No Goodbye to the Cold War
Published in Die Presse
(Austria) on 2008-4-07
by Wolfgang Böhm (link to original)
(Austria) on 2008-4-07
by Wolfgang Böhm (link to original)
Translated from
by Ashley Bell.
Edited by .
Putin and Bush have proven at their last joint meeting that neither wants to renounce historical differences.
They have always been a peculiar pair. Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush have perhaps understood each other so well, because they share the same preferences and mistakes. They can give a virtuoso world politics performance on stage, but they have not yet developed political tolerance or a world view. So no one should be curious about the fact that they ended their last meeting in Sochi with many friendly gestures, but few constructive results.
Putin and Bush have found a form of highly positive great power co-existence. They have looked for a pragmatic convergence, in which neither dabbles in the delicate affairs of the other. Only where their politics directly interfere with the interests of the other, if there trouble. There is the case of the US- Missile Shield in Poland and the Czech Republic as well as the latest case of the NATO eastward expansion. Although in Sochi they sought strategic and not conflict raising arguments, they encountered, above all, old tensions. Neither ultimately wanted to renounce the historic soil of the Cold War. It still serves the mutual dissociation, the argument of ones own power and above all the authorization of doubtful influence on sovereign third countries.
They have always been a peculiar pair. Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush have perhaps understood each other so well, because they share the same preferences and mistakes. They can give a virtuoso world politics performance on stage, but they have not yet developed political tolerance or a world view. So no one should be curious about the fact that they ended their last meeting in Sochi with many friendly gestures, but few constructive results.
Putin and Bush have found a form of highly positive great power co-existence. They have looked for a pragmatic convergence, in which neither dabbles in the delicate affairs of the other. Only where their politics directly interfere with the interests of the other, if there trouble. There is the case of the US- Missile Shield in Poland and the Czech Republic as well as the latest case of the NATO eastward expansion. Although in Sochi they sought strategic and not conflict raising arguments, they encountered, above all, old tensions. Neither ultimately wanted to renounce the historic soil of the Cold War. It still serves the mutual dissociation, the argument of ones own power and above all the authorization of doubtful influence on sovereign third countries.
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