A look at foreign media on the recent Russian-EU summit makes one wonder again just how skewed the reporting in mainstream media is, not only in the United States but in Europe as well, and how to figure out where the truth lies. Here are a few examples, and my thoughts.
Much attention has been paid in Western Europe to the conjuring up of the Cuban missile crisis by Russian President Vladimir Putin when he answered a reporter’s question about the US installing new military facilities in the Czech Republic and Poland. The media attention is understandable in the light of the fact that two of the biggest wars were fought in Europe in the past century, and fear of them lingers.
Media comments in Western Europe on Putin’s remarks seem to agree he was playing the strongman with his rhetoric, both for his own people and for a world audience. The media often turn to American sources for their assessment.
In Italy, the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera presents its readers an analysis in the form of an interview with Strobe Talbot, deputy secretary of state in the Clinton administration, who sees Putin out of control.
Talbot talks about a crisis which he says started in US-Russian relations when Putin began following a nationalist and authoritarian course. Bush, according to Talbot, erred in his assessment of Putin’s methods and goals, and Bush gave Putin too much room to maneuver. But Talbot predicts Moscow will return to a dialogue with the US, under Bush’s successor.
http://tinyurl.com/...
In Britain, The Guardian had an alarming title for an article written by Ian Traynor, Putin: US Risks New Cuban Missile Crisis. The jazzy headline, however, is not vindicated in the article by the direct quotes The Guardian gives for what Putin actually said on the subject during his recent trip abroad. The Guardian jumbles Putin’s words around and comes up with:
"Analogous actions by the Soviet Union when it deployed rockets on Cuba provoked the Cuban missile crisis," he said after the EU-Russia summit.
"For us, technologically, the situation is very similar. Such threats to our country are being created on our borders ... I would remind you how relations were developing in an analogous situation in the middle of the 1960s."
http://tinyurl.com/...
In Russia, the media, which are tightly controlled by the government, accented the positive aspects of the Russian-EU summit in Russia’s view, like the agreement to stop drug trafficking.
The newspaper Novye Izvestia mentioned the Cuban missile remark in its article by Nadezhda Krasilova, At the Summit in Portugal Vladimir Putin Promised to Aid the Development of European Democracy. The mention in the article of the Cuban missile crisis, however, has more details of what Putin actually said when he made the comment.
http://www.newizv.ru/...
In view of the way Putin’s remarks have been quoted, it’s time to give the entire context to let readers make up their own minds about it. The Russian president has a transcript on his Web page. When the reporter asked Putin about the new US installations, he said, using the Russian ‘Caribbean crisis’ for the Cuban missile crisis:
"Let me recall how relations developed in an analogous situation in the mid-60s of the past century. Analogous actions by the Soviet Union when it stationed missiles on Cuba provoked the Caribbean crisis. For us, the situation is technologically very similar. We removed remnants of bases from Vietnam and from Cuba and we eliminated everything there, but such threats to our country are being created on our borders today. Meanwhile, as we see, thank God, there is no ‘Caribbean crisis.’ That happens mainly because Russia’s relations with the United States and with Europe have undergone a cardinal change. I totally agree with President Bush when he says we and the United States are no longer enemies; we are partners. Our personal relations with President Bush, relations of trust, help to no small extent to smooth out such problems. He calls me a friend, and like him I can with every right call him my personal friend. But technological problems in the security sphere are extremely important to us. For that very reason we have offered our American partners a whole system of joint steps, joint not only with the Americans but also with the Europeans: to identify common threats, to set out the parameters of a future system and to determine democratic access to the operation of that system."
http://www.president.kremlin.ru/...
It seems to me that Putin’s remarks make people who lived through the Cuban missile crisis recall how scared they were, and he made an appeal to people to try to understand that Russians feel threatened today by US installations in the Czech Republic and Poland. That seems logical, even when the White House says there’s a big difference between America’s new defensive installations and the Soviet offensive ones in the 1960s. Yeah, right.
It also seems to me that Strobe Talbot‘s comments to the Italian newspaper about Putin’s nationalism are surprising coming out of an American’s mouth. Many people in Europe see US politics, foreign and domestic, saturated with unbridled American nationalism, and they say what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.