Vladimir Putin Takes on a Powerless West

[Purveyor]

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin approached the crisis in Georgia coolly and efficiently, prompting admiration even from some American observers. But Moscow's brutal strike against Georgian President Saakashvili has divided the Western world, with the split running straight through the European Union.

Russia's rebirth begins at 5 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2000, in a musty, inconspicuous room in the small Chechen city of Gudermes, on the highway between the capital Grozny and the coastline of the Caspian Sea.

A leaden darkness hangs over Gudermes, with only occasional gunfire erupting from the sky over Chechnya's embattled capital. At this hour, just as Europe is going to bed, a short, wiry man in a blue windbreaker is speaking to a select group of soldiers and officers of the 42nd Motor Rifle Division. "You are defending more than Russia's dignity and honor in Chechnya. You are also here to stop the disintegration of our country," says the guest, speaking in a biting voice, a cold, fishlike look in his eyes. The man from faraway Moscow, who is not yet particularly well-known at this point, is Vladimir Putin.

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It is the hour of the beginning of Russia's comeback as a major power and of the unparalleled career of a man who his patron, former St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, accurately described in this way: "He is tough as nails and sees his decisions through to the end."

Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, which translates as "Rule the Caucasus," is only 120 kilometers west of Gudermes. The early morning New Year's Day scene in 2000 repeats itself there on Aug. 9. Once again, Vladimir Putin has flown in unannounced. The Russians thought he was at the Olympics in faraway Beijing, where they saw him on television the night before, chatting with United States President George W. Bush and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. And now, suddenly, here he is in Vladikavkaz.

This time Putin is wearing a white windbreaker, as a group of women, refugees from South Ossetia listen, spellbound, to what he has to say. The war in neighboring Georgia, triggered a day earlier by a massive rocket and tank offensive against the autonomous region of the South Ossetians by Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili's army, has forced tens of thousands of terrified civilians across Georgia's northern border into Russia.

They tell Putin, now Russia's prime minister, who sees himself as the patron saint of the small province, about the harm the Georgians have done to their homeland, and they too derive new courage from Putin, with his biting voice. He tells them that the Georgians' behavior is "a crime," that after this act of "aggression" it will be difficult to imagine South Ossetia remaining part of Georgia, and that Russia will do everything to protect the Ossetians.

MORE...

DER SPIEGEL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,572811,00.html

[bemildred]

1. More propaganda.

Skip the bullshit and give us the news.

[Purveyor]

2. It was categorized correctly and no one forced to you click on the link. Further,

I will continue to post articles from various foreign sources that some may consider 'propaganda' unless I'm instructed to stop by forum management.

Some of us find it enlighting to read other reports and opinions from sources other than the US MSM.

Now scurry on over to faux knews and read your so-called "real news".

Have a good evening.

[bemildred]

4. Not addressing you, addressing Der Spiegel.

Post all you like, anything you like.

[bemildred]

7. You are right, some of it is good. It's not so bad.

But some of the language still annoys me.

[Xipe Totec]

3. LOL!

I gather you've never heard of Der Spiegel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Spiegel

Go back to watching FOX for "the news"

[bemildred]

5. I am well acquainted with Der Spiegel.

They posted lots of pro-war and anti-Arab crap back in the run-up to the Iraq war too.

[Demeter]

6. The Headline Is Completely Accurate

And Putin is having a ball rubbing W's face in his own mess...

[bemildred]

8. "Powerless" seems an exaggeration.

I can go for "divided", "caught flat-footed", "hoist by their own petard", stuff like that.

This is annoying:

"American Caucasus strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski has drawn parallels to Stalin and Hitler, equating the Russian invasion of a neighboring country with the Soviet winter war of 1940, when Moscow sought to undermine the sovereignty of small, sovereign Finland."

These are good:

"President Bush calls the Russian invasion "inappropriate and unacceptable." Ralph Peters, a former lieutenant colonel in the US Army, who was invited to speak before the conservative American Enterprise Institute, calls the same action "brilliant." The headline in the Wall Street Journal read "Vladimir Bonaparte."

"Whether we like it or not, Putin will undoubtedly go down in history as one of his country's great leaders," says Clifford Gaddy, the leading Russia expert in Washington, who works for the liberal Brookings Institution and occasionally advises President Bush."

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"But this means nothing less than that the premises of American foreign policy, from former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton to the current President Bush, were wrong, says Talbott. This policy was always based on the assumption, according to Talbott, that Russia wanted to allow itself to be integrated into the existing Western architecture, including NATO, the Group of Eight (G-8) Industrialized Nations, the World Trade Organization and, in the end, perhaps even the European Union. "Now we know that this premise is wrong.""

I think Todd, below, characterizes this better than this Spiegel piece, but it's close.

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"US Vice President Richard Cheney proved to be the supreme windbag when he said that the invasion "must not go unanswered," even though everyone in Washington knows that the only answer will be grim non-action."

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And here's a link to an excerpt from "After the Empire" written in 2002:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=3807942#3809812

[Demeter]

9. Well, Yes, We Could Always Nuke Someone

But diplomatically, morally and now historically, the US hasn't a leg to stand on, nor an army to back its policy up.

Whatever the US had, Bush has squandered, stolen or destroyed.

[bemildred]

10. Well, that's true.

But he is not the only self-serving dummy in the World, we have to wait and see what other peoples decide to do. And the US is still a rich nation, in the natural sense, a continental power, in (some of) it's people, all those sharp well-educated immigrants, the remnants of the old bourgeois and working class. I was born at the end of WWII, I remember when this country was still a great nation and these weasels had not run it into the ground with their money-grubbing and war-mongering. We still pump a lot of our own oil, far more than most countries use. It's our government and our ruling elites that are a disaster.