Why Russians don’t like the West

“The US missile defense complex in Poland, also called the European Interceptor Site (EIS) was part of the Ballistic Missile Defense European Capability of the US, to be placed in Redzikowo, Słupsk, Poland, forming a Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system in conjunction with a US narrow-beam midcourse tracking and discrimination radar system in the Brdy, Czech Republic. It was to consist of up to 10 silo-based interceptors, a two-stage version of the existing three-stage Ground Based Interceptor (GBI), with Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV), with a closing speed of about 7 km/s. The plan was cancelled in 2009.
According to the United States administration, the system was intended to protect against future missiles from Iran, such as the alleged Shahab-6, although in November 2007 the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate reported that Iran’s nuclear weapons program had been halted since late 2003. It has also been pointed out that Central Europe is beyond the range of any missile that Iran currently has.
Russia strongly opposed the system. As an alternative, it proposed sharing the Qabala Radar in Azerbaijan, which Russia leases, but at the time this was not seen as an acceptable substitute for the US. One of the major difficulties from the Russian perspective was that the associated radar installation, which was to be based in the Czech Republic, would have been able to collect information about all movements in Russian airspace up to the Urals mountains, which is the whole of European Russia.
Since 2002, the US had been in talks with Poland and other European countries over the possibility of setting up a European base to intercept long-range missiles. According to US officials, a site similar to the US base in Alaska would help protect the US and Europe from missiles fired from the Middle East or North Africa. The Ustka-Wicko base of the Polish Army 54.553748°N 16.620255°E was initially mentioned as a possible site of US missile interceptors. Poland’s prime minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz said in November 2005 he wanted to open up the public debate on whether Poland should host such a base.
In February 2007 the US started formal negotiations with Poland and the Czech Republic concerning construction of missile shield installations in those countries for a Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System. However in April 2007 the Washington Post reported that 57% of Poles opposed the plan.
Russia threatened to place short-range nuclear missiles on its borders with NATO if the United States refused to abandon its plans to deploy 10 interceptor missiles and a radar in Poland and the Czech Republic. In April 2007, then-President Putin warned of a new Cold War if the Americans deployed the shield in Central Europe. Putin also said that Russia was prepared to abandon its obligations under a Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987 with the United States.
On July 4, 2008, Poland did not agree on the conditions set forth by the United States regarding the installation of anti-ballistic missiles on its territory.
On July 8, 2008, the Russian Foreign Ministry stated that if the missile defense system was approved, “we will be forced to react not with diplomatic, but with military-technical methods.”
On August 14, 2008, shortly after the 2008 South Ossetia war, the United States and Poland announced a deal to implement the missile defense system in Polish territory, with a tracking system placed in the Czech Republic. The Russians responded by saying such action “cannot go unpunished. The fact that this was signed in a period of very difficult crisis in the relations between Russia and the United States over the situation in Georgia shows that, of course, the missile defense system will be deployed not against Iran but against the strategic potential of Russia,” Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s NATO envoy, said.
A high-ranking Russian military officer had warned Poland that it was exposing itself to attack by accepting a U.S. missile interceptor base on its soil. The deputy chief of staff of Russia’s armed forces Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn has warned Poland that, “by deploying (the system), it is exposing itself to a strike — 100 percent”.
On August 20, 2008, the “Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of Poland Concerning the Deployment of Ground-Based Ballistic Missile Defense Interceptors in the Territory of the Republic of Poland” was signed in Warsaw by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski.
On November 5, during President Dmitry Medvedev’s first state of the nation speech he stated that Russia would deploy short-range Iskander missiles to Russia’s western enclave of Kaliningrad, sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania “to neutralize, if necessary, a missile defense system.” “From what we have seen in recent years — the creation of a missile defense system, the encirclement of Russia with military bases, the relentless expansion of NATO — we have gotten the clear impression that they are testing our strength,” he said.
On November 8, an aide to U.S. President-Elect Barack Obama denied a claim made by Polish President Lech Kaczyński’s office that a pledge had been made to go ahead with the missile defense system during a phone conversation between the two men. “His [Obama’s] position is as it was throughout the campaign, that he supports deploying a missile defence system when the technology is proved to be workable,” the aid said, but “no commitment” has been made.
On November 14, French President Nicolas Sarkozy stated that plans for a U.S. missile shield in Central Europe were misguided, and wouldn’t make the continent a safer place. “Deployment of a missile defense system would bring nothing to security ... it would complicate things, and would make them move backward,” he said at a summit. He also warned Russian President Dmitry Medvedev against upping tensions by deploying missiles in Kaliningrad in response to the U.S. planned missile defense system.
On April 5, 2009, President Obama, during his speech in Prague, declared: “As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defense system that is cost-effective and proven.” President Obama continued to expressed conditional support for the program and sought to isolate it from U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control talks.
On September 17, 2009, The White House issued a statement saying that the US “no longer planned to move forward” with the project. According to President Obama, new intelligence had shown Iran was pursuing short-range and medium-range missile development, rather than long-range, necessitating a shift in strategy…”

“Why Russians don’t like the West”

Russians do like “the West”, they have no problems with western democracies. They just do not support American imperialism. Why should they? In a world where national interests play an important role in defining the economic privileges of certain populations against others, it would be indeed against the best interest of the Russian people to give way to total American control over certain strategic regions of the globe.

Russian political environment is really no more dictatorial than its American counterpart. Now, American citizens can be executed without due process - and without any public disclosure on the motivations behind such extreme punishments. Nice. Now, American citizens can be indefinitely detained without due process. They can be searched without a probable cause. They can be tortured - pardon, they can be object of enhanced interrogations. Does this sound like a model for a modern, functional civilization? Something that those barbaric Russians should imitate?

I will tell you something about the Russian perception of political power and authority. It does not exist. Russians face everyday a number of public officers, police agents, and such. But these figures do not incarnate public interests. They incarnate only their own personal interests. And, therefore, they are dealt with accordingly. This principle is very clear to anyone who tried to drive a car on Russian streets. If a cop stops you - you will have to pay a bribe, no matter what. If you do not - you will have to pay some, arbitrary, improbable kind of ticket - which typically is higher than the bribe. The cops will not hurt you, they do not taser pregnant women or old people like their American colleagues. They do not pepper spray peaceful protesters. They appear calmer and fatalistic. They know life is hard for everyone. But, hey, they just want some of your money, you know the rules. This is because their pay is too low, and their superiors are too busy racketeering businessmen to care. Yes, people in the West are way more subtle in doing the same kind of abuses to regular citizens and consumers. But, if I have to choose between bribing occasionally a public employee, without paying any taxes - instead of paying half of my earnings to an impersonal, abstract entity - I take the first option. At least I get to say in the face each of those who are robbing me. And, besides, they are definitely cheaper to satisfy.

“Worse: they are being hated by the people around the world who are fighting (and dying) for more democracy. Because of its stubborn anti-Western stance, Russia ends up supporting all the most brutal regimes of the world. There was a telling sign held by demonstrators in Syria: “Thank you Russia, we are dying”.”
Is this some kind of joke? Doesn’t America support (and fund) a number of brutal regimes protecting their own interests? Let us be serious. And besides, am I the only one who finds a photo of a Syrian protester with an English tag carrying a message against a third international party somehow suspicious? I mean, probably in the Middle East protesters with a degree in foreign languages like to risk their neck to send a message to Russian authorities. Just it looks a little bit artificial from here.

Piero reintroduced a topic forgotten during the last decade.. American activities in the former Jugoslavia.

Perhaps America isn’t really serious about an ABM in Poland?, what the Right might want is negotiations on ABM in Poland to be pressure for Russian Federation concessions on more bases in Azerbaijan,  Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan.
International politics are even more Byzantine than domestic politics—if possible.

Paul Kengor wrote the following in American Spectator, June 4th. Notice (emphasis added) he mentions ‘Missile Defense’ (ABM) three times:

“Last week, President Barack Obama rejected the world’s most powerful living symbol of anti-communism, anti-Sovietism, and victory in the Cold War. The White House declined to have Lech Walesa stand in for the late Jan Karski, who posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Our president spurned Walesa, first president of free Poland, who had once risked everything to courageously join Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II in keeping Solidarity alive in Poland. Like Reagan and John Paul II, Walesa knew that Solidarity could be the wedge to split the Communist Bloc from top to bottom, as it indeed did, thereby making possible elections in Poland in June 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the execution of Ceausescu on Christmas Day 1989, the liberation of Eastern Europe en masse, and peaceful victory in the Cold War.
Obama’s snubbing of Walesa follows several peculiar actions that upset the people of Poland. On September 17, 2009, he canceled plans for a joint missile defense system between the United States and Poland, one of our most dependable post-Cold War NATO allies. Obama did so for pro-Russian reasons. His action on that particular date was stunning: It was precisely 70 years to the day, September 17, 1939, when Russia invaded Poland, in compliance with the sinister Hitler-Stalin Pact. Poles certainly noticed the irony.
Obama’s snubbing of Walesa also follows his recent private assurance to Dmitri Medvedev and Vladimir Putin—inadvertently caught on tape by an open mic—that, in regard to missile defense and nuclear issues, he would “have more flexibility” “after my election.” In other words, more pro-Russia steps at Poland’s expense. Obama’s snubbing of Walesa also came alongside a terrible gaffe about “Polish death camps.”
Obama’s staff seems surprised that Poles reacted so suspiciously to Obama’s gaffe. Gee, I wonder why they’re suspicious….
To me, none of this is a surprise. And it’s also uniquely in line with the thinking of Obama’s mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, a stalwart pro-Soviet, CPUSA member (card no. 47544), who, in his propaganda columns for Communist Party organs like the Chicago Star, defended Yalta and the Soviet takeover of Poland and other Eastern European countries. Davis attempted to argue that Stalin was creating “new democracies” in Poland and the Communist Bloc, and insisted that Eastern Europeans were welcoming the Soviets with open arms. He blasted U.S. policies like NATO and the Marshall Plan.
There’s so much that could be said about Obama’s snub of Walesa. It truly is enlightening. But two things stand out to me, especially in light of the fact that we Americans have a historic election coming up this November 2012, arguably the most pivotal since November 1980:
Shortly after the election of 1980, when Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter, a fearless Lech Walesa stood on a snowy, windswept plain on the outskirts of Gdansk and spoke openly about the U.S. election and its effect on the world. “It was intuition, perhaps,” he said, “but one year ago I envisioned what would happen. Reagan was the only good candidate in your presidential campaign, and I knew he would win.” Walesa spoke presciently that December day: “Someday the West will wake up and you may find it too late, as Solzhenitsyn has written. Reagan will do it better…. He will make the U.S. strong and make it stand up.”
Lech Walesa foresaw Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America.”
What did a young Barack Obama think of that election, of that dawn of a new day in America, of that change in the national mood for the better—and not just for America, but for Poland, for the Communist Bloc, for the world, for freedom, for history? Obama told us the answer in his memoirs. In chapter 7 of Dreams from My Father, Obama described his arrival in Chicago, the step in his sojourn that would change his life and America’s. The ambitious Obama employed the word “change” seven times, including the need for “Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds.”
Obama was not exactly inspired by Reagan’s election. Obama was the anti-Walesa. “Reagan was on his way in,” Obama sniffed, “morning in America.”
Obama perceived an America that needed a “change in the mood of the country.” Ronald Reagan’s “morning in America” needed change.
This is a mesmerizing insight into Obama’s ideology and political mind. Consider: Even among liberal academics and journalists, both at the time and today, there is a consensus that among President Reagan’s greatest achievements was his dramatic change in the mood of the nation, and decidedly for the better, lifting up America and restoring its sagging morale after the years of Carter and Watergate and Vietnam. As even the cynical Reagan biographer Edmund Morris agreed, Reagan had “changed the mood overnight,” and decidedly and wonderfully for the better. That was one thing about Reagan where conservatives and liberals alike, plus literal millions of Reagan Democrats, came together and applauded Reagan—except for the young Obama.
No, Obama wanted to change the mood that Reagan changed. To what, one might ask?
Well, we’re finally getting that answer, thanks to the millions of oblivious Americans who blithely voted for Obama’s “change” in November 1980 [sic]. Really, it’s unthinkable to imagine that an America that elected Reagan to landslide victories in 1980 and 1984, and today regularly judges Reagan not only the greatest president of all time but, in one 2005 poll, the “greatest American” of all time, could elect Barack Obama—and may do so again. But, hey, these are Americans. And they do not vote rationally. In 2008, they elected a man who shunned Lech Walesa and missile defense with Poland, both of whom/which Reagan vigorously supported.
Obama’s Walesa moment is yet another defining moment. So is the election of November 2012. I’d love to hear Lech Walesa’s thoughts on that one. Will Americans “wake up” and “do it better” this time around?”