The West must stand up to “bullying” by Moscow, which is becoming increasingly authoritarian and aggressive, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a speech highly critical of Russia on Thursday.
In her first major address on Russia since its incursion into Georgia last month, Rice said Moscow had taken a “dark turn” that left its global standing worse than at any time since 1991, when it emerged from the fall of the Soviet Union.
Rice, a former Soviet expert who has presided over a steady deterioration of relations with Russia, said Moscow’s invasion of Georgia was part of a pattern that included its use of oil and natural gas as political weapons, the suspension of a treaty on conventional forces in Europe and a threat to target peaceful nations with nuclear weapons.
“The picture emerging from this pattern of behavior is that of a Russia increasingly authoritarian at home and aggressive abroad,” Rice said in the speech to the German Marshall Fund.
The US and Europe must not allow Russian actions in Georgia to achieve any benefit, she said.
“Not in Georgia. Not anywhere,” she said. “Our strategic goal now is to make it clear to Russia’s leaders that their choices are putting Russia on a one-way path to self-imposed isolation and international irrelevance.”
Moscow was internationally condemned for sending troops to Georgia to stop Tbilisi’s attempt to reassert control over the pro-Russian, separatist region of South Ossetia.
Moscow later recognized South Ossetia and another rebel region, Abkhazia, as independent states, and on Wednesday signed treaties to protect them from Georgian attack.
The Kremlin said it had a moral duty to defend the regions against what it called “genocide” by Georgia’s military.
But some political analysts have said Russia’s actions heighten the risk of Moscow attempting to exert more influence over other former Soviet territories, particularly Ukraine.
Rice rejected a Russian “sphere of influence” over its neighbors and hoped Russian leaders would “overcome their nostalgia for another time.”
“We cannot afford to validate the prejudices that some Russian leaders seem to have, that if you pressure free nations enough — if you bully, and threaten, and lash out — we will cave in and forget and eventually concede,” Rice said. “The United States and Europe must stand up to this kind of behavior and all who champion it.”
Rice said Russia’s behavior threatened its participation in a number of global diplomatic, economic and security bodies, including the G8 industrialized nations and jeopardized Moscow’s bid to join the WTO and the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.
Rice, who called Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to tell him she was giving the speech, said the door remained open for Georgia and Ukraine to eventually join NATO.
But some European governments have misgivings about allowing those states to take the first step toward joining NATO, and successfully blocked the move earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Russia’s military successfully launched its Bulava intercontinental ballistic missile from a nuclear submarine in the White Sea to hit a target in the Pacific, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Thursday.
The Dmitry Donskoi submarine fired the missile from underwater from northwest Russia and 20 minutes later it fell on the Kura testing site on the Kamchatka peninsula.
The Bulava missile has a range of 10,000km and can carry six individually targeted nuclear warheads.
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