US Hopes for a New Accord With Moscow are Dead
Max Hastings, The Guardian | July 21, 2008
Hopes for friendly relations with Russia, running high in the 1990s, were ruined by the Bush administration. ++ NATO membership offer to Georgia and Ukraine and plans to install elements of missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic have fuelled Russian paranoia about strategic encirclement. ++ We need to understand that Russian foreign policy is shaped by their hunger for respect and a deep inferiority complex. ++ The best we can hope for now is a “working relationship based upon mutual recognition of interests.”
