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  1. #1
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Vladimir Putin's mastery checkmates the West

    From The Times
    August 14, 2008

    Vladimir Putin's mastery checkmates the West

    Russia has been biding its time, but its victory in Georgia has been brutal - and brilliant

    Michael Binyon

    The cartoon images have shown Russia as an angry bear, stretching out a claw to maul Georgia. Russia is certainly angry, and, like a beast provoked, has bared its teeth. But it is the wrong stereotype. What the world has seen last week is a brilliant and brutal display of Russia's national game, chess. And Moscow has just declared checkmate.

    Chess is a slow game. One has to be ready to ignore provocations, lose a few pawns and turn the hubris of others into their own entrapment. For years there has been rising resentment within Russia. Some of this is inevitable: the loss of empire, a burning sense of grievance and the fear that in the 1990s, amid domestic chaos and economic collapse, Russia's views no longer mattered.

    A generalised resentment, similar to the sour undercurrents of Weimar Germany, began to focus on specific issues: the nonchalance of the Clinton Administration about Russian sensitivities, especially over the Balkans and in opening Nato's door to former Warsaw Pact members; the neo-conservative agenda of the early Bush years that saw no role for Russia in its global agenda; and Washington's ingratitude after 9/11 for vital Kremlin support over terrorism, Afghanistan and intelligence on extremism.

    More infuriating was Western encouragement of “freedomâ€
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  2. #2
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    There are lessons everywhere. To the former Soviet republics - remember your geography. To Nato - do you still want to incorporate Caucasian vendettas into your alliance? To Tbilisi - do you want to keep a President who brought this on you? To Washington - does Russia's voice still count for nothing? Like it or not, it counts for a lot.
    This writer apparently has no qualms about threatening the rest of the world on behalf of Mother Russia, aka, the new and improved USSR.
    The former Soviet republics - remember your geography? Everyone certainly remembers the latest map, when countries in the Baltics, those like Ukraine, etc. were displayed on maps without an SSR after their names and actually different colors that Mother Russia. Now, what map was this guy referring to, the one before 1990?
    Georgia did not bring this on themselves, only tried to keep a postage stamp sized country together.
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