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US State Department did not push “reset” button
Published: 07 July, 2010, 15:01
Edited: 13 July, 2010, 07:40
TAGS: Conflict, Russia, Politics, Human rights, USA
The Foreign Ministry has harshly criticized the US State Department’s report on advancing democracy in Russia, saying that it is based on double standards and does not comply with the “reset” policy.
“There is an impression that, despite the ‘reset’ in Russian-American relations, the attitude [to Russia] of the US Department staff who worked on the report has not changed,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
The annual US Report on Advancing Freedom and Democracy is an American view on the situation with democracy and human rights and its efforts to promote both in, as it says, “non-democratic countries and countries undergoing democratic transitions worldwide”, including Russia.
“With regard to Russia, the traditional set of points on ‘erosion’ of democracy in our country has been used,” Moscow commented in a statement published on the foreign ministry’s website on Tuesday.
Firing back at the statements made in the document, the ministry noted that “it does not fail to mention a list of ‘good deeds’ of the American administration for the sake of Russian people, many of which are on the verge of interfering into internal affairs.” Among such “deeds”, the foreign ministry named “the training of ‘independent election observers’, attempts to foster so-called independent power structures in provinces, the lobbying of ‘needed’ legal initiatives, and so on.”
At the same time, Moscow noted, “whenever an opportunity occurs, our partners do not shy away from claiming that Russian programs on support of compatriots living abroad are political provocations that have to be chased and stopped.”
In fact, Moscow states, the document is a report on spending budget funds that were allocated to the US State Department, and a way for American diplomacy to show they are not spending money in vain. The question is why, despite growing financial inflows, there has been no significant progress – as the Department states – in the so-called problematic countries.
“We believe that the contents of the report prove the fallaciousness of the very principle ‘who is not with the US is not democratic’ which is, in fact, exactly the criteria for assessing the situation in some countries,” the statement reads.
The ministry added that there cannot be two identical democracies. And “the path to democracy, a direction for democratic development, is chosen by the people living in a country, not by the US Department of State.”
Russia, for its part, is open for “a constructive dialogue based on mutual respect, but not for lectures and morals on how to build true democracy.”
“Subjective judgments over what is going on in Russia made by some high-ranking US officials and based on double standards can hardly be considered appropriate,” the ministry said.
Russia is going to solve arising problems as the state and society develop “independently and on the basis of democratic choice that our country has made for itself once and for ever.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry recommended their American colleagues to pay more attention to their “own problems with observing human rights, including general rules of international law on the matter.”
“We value good relations with the US,” the foreign ministry said. “We believe that it is time to leave the past and abandon practices that do not correspond with the new character of our cooperation.”
There have been and will be differences in approaches to some issues, the ministry said. “However, it is important not to make them a matter of political conjuncture but to consider them in a spirit of constructive criticism and recommendations, based on respect for each other’s positions,” Moscow concluded.
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What Hillary forgot to mention is that the US is complicit in the blockade of GAZA, and the Israeli occdupation of Palestian land. Surprise! So what if we've attacked countries that never attacked us, and we will leave failed states in our wake. Now we are hearing the drumbeats for war with Iran, with Bill Clinton reporting that they may have suitcase bombs, and during the meeting with "BiBi, Iran was number one on the list of the most dangerous countries. And to think, the US has to build a missle defense in Poland, to protect all of Europe from Iran, I guess the US feels that the European countries are too inept to protect themselves, or even to voice the need for such protection. the US knows what is best for Europe. In its zeal, it has convinced the EU to allow it to have access to civilians bank accounts to check for terrorists of course. The US doesn't mention the twenty plus nukes Israel has, paid for by our foreign aid gifts. Hillary wants the Russians to believe they are purely for defense, just like Obama wanted to reassure the Muslim world that he wanted to show them change, and did but the change was what AIPAC and Israel could believe in not the Muslim world.
Life for ordinary people is pretty similar wherever you go. I have been to Russia more than once since 2002 and it seemed O.K. to me. My father always said "there is no such thing as democracy.". The men with the money usually call the shots everywhere in the world and talk about "civil rights" is usually only talk. Civil rights for whom? I admire Russia and Russian people and I always feel at home visiting Russia which is something I cannot say about a few places in the world. Politics which we receive in the media is a theatrical performance for the public, although it may be true from time to time. The trick is to know what is true and what is untrue Russia is a peaceful nation and the criticism from the west of Russia tells us more about those doing the criticizing than it does about Russia..