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Putin: US Risks New Cuban Missile Crisis
Vladimir Putin stirred ghosts of the cold war yesterday by comparing the Pentagon's plan to site elements of its missile shield in Europe to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 when the US and the Soviet Union went to the brink of nuclear war.
Speaking at an EU summit near Lisbon, the Russian president said that his country was confronted with a similar threat to the one faced 45 years ago by the United States, when Nikita Khrushchev stationed Russian missiles on Cuba, 90 miles from the US coast, until forced to remove them by John F Kennedy.
The Bush administration was copying Mr Khrushchev and his politburo, said Mr Putin, making an argument to EU countries to try to persuade them to oppose the US plan to deploy parts of its proposed missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. "Analogous actions by the Soviet Union when it deployed rockets on Cuba provoked the Cuban missile crisis," he said after the EU-Russia summit.
"For us, technologically, the situation is very similar. Such threats to our country are being created on our borders ... I would remind you how relations were developing in an analogous situation in the middle of the 1960s."
The Kremlin's challenge to the US president in 1962 triggered the worst confrontation of the cold war, and brought the world its closest to nuclear war.
The US insists its plan to install a radar station near Prague and silos with 10 interceptor rockets in north Poland is not directed against Russia. This week, defence secretary Robert Gates sought to defuse Russia's opposition by offering it greater participation and to delay the shield's operability until Iran develops the ballistic missiles which it is supposed to defend Europe against.
Mr Putin has hardened his anti-western rhetoric in the last six months of his eight years as president, which ends in March ahead of parliamentary elections in December in which he is likely to seek to become prime minister instead.
In February he stunned western leaders by accusing the Bush administration of trying to take over the world. He has threatened to point missiles at western Europe, walk away from a 1980s treaty eliminating missiles, and scrap a treaty limiting conventional forces. Martha Brill Olcott, of the Carnegie endowment in Washington, said: "Mr Putin is clearly ratcheting up the rhetoric. He is in the middle of an election cycle. That's the main thing.
"But he's very angry. He feels he's being lied to by the Bush administration. He feels it's the Bush administration that's escalated, creating an armed environment in Europe."?
Mr Putin also opposes the US demonisation of Iran. On arrival in Portugal on Thursday, he denounced the US sanctions announced by Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, and likened the US administration to "a madman running around with a razor blade".
The Czech parliament voted yesterday against a referendum on the radar station - a vote it risks losing to sceptical public opinion. The Polish government, meanwhile, is likely to expand its demands on Washington for agreeing to the missiles against the Russian opposition.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
16 Comments so far
Show AllThe difference is, of course, that Kennedy was at heart a dove and did not follow the advice of the hawks, especially the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to attack Cuba. The Bush-Cheney-Rice junta is built on jingoism, warmongering, propaganda, war profiteering, cronyism, hidden agendas and, above all, a servile Congress, media and public. They seem bent on reviving the Cold War.
Mr. Putin is popular in Russia, and some say he will bow out of the presidency there in 2008, then run again in 2012. I think, if he does that, that he would find Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama both open and cooperative to deal with here as one of them entered a second term.
I don't think he would like Mr. Giuliani at all--too much like the razor-blade thing.
Well, if we are a "mad man running around with a razor blade," I hope the rest of the world is able to use a tazer rather than a magnum on us, as much as I dislike the use of tazers.
Another Cold War would be good news for defense contractors.
Putin is absolutely right about the US government led by the war criminal Bush, when he described it "a madman running around with a razor blade." US "war of terror" has resulted in innocent bloodshed, destruction of personal and state property, terror, insecurity and instability in the world.
The American media, instead of acknowledging the truth in what Putin said, is insanely reacting to his comments. US not only celebrates HALLOWEEN, but has become HALLOWEEN (the MONSTER)in the world.
The US insists its plan to install a radar station near Prague and silos with 10 interceptor rockets in north Poland is not directed against Russia.
This type of lie is easily criminalized, the crime easily proven, and the law easily enforced.
The Polish government, meanwhile, is likely to expand its demands on Washington for agreeing to the missiles against the Russian opposition.
Poland will eventually reap a rotten harvest from what it sows today from its contract with El Diablo of America.
Putin is right to distrust US intentions. He may be a despot himself, but he's not a fraction as dangerous as the gangsters in the White House, seemingly intent on adding still more war crimes to their burgeoning ledger of criminality by attacking Iran. They must be stopped.
Official DemoRats all support the expansion of NATO and the quiet continuation of the policy of humiliating Russia as long as the government refuses to accede to Russian gangsters like Berezovsky, presented consistently as a victim in Liberal quarters.
"Poland will eventually reap a rotten harvest from what it sows today from its contract with El Diablo of America."
The Polish rulers will once again rely on protection from "democracies", which will once more throw them to the Russians when things become dicey. As predictable as Lucy jerking the football away from Charlie Brown.
Whoa.........whoa.........whoa! "a madman running around with a razor blade". I think everyone knows what that implies!
I happen to respect Putin!
A little revisionist history? Kennedy did attack Cuba, at a place called Playa Giron. The U.S. trained, armed, supplied, transported and everything else required for the mission, including all of the planning. That makes it a U.S. mission and it doesn't matter where the mercenaries originated from, the same as is proved in Iraq. If the Cubans hadn't defeated them in less than 72 hours they would have secured a beachhead and called in the regular U.S. forces which were on standby three miles off the coast and waiting for such a call which was supposed to give the operation a figleaf of international legitimacy.
this is good that someone is confronting the Bush admin. Hope other country will unite with Russia and confront the madman with the razor blade, that is a nuclear bomb with a blank check on invasion.
Crazy men in some ways are like kids, liable to cut themselves with the razor. Watch this crazy man cut himself by attacking Iran.
Putin's right - the Bush regime has learned no lessons from history. Arrogance & ignorance characterize their every step.
Let's hold Kennedy to a higher standard than that he didn't commit the first strike in a nuclear holocaust. Not sure what Cheney would have done, of course; though attacking countries without weapons of mass destruction seems more his gig...
Saila,
The crazy men in the Bush administration may inflict cuts on the USA, and that means all of us ordinary citizens, but they will be protected from the repercussions of their actions. In a few years, while we are paying for all of Bush's war crimes and foolishness, Bush will be sitting on his ranch in Paraguay, sipping Pina Coladas, watching over his Blackwater Guards assigned to protect him, and laughing about all the rube suckers who voted for him.
I, too, have high respect for Mr. Putin. Long ago, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev said that Russia would live long enough to dance on the United States' grave. Oddly prophetic, given how fast the standard of living in Russia is rising. Poland's twin gnomes sold out to Bush, the Czech's slithered away from their own referendum. Wait a minute, is it true that the missiles Bush wants to sink into Europe like his tiny penis haven't even been built yet?
That drunk needs to pull his pants up.