West voracious for Mideast resources: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Mark Glenn, an author and political analyst in Idaho, to ask for his take on recent remarks by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: How do you see President Putin’s statements, certainly quite tough on Turkey especially?

Glenn: Yes, I think that this underscores the wisdom that Vladimir Putin and the people behind him exercise and not flying off the handle immediately after the downing of that jet.  A lot of people were very shocked and surprised that the Russians did not react immediately with some type of military retaliation against Turkey for having shot down a plane that at least …two Russian military intelligence were shot down over Syria, but obviously Putin decided not to fall into this trap they had laid for him and allowed things to cool off so that now a cooler heads having prevailed he can comfort and he can speak as the statements he just did and saying that “this is very uncivilized behavior on the part of the west” because when we are talking about Turkey’s actions, it is not just Turkey’s actions in a vacuum; this is basically something that spearheaded by NATO and the United States. So now having let things cool down and calm down, Putin is able to come forward and to win the ears of the world and, in doing so, to gain more political advantages both to him, to Syria, to Russia and to Iran.

Press TV: How do you feel about what he said about of course the situation in Syria and of course the fact that the Iraq war was genuinely all about oil?

Glenn: Well, I find that very interesting because during his first term he gave speech, I believe at a graduation ceremony for military cadets, and in that speech he said Iraq is reason why Russia must become or must remain a militarily powerful country and basically what he was saying there is that all countries that they have natural resources whether they are in the Middle East, whether they are in the South America or whether they are at Russia itself, that the only that they are going to be able to protect themselves from the voracious and the greedy designs of the West is that they are able to exert military pressure against any invaders. So I think Putin was making a very good point that obviously the West does not want to have mention because of course the story that we have been told is not the whole reason for the destruction of Iraq was to prevent weapons of mass destruction from falling into the hands of Saddam Hussein and to bring democracy in all of the West. So when he is able to reduce it down to the very banal issue of greed and capitalism and oil, I think that once again he has scored a great political victory. 

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