Paul Goble
Staunton,
March 7 – Seventy-three years ago, Winston Churchill a speech at Westminster
College in Fulton, Missouri, which is now remembered primarily for his
application of the term “iron curtain” to Stalin’s policies of isolating the
peoples of the USSR and Eastern Europe from the rest of the world.
But
Roman Bessmertny, the former Ukrainian representative to the Tripartite contact
group in Minsk, says that two other insights the British leader offered may be
even more important because both remain very much true for the Russia of
Vladimir Putin today (nv.ua/opinion/razve-eti-slova-ne-o-putinskoy-rossii-50009648.html).
On the one hand, Churchill said, Soviet
leaders “respect nothing so much as force and disdain nothing more than military
weakness.” And on the other, he continued by arguing that Russia does not want
war. “What it wants are the fruits of war and the unlimited spread of its force
and doctrine.”
Bessmertny says that the latter is “s
favorite citation from the Fulton speech” because it provides a key to
understanding one of the most important aspects of Russian behavior then and
now.
“Do present-day world leaders see
this?” he asks rhetorically. “Yes, they do; but unfortunately, the majority of
them are already on the financial ‘hook’ to Russia. As a result, they choose a
policy of ‘condemnation’” rather than containment and “’deep concern’” instead
of concerted action to oppose Moscow.
It’s long past time to recognize the
continuing value of Churchill’s words in 1946 and to act on them as did world
leaders at that time. “Russia will not change!” Bessmertny says. “It even in the
future will conduct its imperial policy,” by non-military means if possible to
achieve what most would see as military goals.
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