Trash Talk with Condi: the Wicked Witch of the West

Trash Talk with Condi: the Wicked Witch of the West

"What has become clear is that the legitimate goal of rebuilding Russia has taken a dark turn - with the rollback of personal freedoms, the arbitrary enforcement of the law [and] the pervasive corruption at various levels of Russian society," she said. Russia's leaders were risking the future progress of the Russian people, she said, declaring that Russia's leaders "are putting Russia on a one-way path to self-imposed isolation and international irrelevance".

Here's a very nice rebuttal to Condescending Condi:

You have to admire their chutzpah, castigating Russia for attacking another country and emulating in the Caucasus NATO's behaviour in the Balkans. Who does Vladimir Putin think he is — George W Bush? Reading western mainstream media commentators has been a revelation. They live on a different planet. Much of the western media do not seem to have realised yet that their opinions are now staple fare for people all around the world in real time, who also have access to other media. They are therefore well read and well informed. They are also better educated than ever before and have sufficient critical skills to be able to spot rank double standards and hypocrisy.

The net result is that while the American media, for example, might want to dump responsibility on the Bush administration for the rise of anti-Americanism around the world, they too have contributed to the decline of soft power as more and more people lose faith in the objectivity of leading US media outlets and are tired of their one-sided moralising and hectoring. ...

Instead of being dismantled with victory in the Cold War, NATO, an alliance in search of a role and mission, has progressively expanded its borders and reached steadily closer to Russia. Great powers have core vital interests that they will defend. Repeated warnings from Russia of red lines that must not be crossed were serially dismissed as the angry growls of a Russian bear in deep and permanent hibernation. They have been encircled by western bases, missiles and allies, alternately taunted, ignored and dismissed. Champion chess players that they are, the Russians bided their time patiently before checkmating the West brutally but brilliantly in South Ossetia and firing a warning shot across the bows of other former parts of the now forgotten Soviet empire.

Those who wish to back rebel movements and internationalise a crisis by intervening militarily had better be prepared for payback time in other places and conflicts. The wreckage of Georgia's towns and countryside proclaims the ruins of the Bush administration's foreign policy that has so recklessly squandered the hard won fruits of the Cold War in terms of both moral authority and geopolitical gains.

Condi, the Wicked Witch of the West, says that Russia is isolating itself, eh? Let's check in with former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder and see what he has to say:

DRESDEN: Adopting a strong, at times passionate, pro-Russian stance, the former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder has roundly criticized the United States on several fronts, warning NATO against offering membership to Georgia and opposing Pentagon plans to base its anti-ballistic missile shield in Eastern Europe.

In a 40-minute speech to a large gathering of Russian and German business executives Tuesday night, Schröder covered German, European and Russian politics, but omitted even the customary reference to the importance of the trans-Atlantic relationship.

Schröder, now an executive on the payroll of a Russian-German energy consortium dominated by Gazprom, the Russian state-owned energy monopoly, is at the center of a debate about whether the country hews to its post-1945 ties to Washington, or shifts more toward Moscow, maintaining in effect equal warmth or distance from both.

Schröder said that, if anything, Europe and Russia need each other more than ever - Europe for its energy supplies from Russia and Russia for technological and other European support in its bid to modernize.

Only if the European Union works much more closely with Russia can Europe truly become a global player, he said. "Russia is a European country," he said. "There is huge opportunity for us."

The debate over the stance of Germany - a decades-old discussion in the country that straddled East and West in the Cold War - has intensified since Schröder's former top aide and now foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, was tapped 10 days ago as the Social Democrat challenger to Chancellor Angela Merkel in elections next year.

German media close to the Social Democrats have reported that Schröder played a role in persuading Steinmeier to stand against Merkel.

Steinmeier was chief of staff of Schröder's office when he was chancellor, between 1998 and 2005. During that time, he was intimately involved in devising a foreign policy of forging particularly close relations with Russia and China while weakening ties with the United States.

That shift in German foreign policy convinced Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic States of the need to increase their ties with the Americans rather than rely on a weakened and divided European Union. Merkel, who narrowly defeated Schröder in September 2005, has since rebalanced the relationship with the United States and Russia.

In his Dresden speech, Schröder criticized the United States for going ahead with basing interceptors in Poland and radars in the Czech Republic for its missile shield system because this could undermine the stability of Europe.

He also criticized the United States for supporting Georgia and its leader, President Mikheil Saakashvili, whom Schröder said was very "unintelligent" in trying to regain the breakaway enclave of South Ossetia last month.