Remembering Putin's Munich speech: when Russia called for dialogue, West remained silent

Photo: RIA

Seven years ago Russias President Vladimir Putin surprised many Western politicians, stating that the deployment of the US missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic is not defensive, but offensive in nature, and it poses a threat not to Iran, but to Russia. Seven years have passed since that day, and the current actions of influential Western politicians and the US military machine serve only to substitute the fact that Putin had a keen view on the whole matter.
During his famous speech, President Putin said that the process of NATO expansion has nothing to do with modernization of the alliance. "We have the right to ask, 'Against whom is this expansion directed?' " He said the United States had turned the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which sends monitors to elections in the former Soviet sphere, "into a vulgar instrument of ensuring the foreign policy interests of one country." The comments were the sternest yet from Mr. Putin, who has long bristled over criticism from the United States and its European allies. Rubble from the Berlin Wall was "hauled away as souvenirs" to countries that praise openness and personal freedom, he said, but "now there are attempts to impose new dividing lines and rules, maybe virtual, but still dividing our mutual continent." The world, he said, is now unipolar: "One single center of power. One single center of force. One single center of decision making. This is the world of one master, one sovereign." With the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the American defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, and a Congressional delegation sitting stone-faced, Mr. Putin warned that the power amassed by any nation that assumes this ultimate global role "destroys it from within. "It has nothing in common with democracy, of course," he added. "Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations military force." "Primarily the United States has overstepped its national borders, and in every area," said Mr. Putin, who increasingly has tried to re-establish Russias once broad Soviet -era influence, using Russias natural resources as leverage and defending nations at od ds with the United States, including Iran. American military actions, which he termed "unilateral" and "illegitimate," also "have not been able to resolve any matters at all," and, he said, have created only more instability and danger. "They bring us to the abyss of one conflict after another," he said. "Political solutions are becoming impossible." Voice of Russia, New York Times