{"id":9790,"date":"2022-03-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-21T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aspeninstitutece.softmedia.cz\/article\/2022\/xi-jinping-siberia\/"},"modified":"2024-09-30T19:07:53","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T17:07:53","slug":"xi-jinping-siberia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/article\/2022\/xi-jinping-siberia\/","title":{"rendered":"Xi Jinping Wants to Have Siberia for Dinner"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI think that at least for a while, NATO states are protected. Obviously, as we see today, states outside NATO are endangered. I am convinced that in Bucharest, when we gave in to Germany and France\u2019s pressure and did not invite Georgia and Ukraine into the Alliance\u2019s Membership Action Plan right away, giving them instead only vague assurances of future membership, that it was interpreted by the Kremlin as a direct invitation <\/span>for them<\/span><\/i> to act. First, Russians visited Georgia. And now Ukraine. Let\u2019s be honest \u2013 it is partially our own error,\u201d says Schwarzenberg. <\/span><\/p>\n

Is it then a lack of Western resolve that is partially to blame?<\/b>
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Yes, and Georgia and Ukraine are paying the price. All the bullshit we have heard then finally led to this result.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What does Putin want?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Based on what he said, it seems to me clear that he longs for the old Russian empire. We should not forget that what happened in 1989 threw Russia back centuries in their own eyes. They did not only lose the territory conquered by the Bolsheviks, but also that which belonged to them during the Czar. It pains Putin and I understand that. When you worked for and believed in the entity that lay from Vladivostok to Cheb, and suddenly all these satellite states disappear, it is a terrible blow to your self-confidence. He is clearly emotional about this. Similar sentiments reigned in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany. There are all these legends that Germany was not defeated honestly, but that it was stabbed in the back. It is not all that different in today\u2019s Russia.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Foreign policy realists argue that NATO\u2019s expansion is partly to blame, that we have unnecessarily humiliated Russia when it was weak. We should have been more generous to Russia, much like Western allies were generous to West Germany after the Second World War.\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n

There is something to that argument.\u00a0<\/span>We should not forget that in the 1990s under Yeltsin there was hope for democracy in Russia. But after that, when Putin took over, he began to steer the state back to dictatorship.\u00a0<\/span>These tendencies were visible already in the second half of the 1990s. And the fear of Russia was key to why we wanted to expand NATO. By coincidence, I was present at Putin\u2019s infamous anti-West speech in Munich in 2007. My speech immediately followed Putin\u2019s. I think I was right when I said that I would like to thank the President of the Russian Federation for his words as they have clearly demonstrated all the reasons why we were right to have joined NATO. Germans were angry with me, saying that, after all, Putin was quite accommodating in his speech, but it was immediately clear to me what Putin\u2019s words meant. He clearly delineated the policy that has led to today\u2019s invasion.<\/span><\/p>\n

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"This war did not begin in 2022. It began in 2007, with Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s speech to the Munich Security Conference, refusing to accept the post-1989 settlement in Europe," writes @M_Ignatieff<\/a> for @JoinPersuasion<\/a>.https:\/\/t.co\/i6WRt2SQG0<\/a><\/p>\n

— The Progress Network (@progressntwrk) March 15, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n