Money and Energy Feuling Russian Foreign Policies

(19 Sept 08 - RV) Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev today said he did not want disputes with the West to push Russia behind a new Iron Curtain, and that the NATO alliance's role in the Georgia conflict shows the Treaty Organization is unable to provide security in Europe.


Medvedev’s comments came on the heels of strong declarations from the US Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, who delivered her first major speech on the crisis in the Caucasus yesterday.


Though some politicians and commentators have spoken of a return to the Cold War, the professor of International Relations at the American University of Rome, James Walston says the realities of the present situation are more complex: