Putin plays with f ire in his new doctrine
Of late Vladimir Putin has shifted Russia’s nuclear doctrine to a more directly and openly retaliatory posture in response to any attack by Ukraine or any NATO country using longer-range US missiles.
German President Frank Walter Steinmeier accused Washington, Beijing and Moscow on Friday of jeopardising the international order by stoking global mistrust and insecurity with a “great powers competition”.
In his opening remarks at the Munich Security Conference, Steinmeier said, “Each country should see for itself where it stays and put its own interests above all others”.
“And our closest ally, the United States of America, under the present administration, rejects the idea of an international community”, he further added.
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As foreign minister in 2014, he was central to the so-called “Munich consensus” when German leaders said Berlin was ready to assume more responsibility in global affairs. Steinmeier pressed that point again on Friday, but not before bemoaning the foreign policy approaches of Russia, China and the United States.
“Russia has made military force and the violent shifting of borders on the European continent the means of politics once again,” he said in the text of a speech for delivery at the opening of the conference.
According to Steinmeier, Germany’s response should be to raise defence spending and contribute more to European security and maintain its alliance with the US, recognising that Washington’s interests were shifting away from Europe toward Asia.
Turning to Moscow, Steinmeier accused Russia of annexing Crimea “regardless of international law”.
The German president also addressed China’s crackdown on minorities. “China’s actions against minorities in its own country are disturbing for us all,” he said, referring to reports of the mass detention of Uighurs, a Muslim minority group.
He also called for a European policy towards Russia “that is not limited to condemning statements and sanctions alone”.
(With inputs from agency)
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