quote:
Originally posted by Erik Redburn:
[b]I wonder if Moscow used the old "sphere of influence" justification when they ordered the invasion of Hungary and Czechoslovakia?[/b]
The Soviets always maintained that the western front was to prevent another barbarossa. Russia did have the body count from WW II to justifty it. The west never contested it. In fact, a recent study of Soviet and CIA archives by Stanford professor Charles Gatti indicates that the Soviets would rather have created a politcally neutral layer of countries(as was negotiated for Austria, Switzerland etc) to the west. What they wouldn't tolerate were NATO occupied Czechoslovakia or Hungary on Soviet borders. The old Soviet Union represented about a third of world countries, and they were not interested in aggressive expansionism NATO style. There is no real evidence for it, not even in Stalin's time.
Even today, the U.S. and Britain seek to expand their "sphere of influence" and competing with "French-German" expansionism into the Balkans, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Ukrainians, realizing that they will never be considered part of the west, are likely to seek new-old partnerships in the slavic sphere, like Canada and the U.S. would normally if we free and fair trade was possible between our two countries. It's always been a lopsided one for us though. Russia has always wanted to trade fairly with the west. British and American and Dutch energy conglomerates and capitalists have been quite ruthless and unfair in their business practices around the world and often relying on military to enforce the rules in their favour. Here is what Richard Cook, a former U.S. federal government analyst, said in a short essay, [url=http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10191]Has the West Reached Its Limits?[/url]:
quote:
Today, Putin is cleaning out the remaining gangster class. His efforts reached a milestone in January with the arrest in Moscow of Semion Mogilevich, called “the world’s most dangerous man.”Putin has declared that the world will not be governed in a “unipolar” manner; i.e. by the U.S. military as the police force for the global financiers. This does not mean Russia has to be our enemy. In fact the world would be much better off, and much safer, if we joined with Russia as allies in keeping the peace.
But to do that our system would have to change, because finance capitalism is far too unstable to coexist with other nations as equals. [b]It must either grow or die, because it always needs new victims to pay the interest on its usury practices and to finance its speculative balloons.[/b] As a last resort, it needs the kind of financial institution bailouts being engineered by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, where the only remaining stopgap is borrowing from public funds and adding to the national debt.
Once economic growth stops, as has now happened, and all the bubbles to restart it have blown up, as has also happened, the end really is nigh. Especially if the host—the U.S. —is bankrupt.
