WASHINGTON
(VR) – The current American policy when it comes to Eastern Europe has
its seeds as far back as 2008, according to University of Illinois
College of Law Professor Francis
Boyle.
America
is pursuing a policy that he calls a significant "reorientation in the
direction of a major confrontation of Russia." In addition to the danger
posed by heightened rhetoric about the duty of the West to defend
Eastern Europe, Boyle calls the one billion dollars proposed to to boost
US military presence in Eastern Europe "a down payment" and considers
the 23 million in military equipment and training
already supplied to Ukraine a dangerous foreshadowing.
The
call to defense of Eastern by Obama in Poland on Tuesday seems drawn
from the counsel and influence of former security advisor and statesman
Zbigniew
Brzezinski, but the roots go far deeper than that. Boyle says that you
can trace the tree back to the policy philosophy taught at Harvard
University, an ideology that unites Obama with Brzezinski with Henry
Kissinger and one of the political who serves as
his mentor when it comes to foreign policy, but the roots of the policy
can even be traced back to Kissinger and the man who taught them both
at Harvard, Professor William Yandell Elliott.
"Ukraine
is sort of the cutting edge of this," Boyle contends, "but now as you
see the expansion of U.S. and NATO forces in the Baltic Republics and
Poland... it appears to me regretfully that this is an across the board
confrontation with Russia."
Boyle
worries at the nature of the friction between the two superpowers. He
says that the ratcheting up of tensions and hostility comes " despite
the
fact that President Putin made several conciliatory gestures." such as
agreeing to recognize the results of the election of Petro Poroshenko
and agreeing to cut down the demands of Gazprom on the price of gas
thereby de-escalating the economic crisis faced
by Ukrainians.
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"I
think that President Putin has tried very hard to conciliate here, but
if you look at President Obama's speech there in Poland, you know, it...
it was basically an ultimatum."
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francis a. boyle
