Posted on 07/28/2005 8:14:35 PM PDT by KOZ.
MOSCOW, July 28 (RIA Novosti) - After German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder's possible ousting this fall, the Russian-German-French troika that tried to integrate Russia with Europe may cease to exist. President Vladimir Putin will be left without any strategic partners in the EU, Alexander Rahr, director of Russian and CIS programs with the Berlin-based German Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily Thursday.
It is becoming clear why Putin has been pursuing a strategic alliance with China and doing his best to bolster the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Rahr said.
The EU is destined to change. Given Europe's internal socio-political problems, aging population, and lack of economic growth, the EU cannot remain a club of rich West Europeans sponsoring the poor in Eastern Europe, but it also does not want to withdraw into itself either. Thus, the burden will have to be shouldered equally.
Where is Europe going? Will the old transatlantic union be reborn to the liking of western elites? Will the EU dissolve in transatlanticism and, led by Britain, again become a faithful pillar of U.S. global policies in a unipolar world, supported by Germany and France? Such a twist would give a second wind to the West's traditional institutions, NATO and the OSCE. Ukraine and Georgia would not have to integrate with the EU to accede to the EU; joining NATO would do. This would push Russia even more toward Asian alliances, the expert said.
Europe is irresponsibly rejecting integration, albeit informally, with a Eurasia rich in natural resources that the West so badly needs. According to Rahr, the EU seems unwilling to give up its principles. A strategic partnership with Russia would be, even more than before, viewed in light of liberal values. Present-day Russia is a fictitious partner to the West, Rahr concluded.
Russia/China/Iran/North Korea. You forgot two...
thanks, fascism seems to be the new alliance.
Russian Chinese is better.
Only because it is probably more likely they'll start shooting at each other before they start shooting at us...
1. The Russians and Chinese will never have a solid alliance. They couldn't do it during communism, and they both fully distrust one another.
2. Obviously you don't know the state of the Russian military. It's BROKEN and it's conscription pool dwindles daily. Hard to fill the ranks out when the average conscript has a chronic illness, alcohol or drug addiction, and/or a mental illness. The healthy conscript age men find ways to pay the bribes that get them out of the draft.
ala Ezekiel 38
Boris is hoping, against all hope, that he won't have to admit that without US, he is powerless.
In an all-out conflict, Russia still has plenty of nukes to destroy the place. But assuming the trend of "hot spot" and low-intensity conflicts continues, the fact that Americans now parade in this location may well be called "Putin's folly".
Add Venezuela and Sudan to this.
If Russia could get rid of Putin and once again become a democratic and capitalist country, they may become a strategic partner of US against China... only if they do not interfere in America's Central Asia affairs.
Why would that happen? Russia's benefits lay in economic ties to Central Asia and China.
The US bases in every nearby country BUT Russia!
Let's stop trade w/ China and see who would wanna be her ally.
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