this as well,” said Putin, making no sense
but promoting his paranoid view that Russian sovereignty involves disrespecting
its neighbors.
Putin’s aggressive foreign
policy guarantees that Russia will no longer take part in Western economic
prosperity. No Western country—including former Soviet satellites now
independent—can tolerate Putin’s idea of encroaching on sovereign and
independent states. “No one will succeed in defeating Russian militarily,”
said Putin, promoting his sick view that the West seeks to topple Russia.
What the West seeks and expects is Russia’s respect of the sovereignty and
territorial integrity of former Soviet states. “They would have been
delighted to let us go the way of Yugoslavia and the dismemberment of the
Russian peoples, with all the tragic consequences. But it did not happen.
We did not allow it to happen,” conveying Putin’s tortured logic. He wants
Russia to believe that the West seeks to break up the Russian federation.
Judging by Putin’s speech, the U.S. and EU have a lot of work to prevent the
next Crimea.
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