Tom Friedman hat heute in der New York Times einen Kommentar, der sich in die russische Sichtweise einübt.
Wir hätten die Nato nach dem Ende der Sowjetunion nicht ausdehnen sollen, um Rußland nicht in die Defensive zu drängen. Das hat Putins Regiment nämlich einfacher gemacht, weil wir seine Weltsicht plausibler gemacht haben – Rußland als eine eingekreiste, gedemütigte Macht, die durch Öl und Kanonen auf Genugtuung drängt.
„It seemed to us that since we had finally brought down Soviet communism and seen the birth of democracy in Russia the most important thing to do was to help Russian democracy take root and integrate Russia into Europe. Wasn’t that why we fought the cold war — to give young Russians the same chance at freedom and integration with the West as young Czechs, Georgians and Poles? Wasn’t consolidating a democratic Russia more important than bringing the Czech Navy into NATO?
All of this was especially true because, we argued, there was no big problem on the world stage that we could effectively address without Russia — particularly Iran or Iraq. Russia wasn’t about to reinvade Europe. And the Eastern Europeans would be integrated into the West via membership in the European Union.
No, said the Clinton foreign policy team, we’re going to cram NATO expansion down the Russians’ throats, because Moscow is weak and, by the way, they’ll get used to it. Message to Russians: We expect you to behave like Western democrats, but we’re going to treat you like you’re still the Soviet Union. The cold war is over for you, but not for us…
Despite all the pious blather about using NATO to promote democracy, the belief in Russia’s eternal aggressiveness is the only basis on which NATO expansion ever made sense — especially when you consider that the Russians were told they could not join. The other premise was that Russia would always be too weak to endanger any new NATO members, so we would never have to commit troops to defend them. It would cost us nothing. They were wrong on both counts.
The humiliation that NATO expansion bred in Russia was critical in fueling Putin’s rise after Boris Yeltsin moved on. And America’s addiction to oil helped push up energy prices to a level that gave Putin the power to act on that humiliation.“
Ja, da ist auch was dran. Allerdings wird Putin hier doch allzusehr nur als Getriebener dargestellt, und nicht so sehr als eiskalter Akteur, der er auch ist.
Hier übrigens kann man eine Zusammenfassung (eng.) der Doktorthese von Vladimir Putin über die strategische Bedeutung der Öl- und Gasreserven lesen.