Wednesday, November 05, 2014

A Word of Warning to NATO from Finland

Finland isn't impressed with NATO's anti-Moscow attitude.  President Sauli Niinisto will be taking that message to a conference in Helsinki on Thursday with David Cameron and the leaders of the Nordic and Baltic nations.

Niinisto says NATO is backing into a new Cold War with Russia.  He criticized the West for a continuing failure to "grasp the depth and seriousness of Putin's grievances with the US and the EU."

"We are in the position in the West of asking what is Putin up to.  Putin keeps saying the West and Nato are hostile. [He says] they have deceived Russia with Nato enlargement and they are undermining and humiliating Russia.

"So this is a situation that is not promising.  I have said we are almost at the gates of a new kind of cold war" that could suck in all of Europe. 

Niinisto says Finns are worried that, if their country becomes a full member of NATO, the country's 1,300 km. border with Russia would double the frontier along which Russia faces the hostile alliance.

2 comments:

Toby said...

The American myth is very much built on the good versus evil conflict. We see it in their books, movies,TV and video games and in their foreign policy. Not so long ago we heard a President say that, "You are either with us or with the enemy." We now have a Canadian Prime Minister with a similar approach to world affairs. As such they completely botch any possible compromise with alternate realities.

The Mound of Sound said...

Recall the Bush/Cheney aide who said (to paraphrase) - we're not bound by reality, we make reality.