Hey NATO, Lay Off Russia: Qadaffi

Barack Obama would be wise to harken back to the no-meddling Monroe Doctrine and stop the West’s “addiction to interfering in the affairs of other countries,” Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi writes in the Washington Times. He blames NATO expansion to Russia’s border for moving the nuclear power to beef up its arsenal. “Intimidating Russia threatens the world, again, with nuclear war,” he writes.

NATO has no place in a post-Cold War world, except to skew politics and drive independence “down the throats of the former Soviet republics,” Qaddafi continues. That “deliberate, provocative, and continuing process” reminds Russia of past European conquests, but the stakes are even higher now. With its back against the wall, it’s unclear what Putin & Co. might do. (More Moammar Gadhafi stories.)