THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE WEST

The Russian incursion into Georgia after Georgian troops broke into South Ossetia was actually modest compared with NATO\'s behaviour towards Yugoslavia and Kosovo. The Russians wanted to back up the compelling independence claims of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which Stalin incorporated into Georgia. As American author and political analyst George Friedman recently pointed out, the invasion was primarily a response to the threatening military encirclement of Russia carried out by Washington, writes Gunnar Garbo, former editor, MP, and Norwegian Ambassador, presently a writer and activist. In this article, Garbo writes that when Khrushchev installed missiles in Cuba, the world felt itself pushed to the brink of atomic war, and yet today, Western leaders are demanding that Russians see the installation of our missiles along their border as tokens of friendship. For many years, US leaders have been building up a global preponderance of military might. Now they have to recognise that Russia is once again a regional power which they can\'t continue to humiliate without bringing on a new Cold War. This can only be avoided if the US finally starts treating Russia on equal terms. It should stop taking steps that create the same fears and suspicions in Moscow which similar Russian actions would have produced in Washington.