Moscow calls for anti-US alliance

Image by DG Jones via Flickr

smh.com.au

THE President of Russia has called on Europe's leaders to create a new world order that would minimise the role of the United States.
Confident that a row with Europe prompted by Russia's invasion of Georgia in August was over, Dmitry Medvedev arrived in the French spa town of Evian on Wednesday determined to woo his fellow leaders into creating an anti-US front.
Gone was the kind of wartime rhetoric that saw Mr Medvedev lash out at the West and describe his Georgian counterpart, Mikheil Saakashvili, as a "lunatic". Instead Mr Medvedev spoke of a Russia that was "absolutely not interested in confrontation", and outlined plans for a new security pact to ban the use of force in Europe.
Yet there was little doubt that Mr Medvedev was playing the divide-and-rule tactics of Vladimir Putin, his predecessor and now Prime Minister, by seeking to pit the US against its European allies.
In a speech delivered to European leaders at a conference hosted by the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, to discuss the international financial crisis, Mr Medvedev sought to show that the US was at the root of all the world's problems. He blamed Washington's "economic egotism" for the world's financial woes and then accused the Bush Administration of taking Europe to the brink of a new cold war by pursuing a deliberately divisive foreign policy.
He also maintained that the US was once again trying to return to a policy of containing Russia.

The most embarrassing part is that Medvedev is right, the US is THE problem in the Middle East and with the World financial crisis! But so is Russia a problem. Putin would have the same sort of influence over the EU if he could. Sarkozy looks like a placater al la Neville Chamberlain.