''Glastnost'' or Transparency

February 10th, 2007 – This weekend, the 43rd Munich conference on security policy was held in the Bavarian capital. At this particular event in the past, US secretary of state Donald Rumsfeld was the person who stole the show and indeed inspired reluctance and indignation from the other delegates. This time around, Russian president Vladimir Putin was the pundit everyone would be talking about.

In what some are calling a declaration for a new cold war and others are calling a burst of steam from a frustrated and once powerful country, president Putin accused the United States of establishing a "uni-polar" world. He announced "The United States has overstepped its borders in all spheres - economic, political and humanitarian, and has imposed itself on other states," (BBC News service, 11/02/2007), he went on to deplore the wars that the US get have been involved in and have then left for another before the work is done.

One could very well agree with Vladimir that the United-States constitute the one and only superpower in the world, until the sleeping dragon (China) awakens. Also, since the last cold war ended on Christmas of 1991, the American gouvernment has been involved in all matters of international and civil conflicts (Croatia in 1992, Bosnia & Herzegovina from 1993-1995, Kosovo in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001-2003 and Iraq from 2003 to today). Nevertheless, the "infrastructure of global security" as Mr. Putin called it needs cooperation and diplomacy rather than resentment and demagogy.

Previous Russian and soviet heads of state have made similar speeches on the superiority of the United-States as a threat and provocation against the free and democratic world. Stalin, Khrushchev, Brejnev, Andropov and Gorbatchev to a lesser extent, have feared for the state of international cooperation in the face of the growing nuclear, imperialist and capitalist threat personified by the Americans.

For me, Putin’s speech, like the ones of his predecessors have very little weight coming from a country where liberty and democracy are not only novelties but also things that are limited and controlled. At the conference, Senator John McCain echoed this sentiment by affirming that it was rather an autocratic Russia that needed to change its behaviour, obviously referring to the constant sale of military equipment and technology to Iran as well as the violent repressing of nationalist minorities in the Russian federation (Ossetia, Chechnya…).

In 1962, the U.S.S.R head of the communist party, Nikita Khrushchev, made similar concerns known about President Kennedy’s involvement in African and Asian affairs. He was calling attention to the hegemony of intricate alliances that the Americans were making internationally. At the very same time, Khrushchev was installing ballistic missiles in Cuba and encouraging, financially and militarily, newborn or developing communist dictatorships in Zaire and in South-East Asia.

Without dismissing the Russian claim at the 2007 security conference, the heads of state for that country have an unfortunately well documented history of a pot calling the kettle black.

(Pictured: Gorbatchev and Kennedy, during the Cuban missile crisis - Vladimir Putin at the conference saying hmmmm.)

End.