Winning Hearts & Minds
From the BBC, Putin attacks ‘very dangerous’ US:
Russian President Vladimir Putin has attacked the United States for what he said was its “almost uncontained” use of force around the world.
America’s “very dangerous” approach to global relations was fuelling a nuclear arms race, he told a security summit.
[snip]
Mr Putin told senior security officials from around the world that nations were “witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations”.
“One state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way,” he said, speaking through a translator.
“This is very dangerous. Nobody feels secure anymore because nobody can hide behind international law.
“This is nourishing an arms race with the desire of countries to get nuclear weapons.”
While signaling that the Shrubbery can forget about any UN Security Council resolutions that permit the use of force when the US is involved, it is a major power saying what much of the world already thinks: the US is part of the problem, not part of the solution. The refusal to negotiate in any meaningful way has set the US outside the normal diplomatic sphere.
[A translation nitpick: the phrase “nobody can hide behind international law” , would have been better translated as “nobody can be shielded by international law”. Mr. Putin was speaking in Russian.]
2 comments
Sadly, Mr. Bush, despite having looked into Mr. Putin’s eyes and seen his soul (or whatever his exact words were), will see this, not as a public word of caution from one head of state to another, but rather as another basis for a contest about whose is longer. If Putin was sincere back during the eye-gazing, why would he not be equally sincere when issuing a more-or-less friendly warning, a criticism that has the additional virtue of being true. But Bush is congenitally incapable of taking Putin’s statement as a word to the wise. Heaven help us all if he decides to take on Russia as a point of personal pride. Perhaps even Dick Cheney knows to tell him, “don’t go there.”
I know no Russian, but your revised translation seems much more plausible as a statement out of the mouth of a national leader at an international security summit than the BBC’s rendering of the quote. I have a feeling America’s intelligence agencies lost a great deal when you retired from performing translations for them.
On the translation: the quote was, I believe, from Putin’s translator, who is not a native English speaker.
Steve, we never translated Russian, too much is lost. Translation is a dangerous enterprise that often removes the nuance of a language and the intent of an idiom. The “we will bury you” remark by Khrushchev is a prime example of translation gone wrong.
I think Putin is seriously worried. They knew there were no WMDs in Iraq, but they weren’t likely to want to discuss that because it would reveal their sources and methods. I think they have sources in Iran, which are much better than ours. These countries bordered on the Soviet Union. The Soviets would know more about them than we would, just as we know more about Mexico and Canada than the Soviets – they are neighbors.
As the Russians are well aware as a result of Chernobyl, radiation doesn’t respect borders. They also have Islamic extremists of their own to deal with and don’t want them energized. These are “local” issues for Russia, not something going on a world away.