Putin and the West
- By Zhao Jinglun
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E-mail China.org.cn, March 20, 2014
Russian President Vladimir Putin is the man Western officials and media have loved to hate. But Putin has always wanted to be part of the West. It was the West -- the United States and NATO that drove him into a corner. "If you press a spring too hard" as Putin put it, "it will recoil."
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Russian president Vladimir Putin welcomed members of the "Republic of Crimea." |
When Putin was elected Russian president in 2000, he pursued a foreign policy with a pro-Western orientation. When terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, Putin was the first foreign leader to call George W. Bush to offer support for his "war on terror," forming the strongest bond with Washington since World War II.
He offered to help with Bush's invasion of Afghanistan by letting U.S. supplies through Russian territory and did not object to the United States setting up bases in Central Asia.
Putin also dismantled Russia's electronic surveillance center in Lourdes, Cuba and closed its naval base at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam.
What he got in return was Bush tearing up the ABM treaty and NATO expansion in the Baltics and the Balkans, and deployment of military infrastructure on Russia's borders.
At the same time, the United States engineered the independence of Kosovo from Serbia and "color revolutions" in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, and even funded opposition groups (the "fifth column," as Putin calls them) in Russia itself, not to say Chinese dissidents. And the West probed Russia's firm red lines, talking about drawing Georgia and Ukraine into NATO.
Obama's "reset" is half-hearted at best, as Washington has never given up its strategy of encircling Russia and pressing hard on the Kremlin. What has been "reset" is Obama's attempt to "re-normalize" relations with Russia: Washington will engage Moscow in areas where their interests converge -- such as in Afghanistan and a new START treaty. More recently, they worked together to rid Syria of chemical weapons and forge an interim nuclear deal with Iran. But more generalized cooperation failed.
