Medvedev’s Caribbean Dream
Lee on Sep 06 2008 at 10:33 pm | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Lee's Page
A depressingly confused analogy from Medvedev on US aid to Georgia:
“I wonder how they would like it if we sent humanitarian assistance using our navy to countries of the Caribbean that have suffered from the recent hurricanes.”
(AFP)
We’d welcome that. It’s distressing that the Russian government hears only our resistance, without our reasons for it. And here again, there is a certain naiveté to Medvedev that always makes one think it might someday be possible to penetrate the reality distortion field of Putinism that imprisons his imagination.
What needs to be conveyed as forcefully as possible to Moscow, is that the United States does not want a Russia disengaged from world influence, or even disengaged from relations with Georgia. It wants a Russia whose influence is exercised toward the benefit of mankind, not its strangulation. A Russia that is distributing humanitarian aid and connecting peacefully beyond its borders, not violating the human rights and independence of free peoples. That is the essential difference from recent American military interventions in the Caribbean, that Medvedev mistakes for the exercise of power to maintain American geographic hegemony.
Many have complained of a creeping Cold War mentality in the Georgian conflict. In reality the Cold War would represent an improved maturity in Russian perspectives on international relations over the outlook expressed by Medvedev’s crippled analogy. An analogy which can only see modern US policy in the Caribbean through a lens of 1898, rather than revealing her efforts to promote peace, democracy, human rights and independence for the region in the modern era.
Supplemental: It might also be noted that Medvedev’s analogue takes on a further, cynical dimension of inverted value, in light of Russia’s intention to conduct naval war games with Venezuela.
One Response to “Medvedev’s Caribbean Dream”
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The View From the Bluff: Lance’s Economic and Finance Blog
I am not sure that I can completely understand your comments. Would you be so kind as to expand on your reasoning a little more before I comment.