(EDM) Mid-February registered a remarkable sequence of international forums, whose participants debated and sought to counter Russia’s power politics in Europe and the Middle East. First, defense ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) had their regular meeting in Brussels (February 13–14) and then proceeded to the annual security conference in Munich (February 15–17). Meanwhile, the United States–sponsored conference in Warsaw on the Middle East (February 13–14) brought together a number of prominent politicians, including Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Vice President Michael Pence. Simultaneously, Russian President Vladimir Putin greeted his partners in managing the Syrian war—Turkey’ President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani—in Sochi. Irrespective of all these conversations, a bipartisan group of US senators introduced new draft legislation with the self-explanatory name “Defending American Security from Kremlin Aggression Act” (DASKA). The Kremlin has developed a habit of explaining away all Western censure as “Russophobic malaise,” but it can hardly fail to see that each of these events has punched a hole in Russia’s assertive posture (RIA Novosti, February 14). […]
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