> Wall Street Journal - May 12, 2010
> In Secret Report, Russia Shifts Westward
> By GREGORY L. WHITE
Hilarious. This is less about any actual shift in Russia's commitment to multipolarity -- there has been none -- and more about Obama telling the US mainstream media to stop smearing Russia.
> It calls for taking advantage of the global financial
> crisis to acquire industrial and energy assets in the Baltics, Belarus,
> Ukraine and Central Asia—all areas where Russian influence is a sensitive
> political issue.
It's called regional trade integration, and it's a good thing. Russia will pay a fair price for those assets, we're not talking plunder. In fact, Russia is refinancing Ukraine, with a massive $4 billion annual bailout, and has helped stabilize Kazakhstan and Belarus.
The irony is that Russia has wanted more trade and investment with its neighbors for some time. The US oiligarchy feared this, and responded with its infamous Color Revolution project to keep the post-Soviet states squabbling with each other. That project failed, because the people of Eurasia had the sense to vote out the politicians who nailed their flag to a dying US Empire.
> On the issue of Iran's nuclear ambitions, U.S. officials say Russia has
> largely come around to supporting Washington's efforts to tighten
> sanctions on Tehran.
Actually, the BRICs have pulled off some clever diplomacy here. The sanctions have been so watered down that they're practically meaningless, while Brazil has stepped into Russia's shoes as the neutral negotiator with Iran (this was a favor to Russia, who I suspect needed some breathing room to get the START deal signed).
> In a cover letter to the report, Mr. Lavrov calls for creating "alliances
> of modernization" with European countries to attract needed technology
> and wrote that "It is necessary to find opportunities to use American
> technological potential." The report singled out Germany, France, Italy
> and Spain as Russia's closest partners in Europe.
Those countries are key centers of renewable energy and green tech of all kinds, exactly what Russia and the entire Eurasian semi-periphery needs. And for all of the problems of the European Union -- and it has plenty, I don't mean to diminish the violence of Euroliberalism in the slightest -- it's still the world's first transnational democracy, and many of its social achievements are an inspiration for the multipolar future.
-- DRR