Afrasianet - Former US Vice President Joseph Biden delivered an impassioned speech which alternated between attacking Russia and praising the US-led world order, while omitting the essence of the ongoing Cold War redux.
Biden, a former senator and America’s second-highest official for two terms, took to the podium at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) on Friday evening to deliver a moving speech about the threat posed by Russian President Vladimir Putin to the “liberal world order.” He said NATO members must oppose these “malign activities” and stick to their values, even though the US did not do this under the administration he was part of.
Russia-bashing is a popular game for Western politicians nowadays. Biden was not the first speaker at the MSC to focus on the menace of the East, although unlike Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, he didn’t address his anti-Kremlin rally cry to a nearly deserted hall. On the contrary, it was packed full, including by some former Obama officials like John “you don’t invade a country on phony pretext” Kerry, the ex-Secretary of State.
And the audience heard a lot about how the Kremlin is so weak that it threatens the very core of the world order (don’t ask, just take his word for it).
Russia is a “nation in a serious decline,” Biden said, and it suffers from the stranglehold oil and gas have on the economy (Russian energy exports were 11.78 percent of GDP in 2016, amid the oil price crisis, compared to 20.32 in 2000). Russia maintains a “network of partnerships solely through coercion,” said the former vice president of a nation which has over 1,000 military bases throughout the world. Russia’s population is “aging and shrinking” (Russia’s demographic situation is typical among countries in which women can make careers, birth control is not frowned upon, and people are not forced to rely on their children in old age, although it is enduring a birth gap stemming from three generations ago, when the Soviet Union lost an estimated 26 million people in World War II).
The Kremlin is dealing with its weakness by undermining the West in general and “democratic ideals” on its borders in particular, the former VP believes, because “any alternative that can attract support jeopardizes the wealth, power and privilege of those oligarchs in charge.” For instance, Ukraine – which could be called Biden’s pet project – supposedly chose those “democratic ideals” in 2014, when armed mobs kicked out its democratically-elected president who already submitted to the demands of the opposition leaders. And then, the new Kiev went after Ukrainian people in the east who didn’t share such ideals, sending tanks against unarmed civilians and later shelling cities engulfed by rebellion.
RT