IHT: Search: "MUNICH: This city is no longer the venue of appeasement.
At an annual security conference here on the eve of NATO's seven-state expansion, Moscow's neo-imperialist defense minister threatened to back out of an agreement limiting the size of his armed forces on Russia's European front.
Sergei Ivanov's bluff was immediately called by Senator John McCain. The Arizonan had accused President Vladimir Putin's regime of a 'creeping coup' against democracy within Russia, as well as a campaign to intimidate and reassert control over states - from the Baltics to Belarus, Georgia and Ukraine - that America's victory in the cold war had liberated from Soviet rule.
This Russia-NATO confrontation has been brewing for a year. While France and Germany split with the rest of Europe and the United States over the war in Iraq, Putin took advantage of the world's distraction to crack down on internal dissent and to undermine the independence of his neighbors.
The first public inkling of U.S. concern with Putin's irredentism came in Secretary of State Colin Powell's trip last month to attend the inauguration of Georgia's new elected leader, signaling strong support for that nation's independence. This was accompanied by a Powell article in Izvestia uncommonly critical of Moscow's repression of the news media."
At an annual security conference here on the eve of NATO's seven-state expansion, Moscow's neo-imperialist defense minister threatened to back out of an agreement limiting the size of his armed forces on Russia's European front.
Sergei Ivanov's bluff was immediately called by Senator John McCain. The Arizonan had accused President Vladimir Putin's regime of a 'creeping coup' against democracy within Russia, as well as a campaign to intimidate and reassert control over states - from the Baltics to Belarus, Georgia and Ukraine - that America's victory in the cold war had liberated from Soviet rule.
This Russia-NATO confrontation has been brewing for a year. While France and Germany split with the rest of Europe and the United States over the war in Iraq, Putin took advantage of the world's distraction to crack down on internal dissent and to undermine the independence of his neighbors.
The first public inkling of U.S. concern with Putin's irredentism came in Secretary of State Colin Powell's trip last month to attend the inauguration of Georgia's new elected leader, signaling strong support for that nation's independence. This was accompanied by a Powell article in Izvestia uncommonly critical of Moscow's repression of the news media."
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