The Foreign Policy Initiative
"As president of a small Baltic republic that was occupied by the Soviet Union
for more than four decades, Estonia’s Toomas Hendrik Ilves is all too familiar
with the way Russia has treated its neighbors. For years he’s warned about the
revanchist agenda and aggressive behavior of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
And now that the world has seen the Kremlin’s reckless, ruthless actions in
Ukraine and Crimea, influential leaders in the respectable salons of Washington,
Brussels and other European capitals are starting to pay attention. Or, at
least, they should be.
"What’s most threatening about Russia’s behavior, in Ilves’s view, is that “the old rules don’t apply.” But it should not have taken the invasion of Crimea to get that message across. The Helsinki Accords of 1975 were supposed to have established the territorial integrity of European nations, he says, and since Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia it’s been clear that Putin would just ignore them when he saw fit."
"What’s most threatening about Russia’s behavior, in Ilves’s view, is that “the old rules don’t apply.” But it should not have taken the invasion of Crimea to get that message across. The Helsinki Accords of 1975 were supposed to have established the territorial integrity of European nations, he says, and since Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia it’s been clear that Putin would just ignore them when he saw fit."
No comments:
Post a Comment