NO MORE BEAR IN THE FOREST :

Putin Lectures Ambassadors on Policy (Andrei Zolotov Jr., Jul. 15, 2002,
Moscow Times)

Having summoned all of his ambassadors to Moscow, President Vladimir Putin on Friday explained his new pro-Western foreign policy
and laid out his vision for a more modern and economically savvy diplomatic corps.

Formally dedicated to the Foreign Ministry's 200th anniversary -- in 1802, Tsar Alexander I for the first time called the foreign service a "ministry" --
the meeting of more than 130 ambassadors at the ministry was more than just an office party.

The only previous time a similar meeting was called was in 1986, when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev appointed Eduard Shevardnadze as foreign
minister and the policy of bringing the Cold War to an end was inaugurated. The last Soviet foreign minister, Boris Pankin, said in an interview
Friday that the 1986 meeting brought a "turning point" in Soviet foreign policy.

Putin re-oriented Russia's foreign policy in reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks, and the new pro-Western stance has been a hard sell to the country's military and diplomatic establishment.

He told the ambassadors Friday that the new, closer relationship between Russia and the United States was the result of a "new reading of both countries' interests and a similar perception of the very character of modern global threats."

Though I like the book very much, it's always seemed that one of the real errors in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996) (Samuel P. Huntington) (Grade: B+), was Mr. Huntington's failure to anticipate that the Christianity and culture of places like Russia and Latin America would tend to push them towards identifying with the West, rather than clashing with it. Mr. Putin certainly recognizes, and President Bush picked up on this immediately, that Russia's future lies in friendship, maybe even partnership, with America, not confrontation. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 14, 2002 11:37 PM