The Russian Question
What's Obama's answer?
by
Justin Raimondo
by Justin Raimondo
DIGG THIS
 The
Obama-oids aren't talking too much about foreign policy these days,
although that was their candidate's ticket
to the White House. Iraq was the winning issue that gave Obama's
primary campaign the oomph it needed to oust the putative front-runner
from her perch as the anointed one, but it fails to evoke the interest
it once did on account of the rapid
deterioration of the economy. It doesn't matter that the costs
of the Iraq and Afghan wars amount to at
least three more bank bailouts – and you can throw in what's
left of the American auto industry for good measure.
For all the
focus
on domestic politics and economics, the rest of the world has a
way of intruding without much regard for our schedule or context.
The announcement of Obama's victory was still reverberating globally,
amid a chorus of media-hyped
hosannas, when Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made a speech
in which Obama was not so much as alluded to: instead, the stern-faced
successor to Vladimir Putin delivered
a tongue-lashing in which he described the global financial crisis
as having started as "a local extraordinary event in the U.S.
markets," the result of "erroneous, egotistical, and sometimes
even dangerous decisions by some members of the global community,"
i.e., the West. This was prefaced by a declaration that "to
neutralize – if necessary – the anti-missile system, an Iskander
missile system will be deployed in the Kaliningrad region. Naturally,
we also consider using for the same purpose the resources of Russia's
navy."
The "anti-missile
system" Medvedev is here referring to is an untested
and quite
expensive new weapon being marketed to our Eastern European
NATO partners, with huge profits for U.S. manufacturers. The old
Committee
to Expand NATO was basically a front for these interests. Their
victory in getting the former Warsaw Pact admitted to the club was
sweetened by the agreement to install the missile shield in Poland
and the Czech
Republic, which means billions for the U.S. arms
industry, the only sector that's prospering in these hard times.
It also marks the crowning provocation of a whole series of hostile
acts aimed at the Kremlin, which Medvedev had no choice but to reply
to in the way he did.
The Medvedev
speech wasn't very good public relations, at least in the West,
but the Russians are less concerned about what the editorial page
of the Washington
Post has to say on the subject than what to say to their
own people as the West draws nearer to the Kremlin's very doorstep.
Shielded behind a sophisticated, albeit untested, anti-missile system,
NATO forces stationed in Poland could take out Moscow in minutes.
No Russian government can permit that condition to long endure.
What we know
of Obama's views on Russia are not encouraging. In his infomercial,
he vowed
to "curb Russian aggression." This was a reference to
the Russo-Georgian war, which John McCain made the signature
issue of his foreign policy stance, and Obama joined with the
Republican candidate in condemning Russian "aggression."
Read
the rest of the article
November
11, 2008
Justin
Raimondo [send him mail]
is editorial director of Antiwar.com and is the author of An
Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard and Reclaiming
the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement.
Copyright
© 2008 Antiwar.com
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