Russia Rearms

"Russian President Dmitry Medvedev struck a Cold War tone on Tuesday, pledging to press ahead with an ambitious rearmament program in response to what he described as NATO's military expansion close to Russia's borders. His hawkish comments come ahead of his first meeting with President Barack Obama early next month at the Group of 20 meeting, and were paired with even tougher rhetoric from Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov. Mr. Serdyukov accused the US of trying to push Russia out of its traditional sphere of influence--the former Soviet Union--in order to secure raw materials and energy supplies. ... 'It's more a message to America: Don't take us for granted,' said Nikolai Zlobin, a senior fellow at the World Security Institute, a Washington think tank. ... The US reaction was muted. Obama administration spokesman Robert Griggs said on Tuesday that [NATO] 'is a collective defense organization. I think to suggest that it poses an offensive military threat is simply wrong'," my emphasis, Andrew Osborn at the WSJ, 18 March 2009.

Eddie Antar apparently designed our NATO policy, it's "insane". How many divisions has NATO to defend the US? We no more need say, Poland in NATO, than we needed the USSR to take Mexico into the Warsaw Pact. I disagree with Serdyukov to this extent: we are not trying to "secure raw material and energy supplies" in pushing NATO up to Russia's borders, but "spreading Democracy". See my 30 July 2007 post on Wilson, link: http://skepticaltexascpa.blogspot.com/2007/07/saudi-arabia-iran-and-woodrow-wilsons.html. We should respect Russia's sphere of influence if we expect it to respect ours, which was articulated in the Monroe Doctrine. Anyone remember it?