earlier today i spoke to dr carrie oderman she is a political analyst based here in kiev and she's been tracking this conflict very very closely here's what she told me with me is dr carrie orderman she's a political commentator and she's joining us here live in kiev dr orderman welcome to eon thank you for having me the million dollar question that everyone is asking is will there be war and the million dollar answer is there already is war it's been going on since 2014 and this is the standard answer that you're going to hear when you talk to anyone the question is why hasn't international media really been focused on it until now and that's because of the russian troops that started coming in the spring of 2021. so there is war there isn't going to be war we hope the war doesn't continue for the people living here though uh do you feel that ukraine's western allies did not really live up to the promise that they made that they they said that they will keep supporting ukraine but then the statements that came really gave russia the edge when the u.s president says we will not send troops on the ground you know they say intelligence is the ability to recognize patterns and there's been a long historical pattern of prop promises being made to ukrainians and them being broken if you go back even to the mid 90s with bill clinton and the budapest memorandum ukraine was i think the third most powerful nuclear power in the world after the fall of the soviet union and they handed over the nuclear codes as part of the budapest memorandum and both the united states and russia promised that there would be no aggression towards ukraine so a lot of promises have session been made now you're absolutely right there's a completely different tone coming out of washington right now and even a different tone than president vladimir zelinski and his administration are using here in the city uh today's meeting between uh president putin of russia and president xi jinping of china is being talked about a lot and the fact that moscow and beijing have closed ranks and made a joint statement that says that u.s and its nato allies pose a threat to uh security in the region uh how significant do you think is that statement and the fact that china has clearly thrown its lot behind russia well there was always support tacit support but this is a a more significant sort of underlining of that that that support i think that it was extremely interesting at the security council meeting last week in new york when china and russia came out strong together and that's simply because precedences are being set in international law what the west allows to happen here in ukraine will then be used perhaps for china with its taiwan question so this is interesting that in some ways china and russia are going to keep cooperating on this level but in other ways are going to continue to have their differences uh another criticism against the u.s is that joe biden has completed one year in office and he's not had a foreign policy win and he does not want to be seen as the one who's blinking first so he wants this uh this conflict to sort of continue to escalate uh whereas there are countries like india which have refused to take sides for for diplomatic reasons as well but the fact that india has underlined the need for dialogue rather than the escalation of hostilities how do you how do you compare the two well first let's address india any country that has an unstable border issue should also be following this very carefully to see how the international community reacts now whether or not joe biden has had a foreign policy win or not let's consider the fact that american domestic policy is famously divorced from foreign policy what's happening with joe biden's popularity of the united states has nothing to do really with what's happening outside in his actions we have to keep in mind that joe biden has been in politics for over 40 years which means he's very familiar with the cold war the foreign policy of the soviet union and this is actually i think a benefit for the white house right now because you know in the late in the early 90s there was a lot of discussion about finding new political paradigms how are we going to understand how the world is working now that the cold war has ended there's no more uh polarity there's more it's multi-polarity and what ended up happening now is again and again russia was given the benefit of the doubt however it continues to pursue an expansionist soviet union-esque foreign policy and that is something that joe biden as someone that was a senator during the cold war is probably more familiar with than other world leaders but how is he using that familiarity to his benefit because he seems to be giving uh vladimir putin the advantage in every single stage of this conflict if i know if i had answers to how joe biden could make the best out of this i think i'd be working for joe biden in the white house as someone here in ukraine i will have to admit that it is hard to stay unbiased about what's happening and each time the united states signals to ukrainians that they're offering support it is seen very positively here and as someone whose personal security may or may not be affected by this you can obviously tell that i would welcome that um portraying that to the u.s voter is unfortunately something that's very very difficult and as with anyone who works in media there's a way to tell a story and in the united states stories are being told in a very tribal way right now so whether or not if joe biden is doing the right thing or not only time will tell and it's hard to make any calls about his foreign policy right now he needs more time dr urdman set thanks very much for speaking with us veon is now available in your country download the app now and get all the news on the move
Comments
Post a Comment