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Presidents Barack Obama and Dimitry Medvedev at their first meeting on April 1, 2009 in London, UK
There is no shortage of solicited and unsolicited advisors and pieces of advice for the upcoming Obama-Medvedev summit this week in Moscow. Some of the advice is pretty reasonable; for the most part it is best ignored. One’s first instinct is to stay away from this cacophony and try to moderate one’s expectations so as not to be hugely disappointed later.
However, the temptation to weigh in with one’s particular advice is very high. Since both Obama and Medvedev are Internet users one does not have to send a letter to the White House or the Kremlin and wait for the routine answer from some clerk. Chances are that both or at least one of them will surf the Net on the eve of the summit and pay attention to some of the items.
Continue reading "From European to Euro-Atlantic Security" »
Boris Yeltsin, on top of a tank in Moscow, declaring an end to the Soviet regime in 1991
When the featured article was being written, the author and the Iranian people still had hopes to find leadership to their quest for freedom. Unfortunately, Mir Hossein Mousavi has not appeared in front of the protestors since the elections of June 12, and yesterday rejected another vote recount. The recent activities in Iran are, undoubtedly, a huge step forward in fostering democracy in this majority Muslim nation. However, they will result in nothing without proper leadership. Russia and China did not have to recognize, much less defend, Ahmadinejad’s victory as soon as they did, but perhaps they knew the painful truth ahead of time: the Iranian opposition has no leader, and a leader is what is so desperately needed at this historic moment.
Charles Krauthammer’s article published over at Townhall.com on June 26 does a great job of describing the difference between Russia’s 1991 and Iran’s 2009: “They need a leader like Boris Yeltsin: a former establishment figure with newly revolutionary credentials and legitimacy, who stands on a tank and gives the opposition direction by calling for the unthinkable -- the abolition of the old political order.” Most Russians remember Yeltsin as a despot, a drunk, and a sometimes embarrassing grandpa. World history will remember him as the man who ended 70 years of an Evil Empire, permanently curing Russia's infection of Communism. Hopefully, four years from now, an Iranian Yeltsin will stand up on a tank and prove that innocent protestors did not die in vain.
Visit the extended post to read the full version of the discussed article.
Continue reading "Iran: Desperately Seeking Yeltsin" »
Iranian protesters confronted by basij militias on the streets of Tehran
Over at Discovery Blog, Ambassador Bruce Chapman is writing about the current upheaval of popular discontent against the Islamic Republic regime in Iran. Nearly three years ago, Discovery Institute hosted Amir Abbas Fakhravar at its Seattle offices. Mr. Fakhravar is a former head of the Iran Student Confederation who was previously jailed and tortured for his opposition to the Islamic Republic regime. You can read Mr. Fakhravar's blog here.
So far, Russian diplomats have maintained a firm "no comment" policy concerning the ongoing power struggle inside Iran. [UPDATE: The Russian Foreign Ministry released a statement concerning the post-election revolt today, not over the weekend when this story was written]. But since Russia has already been mentioned in passing in some analysis of the crisis inside Iran, it's worth looking at the facts surrounding the complicated relationship between Tehran and Moscow.
Continue reading "Russia and Iran's Winds of Change" »
In the Eighties, lots of folks who regarded themselves as true Reaganites often said that The Washington Post should more properly bear the title of "Pravda on the Potomac". Indeed, the paper’s vicious anti-Ronny rhetoric, as well as its views on some other policy issues, were stylistically pretty close to Pravda in its heyday.
Ironically, with the collapse of Communism “Pravda on the Potomac” became a common epithet for The Washington Post not only among the people on the right but on the left and center as well. A recent Google search on this entry provided 13,100 links including articles and sites representing practically the whole spectrum of American politics.
Continue reading "Pravda on the Hudson" »
by Anatol Lieven
Anatol Lieven is a Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation.
Over the last several days, two pieces attacking the realist approach to Russia were published in prominent media outlets in the United States and Russia. One, co-authored by Lev Gudkov of the Levada Center, Igor Klyamkin, vice president of the Liberal Mission Foundation, Georgy Satarov, president of the Russian NGO the Indem Foundation and Lilia Shevtsova, a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center was featured on the editorial page of The Washington Post.
[Editor's Note: This article is titled "False Choices for Russia", an excerpt of which was republished on Russia Blog earlier this month in the post "What Can Save Russia's Liberals" by Ambassador Bruce Chapman]. The other, by Andrei Piontkovsky, a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute, was released in the Moscow Times.
I read these pieces concerning the moves to improve relations between America and Russia with a profound feeling of depression.
Continue reading "Russia’s Limousine Liberals" »
By Anatoly Karlin
American Enterprise Institute demographer Nicholas Eberstadt's recent article on Russian hypermortality was titled "Drunken Nation"
Editor's Note: This is a succinct summary of the article "Rite of Spring: Russia's Fertility Trends" previously published by Russia Blog on April 29, 2009. To find more articles on Russian demographics, click here.
In 1992, for the first time since the Great Patriotic War, deaths exceeded births, forming the so-called “Russian Cross”. Since then the population fell from 149mn to 142mn souls. Ravaged by AIDS, infertility and alcoholism, Russians are doomed to die out and be replaced by hordes of Islamist fanatics in the West and Chinese settlers in the Far East...or so one could conclude from reading many of the popular stories about Russian demography today.
Continue reading "Through the Looking Glass on Russian Mortality" »
"Don’t bother pushing the ambiguous Reset Button; just replace the whole operating system." That’s the advice offered President Obama and President Medvedev at the 28th Annual World Russia Forum that took place 27-28 April in Washington. Since 1981 the Forum has been organized by Edward Lozansky’s American University in Moscow (AUM). Of late, Discovery Institute of Seattle, Eurasia Center of Washington, the Congress of Russian Americans, and Aeroflot airlines joined this effort at people’s diplomacy to improve US -Russia relations.
The Forum attracted a powerful array of speakers, such as former US Ambassadors to Russia, Thomas Pickering and William Burns; former National Security Adviser (under President Reagan) Robert McFarlane; and Russia experts professors Marshall Goldman of Harvard and Robert Legvold of Columbia University. The Russian side was represented by Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, Dr. Igor Panarin of the Russian Diplomatic Academy, and Dr. Sergey Rogov, head of the Institute of USA and Canada, among others. (View the photo report).
Continue reading "World Russia Forum 2009
Summary and Assessment" »
An afternoon at the Moscow's Victory Park (photo by Yuri Mamchur)
Yesterday, The Washington Post published Mr. Lev Gudkov’s article “False Choices For Russia” (see below). This article is more an attitude than a program. It doesn’t really say what Russians or Americans should do to promote “democracy” in Russia. But I have an idea for the Russians: the liberal parties and politicians should stop fracturing and running assorted parties and come together in one party with one agenda that has a chance of actually getting people elected to office. Sitting on the outside with a tiny percentage of the vote split several ways--and then whining about it--is not the pathway to success.
Even in the United States no one listens to the little parties. A liberal national party with a chance of success would have to have a combination of groups and interests, some willingness to compose differences among them and then a clear reform agenda that had appeal to the common man and woman. Then they would have a chance of success.
Read the previous Russia Blog article about the issue and read the original article in the extended post.
Continue reading "What Can Save Russia's Liberals?" »
Last week President Dmitry Medvedev formed a government commission on analyzing and suppressing falsifications of history to the detriment of Russia. Some have rushed to portray this move as an “Orwellian Truth Commission” dedicated to official propaganda of the historical facts that fit the government’s interpretation of history. Indeed, one may be tempted to form such a conclusion simply by looking at the commission’s appointees. What is Medvedev likely to accomplish by forming this commission? Is this the right way to approach this issue, or are there more subtle ways to deal with the problem? -- Dr. Vladimir Frolov
One should wait, of course, for the commission to undertake some specific actions before criticizing it, but knowing how bureaucracy works, one could safely assume with high probability that whoever came up with the idea to create a “Commission on Analyzing and Suppressing Falsifications of History Detrimental to Russia” did not do a good service to his country or to president Medvedev, for that matter. Leaving aside its dubious name, this commission will do more in creating controversy than in helping Russia to withstand the information warfare conducted by its foes. Instead of taking a high road and leaving the word battles to historians and experts, the Kremlin set itself on a par with those ill-wishers who try to use history for political purposes at the pundit or state level.
Continue reading "Russia's Orwellian Truth Commission" »
Michael Averko addressing the guests of the World Russia Forum in Washington D.C.
Last month's parliamentary election and political demonstration in Moldova led to greater attention focused on that country. A few relatively high placed articles on the subject have been followed up on.
Appearing shortly before the vote and protest, Vlad Spanu's March 20 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) commentary "Backroom Deals Can't Solve Transdniester Dispute" acknowledges the popularity of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev in Moldova, where they have respectively run 1-2 in popularity among politicians worldwide. This point relates to the simultaneous desires of wanting good relations with the West, without being so against Russia and its leadership.
Continue reading "Follow-up on the Former Moldavian SSR Commentary" »
By E. Wayne Merry
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. E. Wayne Merry was a speaker at the World Russia Forum which was recently held in Washington, D.C. by Discovery Institute and the American University in Moscow.
The Obama administration has offered to “reset” relations with Russia. But what is really needed is a change of operating system.
A reset seeks to restore a previous relationship, which for former officials of the Clinton administration now back in office means the Yeltsin years. This will fail because Moscow views that period as emblematic of Russian weakness and exploitation by the West, and especially by the United States.
Relations with Moscow deteriorated under both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. The U.S. neo-liberal project of the ’90s not only failed but deeply alienated Russians. The bilateral nadir was the Kosovo war, a worse episode than last year’s Georgia conflict. A new opportunity after 9/11 was frankly squandered. Washington regarded Russia as a loser and treated it as such. It forgot that Russia would not be weak forever, and would remember.
Continue reading "A ‘Reset’ Is Not Enough " »
This article originally appeared in The Washington Times
Only a couple of short months after the United States and Russia exchanged encouraging remarks about resetting troubled relations, the two countries find themselves again at odds over Georgia. Last week, NATO began monthlong military exercises in Georgia that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has called an "open provocation."
It's unfortunate that these current NATO exercises have the capacity to disrupt much broader strategic interests that the United States and Russia have in common, most notably the mutual fight against al Qaeda. At stake are strong U.S.-Russian cooperative efforts in defeating al Qaeda and stopping its encroachment into the Central Asian and Caucasus regions.
Continue reading "Is NATO Disrupting Russia 'Reset'?" »
Russian troops entering South Ossetia last year after a Georgian offensive to retake the secessionist territory was repulsed by Russia.
The Russia-Georgia War in August 2008 has seriously exacerbated Russia’s already damaged relationships with the West. If the Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain, had won last November’s election in the United States, the two countries might have moved to the next level of confrontation – possibly of a military nature.
Few people in the U.S. political class have been more ardent in advocating U.S. ties with the small Georgia at the expense of relations with Russia. Some of McCain’s advisers are also known to have worked as paid lobbyists for Georgia’s membership in NATO. Clearly they are not concerned that, had Georgia been a member of the alliance when the violence erupted in South Ossetia, the United States would have been in a state of war with Russia.
Continue reading "Preventing a New Crimean War" »
The new U.S.-Russia arms race...bailouts and printing money?
In its May 2009 issue The Atlantic Monthly published an article featuring the provocative title, "Is the U.S. Becoming Russia?". The author, Simon Johnson, is an academic economist at MIT's Sloan School of Management and former director of the International Monetary Fund from 2007 to 2008. Prof. Johnson is intimately familiar with inner the workings of the IMF, the same Washington-based multinational agency that once extended billions in loans to Russia when Russians experienced hyperinflation and a banking system collapse in the 1990s. Regardless of whether one agrees with Johnson's thesis -- that the U.S. is rapidly starting to resemble the emerging market economies, such as Russia, that it once advised -- his article is well worth a good read.
Continue reading "The Atlantic Monthly Asks:
"Is the U.S. Becoming Russia?"" »
The American Enterprise Institute's Nicholas Eberstadt has become one of the leading proponents of the notion that Russia is in a terminal state of demographic decline
Last month Ross Douthat, a regular columnist for The Atlantic Monthly magazine now with The New York Times, commented on a new essay by Nicholas Eberstadt on the declining population of Russia. Dr. Eberstadt, a political economist, is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington D.C. Eberstadt's most recent essay (with the perhaps insulting title), "Drunken Nation: Russia’s Depopulation Bomb", which prompted Douthat's comments, is largely a rehash of his earlier report "Russia: The Sick Man of Europe" published in The Public Interest quarterly magazine back in the winter of 2004/2005.
Eberstadt's article provoked a larger discussion about global demographic trends between American "conservatives" like Douthat and "liberals" such as The American Prospect's authors Matthew Yglesias and Michelle Goldberg. However, these American pundits quickly changed their topic from Russian demographics to the reasons behind declining birth rates in Europe, Japan and other modern societies all over the world.
Continue reading "The U.S. Politics of Russian Demographics" »
By Anatoly Karlin
In recent weeks, Russia's birth rates and demographics have become a hot topic for discussion in Washington, D.C. and among American pundits. Perhaps it's been a slow news period since the initial warm rhetoric between Washington and Moscow following the election of the new President Barack Obama and the "reset" button his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have promised for U.S.-Russia relations. Russia Blog has been covering the debate over Russia's population and the future of Russian society since June 2005 -- at times, drawing praise from popular scholars such as The New York Times bestselling author and former Sovietologist Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett.
Now we present the San Francisco-based blogger Anatoly Karlin's extensive essay below, which cites Rosstat statistics to claim that the sky is not falling when it comes to the population of Russia, and also puts Russian demographics in the overall context of Europe. Karlin notes that Russian birth rates have actually been slowly increasing since reaching a post-Soviet nadir during the late 1990s. While Russia's mortality rates remain far too high, there are some reasons for cautious optimism about the country's future.
- The Editors
Continue reading "Rite of Spring: Russia's Fertility Trends" »
Kendrick White speaking at a U.S.-Russia Business Council event
This article originally appeared on Kendrick White's blog at the Marchmont Capital Partners website and was also featured over at Andy Young's Siberian Light blog. - The Editors
This country is vast and the opportunities here are extraordinary. And if you grew up or lived abroad in the US, the UK, Europe or parts of Asia, where the rules of the game are more or less understandable after centuries of capitalistic trial and error, it’s easy to spot new market niches or opportunities here which are still open to rapid development.
This has led me on countless occasions over the years to new investment ideas and exhilarating discussions with business partners - only later to be met with countless frustrations when I’ve been told, “Great idea, but we can’t do that here” or “this would be wonderful, but the laws here forbid us from fixing this problem in this way”.
Why? If it can be done elsewhere, why can’t it be done here?
Continue reading "Barriers and Bureaucracy
Must it Be Like This?" »
Kendrick White is an American entrepreneur living and working in Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Federation. Kendrick's firm, Marchmont Capital Partners, is one of the very few companies publishing business content in English from Russia's regions (that is, the rest of Russia outside Moscow and St. Petersburg). Russia Blog first covered the Marchmont Investment Guide to Russia's regional businesses back in March 2007, when then FINAM investment banker Vladimir F. Kuznetsov posted an article about Kendrick White.
We are proud to announce that blog posts and articles by Kendrick White and other Marchmont Capital authors discussing Russian business issues will now be a regular feature on Russia Blog.
- The Editors
What should I tell my children about my experiences in Russia? That this is a “boom and bust” country of extreme experiences…and emotions?
It’s hard to say. So many of my friends--Russians, Americans, Scandinavians, Asians—are having the same experiences in their countries.
“Here we are again, another crisis to deal with!” Most of these friends are pure entrepreneurs, men and women who took the leap of faith in 1991 and 1992…when things were even bleaker than today.
Continue reading "What Will I Tell My Children About My Experiences in Russia?" »
Angry youths pelting riot police with stones in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau last week
The former Soviet republic of Moldova is not the kind of place that typically grabs headlines. As many media reports have reminded us in the last two weeks, Moldova is one of the poorest countries in Europe. While plenty of Moldovans have cellular phones, among post-Soviet republics, Moldova is not exactly as wired as say, Estonia.
Given these facts, one would think that the Moldovan capital of Chisinau would be an unlikely place for a revolution fueled by social networking technologies, such as Twitter and Facebook. Yet according to early reports from The New York Times and other Western media outlets, that is supposedly what happened this month, after Moldova's Communist Party won an election that the opposition insists was rigged.
Continue reading "Twitter Madness in Chisinau
What Happened in Moldova?" »
Dear Senator Cornyn,
I received your email newsletter regarding your position on the issue of missile defense. I agree with my fellow conservatives that protecting our country and allies from missile attacks should be a very high priority. I strongly support continued funding for sea-based and airborne laser systems that can rapidly be deployed to a crisis zone and ground-based lasers to counter the threat posed by terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. I also support continued U.S. bilateral technical cooperation with all nations threatened by rogue missile strikes.
However, I must respectfully disagree with the notion that placing a handful of interceptors in Poland and a tracking radar in the Czech Republic is going to make Europe or America safer. On the contrary, I view this token system as serving more of a political rather than military purpose. The proposed system may very well serve to cement our ties with "New Europe" members that joined NATO during the 1990s. But I also believe that some in Washington would not mind if the system provokes a foolish Russian response that would involve putting offensive missiles in the enclave of Kaliningrad.
Continue reading "An Open Letter to U.S. Senator John Cornyn
on Missile Defense in Europe" »
Boris Yeltsin handing the Russian Constitution to Vladimir Putin on December 31, 1999
The Kennan Institute hosted on March 19, 2009 a day-long international conference, “The Russian Constitution at Fifteen: Assessments and Current Challenges to Russia's Legal Development.” The actual anniversary was observed in Russia on December 12, 2008. But there were good reasons to mark it in the U.S. as well. Oleg Rumyantsev, who was the head of the Constitutional Commission’s drafting team, had spent a summer of 1990 at the Library of Congress studying the American experience in writing a country’s Fundamental Law.
Now, almost two decades later, Mr. Rumyantsev, whom The Washington Post then called “the James Madison of Russia,” came back to Washington as president of the Foundation for Constitutional Reform and co-sponsor of this event. Two other sponsors were the International Institute of Global Development (founded by Alexander Lebedev, a wealthy Russian businessman), and the Kennan Institute.
Continue reading "The Russian Constitution at Fifteen Discussed in Washington: A Summary, Impressions, and Commentary" »
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev shaking hands with U.S. President Barack Obama at the G-20 summit in London, United Kingdom on April 1, 2009
The expectations regarding the first face-to-face meeting between Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama are running high. Herein lurks a danger, for few things are worse that broken hopes and disappointments. The issues facing both countries are so daunting, and the accumulated mutual mistrust is so overwhelming, that the chances for dramatic breakthroughs are minimal. However, if common sense prevails, both leaders should be able to reach agreement at least in some critical areas. And nowhere is the situation more critical than in Afghanistan.
Continue reading "High Expectations on Obama-Medvedev Meeting" »
By Nadezhda Savinkova
Edward and Tatiana Lozansky outside their Russia House restaurant and lounge on Dupont Circle in Washington D.C.
When 18-year-old high school graduate Tatiana Yershova decided to marry the much older Edward Lozansky in 1971, her friends and relatives believed she was making a terrible mistake. The slim, dark-haired and striking Tatiana was the daughter of one of the Soviet Union's highest-ranking generals, who, in 1968, played a key role in crushing the Prague Spring. So her decision to marry a poor Jewish physicist twelve years her senior, with dissident connections and a bad KGB record who had protested that Soviet invasion, was a mystery to those who knew her.
Continue reading "For the Love of Tatiana" »
This is the author's updated version of the article that appeared in Global Research on March 31 and Eurasian Home on April 1.
When compared to the other disputed former Soviet territories of Pridnestrovie (also referred to as Transnistria, Transdniestria, Transdnestr and Trans-Dniester), South Ossetia and Abkhazia - Nagorno Karabakh (which Armenians also refer to as Artsakh) often seems to get the least attention. This despite the latter being the bloodiest of these conflicts. Geographically, Nagorno-Karabakh is further away from the European Union nations and the United States than the other mentioned lands. As is true with a number of other conflicts, some find this contested former Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic territory to have murky conditions, in terms of determining which side (Armenian or Azeri) to fully support. Materialistically, fossil fuel rich Azerbaijan is the greater prize. There is also a degree of understandable sympathy for the tragic past of the Armenian people and some expressed apprehension with the human rights situations in Azerbaijan and (to an overall lesser extent) Armenia.
Since last August's war involving the Georgian government's armed attack on South Ossetia, there has been an increase in diplomatic activity among countries considered as key diplomatic parties in the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute. In September, the president of Turkey (a country seen as sympathetic to Azerbaijan and historically at odds with Armenia) and his Armenian counterpart met in Yerevan. An optimistic overview was given of that occurrence. The presidents of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia held a November meeting in Moscow, in what was described as upbeat. In February, the Turkish president met his Russian counterpart in Russia. During his stay there, Turkey's president visited the predominately Muslim republic of Tatarstan. The Russo-Turkish meeting further encouraged the growing commercial ties between the two countries.
Continue reading "At the Crossroads of Strategic Pipeline Corridors:
Settling the Dispute Over Nagorno-Karabakh" »
by Anatoly Karlin
One of the staples of alarmist, pessimistic and/or Russophobic (not to mention Sinophobic) commentary on Russian demography is a reworking of the yellow peril thesis. In these fevered imaginations, Chinese supposedly swim across the Amur River in their millions, establishing village communes in the taiga, and breeding prolifically so as to displace ethnic Russians and revert Khabarovsk and Vladivostok back to their rightful Qing Dynasty-era names, Boli and Haisanwei.
To a limited extent they have a point. Since 1989 the population of the Russian Far East declined by 14% to 6.7 million in 2002; shorn of subsidies from the center, it is now dependent on the rest of East Asia for food and consumer imports. It sits next to Chinese Manchuria (the provinces of Heilongjiang, Liaoning and Jilin), an environmentally-strained rust belt of 108 million souls. Thus it is not surprising to see American geopolitical jockeys, Russian xenophobes and anti-Putin "liberals" alike (i.e. Radio Free Europe's Aleksandr Golts and Echo Moskvi Radio's Yulia Latynina, etc) claiming that a stealth demographic invasion of Russia is well underway which will in a few years result in a Chinese Far East.
Continue reading "The Myth of the Yellow Peril:
Overhyping Chinese Migration into Russia" »
A photo allegedly showing then KGB agent Vladimir Putin posing as a tourist in Red Square during President Ronald Reagan's visit to the Soviet Union in 1988. In fact, most Russian analysts believe the man on the left is not Putin, who was living and working in East Germany at the time.
The Parallax Brief blog, maintained by an Englishman working at an investment bank in Moscow, is an interesting read. Judging by the author's blogroll and published comments, his views a mixture of British pro-free market ideas and American liberalism (the Parallax Brief seems sympathetic towards Democrat Barack Obama, or at least willing to give the new U.S. President some slack). However, the PB definitely provides an outsider's perspective on Russia different from what is typically published in the U.S.-UK media.
In particular, this blogger asks a question that would be regarded as anathema among some in Washington D.C. conservative Republican establishment, many of whom still view Moscow as the perpetual seat of the Evil Empire, regardless of how much Russia has actually changed since the collapse of the USSR. Namely, can Russia be described as a conservative country?
Continue reading "Is Russia a Conservative Country?" »
Over the past few weeks Washington has witnessed an unusual degree of activity at the official and pundit level aimed at a radical revision of US-Russia relations. Numerous think tanks and NGOs try to outdo one another in holding the most conferences and workshops on “resetting” and in churning out advice for Barack Obama. Not all of this advice is exactly radiating good will and optimism, though most of it is. Still, the anti-Russia lobby does not lose heart, but continues its enthusiastic criticism of the White House, urging Obama not to merely carry on the Bush Administration policies toward Russia, but actually to further toughen it.
After the collapse of Communism and disintegration of the Soviet Union two distinct schools emerged in America in terms of shaping Russia policy. One, which may conveniently be dubbed “Pro”, advocated furthering Russia’s integration into the West by granting it hefty economic aid to help it switch to market economy and speed up its entry into NATO. The second, by the same token to be named “Contra”, continued to look on new Russia as a country that was, at best, no longer capable of swaying geopolitical developments and therefore whose interests could be largely ignored, and at worst, a prospective enemy to be kept in a weakened state and every way “contained.”
Continue reading "Make Hay While Obama Is There" »
The brief August 2008 war between Georgia and Russia continues to spawn films
Channel One, the same Russian TV network that produced the blockbusters Night Watch and Day Watch has made an action movie about the Georgia War, titled Olympus Inferno. The movie features two main characters, an American entomologist studying butterflies in South Ossetia (you can hear him yelling "What the hell is going on?" a lot in the trailer) and a Russian female journalist. The two characters must work together to get back to Russian lines after getting swept up in the August 8, 2008 Georgian offensive against the separatist enclave of South Ossetia.
Continue reading "Russian Movies on Georgia War:
Olympus Inferno and War 08/08/08" »
In spite of the recent decline in crude oil prices, Russians are still paying $3 at the pump, nearly twice as much as the average in America. Why?
It's no secret that Russia's oil and gas industry, which accounts for more than half of Russian export revenues and more than a third of Russian GDP, has fallen on hard times lately. In the final quarter of 2008, at the same time that oil prices plunged worldwide, Rosneft, Lukoil and Gazpromneft also lost access to easy credit from Western capital markets. After briefly surpassing Saudi Arabia as the world's no. 1 oil producer in 2006, Russia's oil output has stagnated and declined somewhat in the last two and a half years.
The Russian federal budget, which had previously anticipated prices at $95 a barrel for 2009, now faces a huge shortfall, with current prices hovering around $45 a barrel. The Kremlin had announced plans to cut oil export taxes to spur new exploration and production in an industry that for decades has provided one of its primary sources of revenue, but these badly needed reforms may end up being postponed. Adding insult to injury for ordinary Russians, drivers across Russia are still paying over $3 a gallon at the gas pump, in spite of the collapse in crude oil prices.
Click on the extended post to read more.
Continue reading "In U.S.-Russia Energy Rivalry
China is the Big Winner" »
My last American Chronicle article ("Update on the Former Moldavian SSR Dispute," Dec. 31) on the meeting between the leaders of Moldova and Pridnestrovie (also referred to as Transnistria, Transdniestria, Transdnestr and Trans-Dniester) relates to the issue of how to successfully resolve the dispute between the two parties. A major stumbling block is Pridnestrovie's government refusing to accept the Moldovan government's position that Moldova's territory includes all land which comprised the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR).
Theoretically, there is a way to honor Pridnestrovie's stance, in a settlement that would unite the two parties. Rather than advocate Pridnestrovie acknowledging itself as part of Moldova, a constitutionally loose union state of two republics can be proposed. Its name could be along the lines of the Union of Moldova and Pridnestrovie.
Continue reading "Resolving the Former Moldavian SSR Dispute" »
“We worked hard to get the right Russian word,” Clinton told Lavrov, “do you think we got it?"
“You got it wrong,” answered Lavrov. “This says ‘peregruzka,’ which means overcharged.”
It must have come as a pleasant surprise to Vice President Joe Biden’s speechwriter that his phrase about the need to “hit the reset button” in Moscow-Washington relations suddenly became popular and endlessly quoted by both pro- and anti-revisionists of U.S.-Russia relations. In any case Russia should obviously thank its lucky stars for Obama’s electoral victory, for had he lost, the chances of improving these relations would have been very slim indeed -- things would most likely go from bad to worse.
Obama is clearly sending out positive signals, yet Moscow, regrettably, has so far refrained from offering to meet him halfway, producing little except rhetoric about its readiness to try new foreign policy approaches. Moreover, according to numerous political analysts, the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has already made two mistakes that baffle everyone favoring the two countries’ rapprochement.
Continue reading "There Are More Ways than One to Hit the Reset Button" »
By Oleg Atbashian
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with the famous "reset" button. In light of the Cold War MAD connotations of "The Button", should it have been red? Or even a button at all?
Did you know that if you translate “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” into Russian, it becomes “the vodka is agreeable but the meat has gone bad”? Literal translations can be tricky that way.
It seems that no translators were harmed in the manufacturing of Hillary Clinton’s “reset” button, which she presented to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva on Friday.
“We worked hard to get the right Russian word,” Clinton addressed Lavrov in a deliberately slow voice, as if talking to a special-needs child. “Do you think we got it?”
“You got it wrong,” Lavrov answered in fluent English. “This says ‘peregruzka,’ which means overcharged.”
Well, it looks like somebody used a cheap electronic translation program. But it could be worse. I once came across a website that advertised its automated translation service with an example of a label from a jar of pickles, informing Russian consumers that it contained condoms.
Talk about food safety! That’s what you get when you translate “preservatives” without as much as a human touch.
Continue reading "How Do You Say ‘Hillary’s Gaffe’ in Russian?" »
A Russian soldier making the sign of the cross before an icon. Russia's largely conscript army is being slashed to make way for a cheaper and smaller military.
Continuing Russia Blog's recent run of posts about Austin-based commentators and personalities, U.S. Army Reserve Colonel Austin Bay (an ocassional guest professor at my alma mater of the University of Texas at Austin) has an excellent post over at his Strategy Page website about the recently announced cutbacks in Russia's military budget. The notion that Russia is engaged in a military buildup to challenge the West, which was popularized last year during the brief war between Russia and Georgia, has taken a hard hit from the realities of the global economic meltdown. The Kremlin is trying to patch huge holes in the Russian federal budget left by the collapse of world crude oil prices from $95 per barrel to less than $40 a barrel.
Click on the extended post to read more.
Continue reading "Russia Cutting Back Armed Forces" »
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin meeting Chinese Premier Wen Jinbao in October 2008 (Photo by: Xinhua). Both governments are worried about the value of their dollar-denominated assets holding up during Washington's upcoming spending binge
The Western media have said plenty about Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's remarks at Davos, Switzerland last January 28. Some observers claimed that Putin chose to blame capitalism for today’s economic woes. Others, such as former U.S. President Bill Clinton, believe Putin offered an "endorsement of private enterprise" instead of more government intervention to bail out the sagging global economy.
Putin, however, was not attacking capitalism, but the haphazard series of Western government bailouts and interventions that have made it very hard to predict when global financial markets will stabilize. It is not clear to foreigners which American financial companies like Bank of America and Citigroup will be nationalized as "too big to fail" and which ones will be allowed to slide into bankruptcy, as did Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.
Click on the extended post to read more.
Continue reading "Russia and China's Financial Warning to the West
Is Anyone in Washington Listening?" »
Kyrgyzstan is officially expelling U.S. forces from the Manas Air Base -- so now what?
Nikolas K. Gvosdev is a professor at the U.S. Naval War College and the editor of The Washington Realist foreign policy blog. Gvosdev is also, when it comes to Russia, probably not the most popular guy in Washington, particularly when he reminds his fellow Washingtonians about the limits of American power worldwide and the checks on the extent of U.S. influence in the former Soviet Union. Gvosdev has long been skeptical of efforts to create democracy overnight in former Soviet republics like Ukraine and Georgia through so-called "Color Revolutions" that took place earlier this decade with strong American government and NGO support.
Here at Russia Blog, we've frequently published Prof. Gvosdev's articles in the last two years. Gvosdev's latest article offers suggestions on how the Obama Administration can cooperate with Moscow to secure NATO's logistical lifeline through Central Asia into Afghanistan. While some observers may believe that Russia is taking unfair advantage of America's predicament in Afghanistan, demanding concessions from Washington in return for NATO access to Russian and former Soviet territory, the fact is nothing in international relations comes for free. And the phrase "trust but verify", so beloved by fans of the late President Ronald Reagan, actually came from Russia. The Kremlin is now testing U.S. intentions in Central Asia to see if fighting the Taliban and jihadism really are the highest American priorities in the region, or if other zero-sum agendas are still ongoing twenty years after the Cold War was officially declared over.
Click on the extended post to read the article.
Continue reading "Working Together in the Land of the Unruly
U.S.-Russian Quid Pro Quo on Afghanistan" »
A U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane in the snow at Manas Air Base, 2006
The Swiss International Relations and Security Network (ISN) website, a project of the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, has published an interesting take on why the U.S. is losing access to a strategic military base at Manas in Kyrgyzstan. While Switzerland has long enjoyed a reputation for a detached, if not always completely neutral view of international affairs, the author in this case is actually an American, Dr John C.K. Daly, a Washington D.C.-based consultant and an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute.
Dr. Daly writes that Washington hawks who want to blame the Kremlin for the U.S. getting booted out of the Kyrgyz base that has been critical to ongoing American military operations in Afghanistan since December 2001 have no one to blame but themselves. Dr. Daly adds that Washington should understand that the Kremlin no longer believes that the U.S. has the political will to stay in Afghanistan long-term and defeat the Taliban. Therefore Russia is making every effort to prop up its authoritarian friends in former Soviet Central Asia with economic aid, lest they too fall victim to the Taliban exporting heroin and jihad into their countries in the years to come.
Click on the extended post to read more.
Continue reading "Why Kyrgyzstan is Kicking the U.S. Out
Why the U.S. and Russia Need to Make a Deal" »
Myth: Russia is only about oil and gas. Fact: Russia has begun to diversify its economy
The present economic crisis and collapse of energy prices give Russia more opportunity for diversification
Princeton University history professor Stephen Kotkin recently released a paperback edition of his book, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000 with an addendum covering the last eight years in Russia. Writing over at the Russia: Other Points of View forum, Prof. Kotkin notes that the Western media often fixates on Russian leaders like Vladimir Putin and Cold War-style Kremlinology, to the detriment of reporting on changing economic and social conditions for ordinary Russians. Only in the last two and a half years, for example, has the Western media widely reported that middle class Russians are buying many of the same things that middle class Westerners once commonly took for granted, such as new cars, apartments, and vacation packages abroad.
Click on the extended post to read Prof. Kotkin's article.
Continue reading "How Did Russia Rebuild Itself?
Sorry, But You're Wrong" »
The latest Russo-Ukrainian gas spat may have finally taught the elites in those two countries a vital lesson. Namely, that they stand to gain far more from acting in concert, than either one of them gains from acting against the interest of the other.
The latest statement by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso that "Europeans" will not forget how Ukrainian and Russian leaders acted during this crisis, reveals more than just impotence. It serves as a reminder that many Western Europeans are still not ready to accept either Ukraine or Russia as part of Europe. It would be wise for both Russian and Ukrainians not to lose sight of this fact, for it both shapes and constrains the policies of European Union towards them.
At the outset of this latest spat, both Ukrainian and Russia political elites made the mistake of assuming that EU leaders cared about the issues. They therefore put all their efforts into making their case in the media, instead of undertaking direct negotiations. Ukrainian leaders hoped to mobilise western sympathy by portraying their country as a victim of Russian imperialism, while Russian leaders sought to portray the Ukrainians as thieves. Each then tried to involve their Western European partners more directly, urging the European Commission to send monitors to the pumping stations, inviting the parties to a gas summit, and floating schemes by which European intermediaries might step in to guarantee payments in the event of further payment arrears.
Continue reading "Recasting Ukraine's Identity" »
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in front of a banner for Gazprom, Russia's state-owned natural gas export monopoly
As of yesterday, January 17, 2009, the gas crisis was not over yet, and contrary to some optimistic expectations, it may actually continue for a long time, perhaps in a less severe but still damaging way to all parties of the conflict -- Russia, Ukraine, and the European Union. This will add additional pain to the current global economic and financial crisis, so we should be ready for the worst. However, despite all negative consequences, each crisis provides an opportunity to soberly evaluate the situation, draw proper conclusions, learn new lessons, think of the new strategies and tactics, and apply a new course of actions.
Unfortunately, the September 11 crisis, despite some encouraging steps at the beginning, did not produce too much in the long term East--West cooperation agenda. Will the current crisis generate better results? No one knows for sure, but nothing will happen unless we try, and here is some of my humble advice to the powers that be.
Click on the extended post to read more.
Continue reading "Lessons from the Russia-Ukraine Gas Crisis" »
Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin
Russia Blog contributor Professor Andrei P. Tsygankov sends along his latest article, published in the Asia Times newspaper. Prof. Tsygankov writes that although Russia is justified in seeking higher prices from countries like Ukraine that have based much of their recent economic growth on cheap subsidized Russian gas, the Kremlin has pinned far too much of its hopes for future development on the oil and gas industry.
While this type of criticism is quite commonplace in the West, Tsygankov, like his fellow Asia Times contributor "Spengler", realizes that the time is short. If Russia (and for that matter, Ukraine and Georgia, which are in even worse demographic shape) want to turn things around and avoid their societies being cut in half, they have to do it within a generation.
Click on the extended post to read this excellent Asia Times article.
Continue reading "Russia's Superpower Strategy Runs Out of Gas" »
A Russian soldier in Georgia in 2008
All quiet on the Caucases front: Emil Sanamyan writes that since the defeat of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's effort to reunify South Ossetia by force, other former Soviet republics have indicated a willingness to settle their secessionist conflicts through negotiations rather than violence
World Politics Review, an online magazine based in Washington, D.C., has a new format and several contributors offering perspectives outside of the typical U.S. editorial page fare when it comes to Russia and other parts of the world. Emil Sanamyan is the Washington editor and bureau chief of the Armenian Reporter and he writes that in the aftermath of the August 2008 war between Russia and Georgia, the violatile Caucases region has actually become more quiet.
In particular, Mr. Sanamyan writes about signs that the long simmering conflict between majority Muslim Azerbaijan and historically Christian Armenia over the territory of Ngorno-Karabkh may be moving towards a peaceful settlement. And with little acclaim from analysts in the West, Moscow is acting as a peace broker between the two sides. Russia has long had friendly relations with both Armenia and Azerbaijan and both countries have extensive ethnic and immigrant diasporas in the Russian Federation.
Click on the extended post to read the article.
Continue reading "In Aftermath of Georgia War, a More Stable Caucasus" »
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. In spite of the hype pushed by some conspiracy theorists, Israel only supplied Georgia with a tiny fraction of its military equipment and suspended all arms sales months before the August 2008 war
Since the August 2008 war between Russia and Georgia, many geopolitical analysts have tried to understand the origins of the conflict, and explain both U.S. support for the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and Russian support for his opponents, the separatist governments of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In doing so, geopolitical thinkers around the world have sought explanations for the conflict that go beyond the personalities of the individual leaders involved, such as the Russian President Dimitry Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
Click on the extended post to read more.
Continue reading "Pipeline Politics:
How Georgia Influences Israel and Iran" »
Muscovites celebrating the New Year near the Kremlin on January 1, 2008
During this time of year, it's traditional, in Russia as in the West, to take stock of the previous year and to make resolutions for changes in the upcoming year. Yuri Mamchur, Russia Blog's creator and main editor, has published a retrospective in the Seattle Times this week (scroll down on the main page or click on this link to see Yuri's article) on how Russia could have been better prepared to face the current global economic crisis. Addressing the same topic, Professor Andrei Tsygankov from San Francisco State University in California has sent us a panel discussion he participated in with other experts for the magazine Russia Profile.
Click on the extended post to read the article.
Continue reading "Prof. Andrei Tsygankov:
Russia's 2008 in Review" »
Originally published in The Seattle Times on December 30, 2008.
Eight years after President Boris Yeltsin gave up the presidential suite, Russian economic legislation had matured, but the economy hadn't. Russia doesn't have much to show for its meteoritic economic rise and fall. But it could have been avoided if Russia had not missed important opportunities, from infrastructure investment to small business loans.
THE Russian government and people, awash with money, were convinced their economy was invulnerable to the world financial crisis. By September, Russia's gold reserves stood at $581 billion. The federal budget seemed strong, salaries high, economic reforms successful and government investments wise. In hindsight, it was all too noticeably "Potemkin" and vulnerable. When foreign markets crashed and oil prices fell, Russia's financial standing changed overnight.
Continue reading "Russia's Economic Crisis Could Have Been Avoided" »
The late Free Congress Foundation CEO Paul Weyrich speaking on CSPAN
Writing about Paul Weyrich over at the National Review Online website on December 18, 2008, Michael G. Franc of the Heritage Foundation wrote:
Paul Weyrich possessed the unrivaled ability to take public stands on behalf of his (and our) core principles, even when doing so created a breach with the conventional wisdom that reigned inside Washington at any given moment. Personal relationships with Washington’s power brokers (and he knew them all, because they all quietly and respectfully sought his counsel) were irrelevant if the broker in question was contemplating a policy that violated one of his core tenets. He would patiently explain his point of view, counsel adherence to a timeless principle over a strategic feint that might (but usually didn’t) yield some transitory political advantage, and then go public with his principled view if the quiet conversation proved fruitless.
Besides taking strong positions on moral, human life, and family issues, Weyrich was not afraid to criticize what he saw as misguided foreign policies, particularly those advocated by his fellow conservatives and within the Republican Party. Whereas others simply accepted the expansion of NATO into the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine as a given, Weyrich pressed the hard question to his fellow conservatives of whether these steps would actually advance the cause of freedom worldwide, or if they would needlessly antagonize Russia without making America or Europe the slightest bit more secure.
For the sake of educating the public and press about what Weyrich believed and advocated, Russia Blog has republished two of his final op-eds about the future of U.S.-Russia relations.
Click on the extended post to read Weyrich's op-eds from December 2 and August 20, 2008
Continue reading "Remembering Paul Weyrich:
Thoughts on Georgia War, U.S.-Russia Relations" »
Patriarch Alexy II speaking to the Council of Europe in October 2007
Professor Andrei P. Tsygankov of San Francisco State University has sent us an article previously published by Russia Profile that included contributions from him and James George Jatras, a Washington D.C.-based international lawyer and the Director of the American Council for Kosovo, which opposed U.S. recognition of the former Serbian province. Jatras has been a frequent speaker at events hosted by the CATO Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the Institute of World Politics.
In the Russia Profile panel, Tsygankov and Jatras discuss the controversial question of the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian State, and how Patriarch Alexy changed these relationship, and with it the culture of post-Soviet Russia.
- The Editors
Click on the extended post to read the full article.
Continue reading "Russian Church and State:
What is Patriarch Alexy's Legacy?" »
Mark Ames, the former publisher of The Exile, a controversial English-language "alternative" newspaper in Moscow, has an excellent article appearing in the latest issue of the American left-wing journal The Nation. In his article, Ames does some old fashioned fact checking concerning The Washington Post's editorial line about Russia. Specifically, Ames points to an embarassing rush to judgement without the slightest evidence in the odd case of Karina Moskalenko, a Russian human rights lawyer based in Strasbourg, France.
In recent years, Moskalenko has pursued several cases against the Russian government at the European Court of Human Rights. When tiny traces of mercury were discovered in her car, the Washington Post quickly suggested that someone had tried to poison the attorney. Upon further examination, however, the mercury traces came from a thermometer that the previous owner of the car had broken in the vehicle. The Washington Post, however, didn't issue a correction about the case on the editorial page when the facts dispelled foul play, and buried news of the case in the news section.
The real issue here is not getting one story wrong or posting the correction in fine print -- this often happens at even the best newspapers -- but what the case says about the mentality of the Post's editors when it comes to Russia. Certainly, left-wing critics of American foreign policy like Ames are hardly the only ones to have asked this question. A few weeks before the Georgia War began on August 8, 2008, Paul J. Saunders, executive director of the Washington D.C.-based Nixon Center, published an article in The National Interest labelling the WaPost the "Tblisi Post" for its frequent championing the cause of the tiny Caucasian nation and its embattled President, Mikheil Saakashvili.
Click on the extended post to read the article.
Continue reading "Sloppy Editorials on Russia at
The Washington Post " »
Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for President in the 2008 election
Former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. (ret) Colin Powell has made a lot of news this year. First, the longtime Republican Powell endorsed Illinois Democrat Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States. Second, on Sunday, December 14, in an interview with Fareed Zakaria, Powell gave a candid account of his time as Secretary of State for President George W. Bush(2001-2004), in which he discussed the day-to-day "business" of U.S.-Russia relations. In his discussion with Newsweek and CNN correspondent Zakaria, Powell declared that while missile defense systems may eventually be deployed to protect the U.S. and its allies, they must be proven to be workable, and their deployment weighed against other diplomatic and military priorities in U.S. grand strategy.
Click on the extended post to read more.
Continue reading "Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Russia:
"With the Russians, you can be tough, but you should listen"" »
Suzanne Massie is a Russia expert and former adviser to President Reagan
"Take bold steps, like Ronald Reagan, and chart a new foreign policy course toward Russia." This is the advice that Suzanne Massie, a Russia expert and former adviser to President Reagan, gave to President-elect Barack Obama during her presentation ,"Reagan's Evolving Views on Russians and their Relevance Today," at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies (KIARS) in Washington D.C. on December 1, 2008.
Ms. Massie is a writer, lecturer and the author of best-selling books, Nicholas and Alexandra, and Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia, as well as other books dealing with Russia's history and culture. Born in New York City in the family of a Swiss diplomat, she was educated at Vassar College and the Sorbonne. From 1985 to 1997 she was a fellow of the Harvard Russian Research Center. Trilingual (fluent in Russian, French, and English), she was invited by KIARS's director Dr. Blair Ruble to reminisce on the years of 1984-1988 when she was an adviser to President Reagan.
Continue reading "Suzanne Massie's Advice to President Obama:
Adopt Reagan's Attitude toward Russia" »
A Russian soldier in Georgia
The International Herald Tribune has done some of the best reporting about Russia in recent months, including C.J. Chivers recently published analysis questioning many initial reports from the August 2008 war in Georgia. The Georgia War revealed that the Russian military still has sharp teeth - at least when fighting an inferior opponent on its own borders.
However, the war also revealed that even the Russian Army's elite formations were fielding 1980s vintage equipment, and did not have night vision goggles or Global Positioning System (GPS) devices like some of their Georgian opponents. The lack of unmanned aerial vehicles also led to a Russian Air Force Tupolev bomber getting shot down on a routine reconaissance mission over Georgia, with the loss of the entire crew. Russian army commanders, like the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, were reduced to issuing battlefield orders over easily intercepted cellphone lines due to a shortage of secure radios.
In late October the IHT reported on large Russian military exercises then taking place across all eleven time zones of Russia, complete with ICBM tests (hat tip: former Sovietologist and blogger Thomas P.M. Barnett). The IHT added that most American officials in the Pentagon and Bush Administration considered these changes in the Russian military's organization to be routine and not a cause for alarm in the West. If anything, President Medvedev's ambitious plans to modernize the armed forces may have to be scaled back due to a weak ruble, falling oil prices, and declining tax revenues into the Russian federal budget.
Click on the extended post to read an excerpt from the IHT article. Click on the Human Rights section of Russia Blog to read more about the problems of brutal hazing (dedovshina) and low morale in the Russian army.
Continue reading "IHT: Russian Military Modernization
May Be Hampered by Economic Crisis" »
Medvedev’s statement regarding the deployment of Iskander missiles in the Kaliningrad Region in response to the US intention to station Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic was hardly among the Kremlin’s most fortunate moves. Considering that Obama himself was not a great supporter of that project--with its dubious technological efficiency and exorbitant cost--it would probably have been more expedient to let the new US president freeze or even bury this idea of the Bush Administration.
The timing for making such a statement, with Obama only just emerging victorious from a grueling race, also was rather less than perfect. After Obama’s election was secured, a phone call to congratulate the new White House resident and wish him success in his difficult mission might have been more fitting. Memorably, Putin’s phone call to Bush on 11 September 2001 was instrumental in establishing a personal friendship between the two presidents that exerted some restraint on the zeal of the Cold War Warriors.
Continue reading "Obama Takes the First Step Toward Russia " »
Shirtless Putin and Obama (Compilation by Publius Pundit)
Reality is catching up fast for the Russian Federation, which begun to slowly orient its expectations towards Barack Obama's win about two weeks prior to November 4. As the Russian government and its policy analysts expected, Obama's nascent presidency will have mixed results for US-Russia relations, though cautious optimism is starting to take hold. One issue that is already grabbing headlines in Russia is the American attitude towards anti-missile shield in Europe.
As reported by the Daily Vzglyad, Obama reiterated his commitment to the Patriot missile batteries in Poland, signed earlier in August by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. The paper commented on Western Europe's desire for a "new beginning in relations between Russia and the US," but remained convinced that President-elect's desire not to deviate form the previous administration's plans signaled that major changes in US-Russia relations are not expected to take place anytime soon.
Continue reading "Russians Cautious on Obama;
No Major Changes Expected" »
Democrat Vice Presidential nominee Joe Biden's remarks at a fundraiser in Seattle that an Obama Administration will be tested by an international crisis have drawn criticism from Republicans
Senator Joe Biden, Barack Obama's vice presidential nominee on the Democratic ticket for President, has never shied away from speaking his mind in public. At times this has led to ambiguous remarks, such as Biden's odd statement last year during the Democratic primaries that his future running mate Obama was "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy". More recently, it has led the Delaware Senator who prides himself on being an intellectual to commit an embarassing gaffe, declaring that President Franklin Roosevelt appeared on television to reassure the American people after the stock market crash of 1929. In reality, FDR wasn't elected until 1932 and television only came online a decade later, in 1939.
On October 19, Biden appeared before 10,000 supporters at a campaign rally in Tacoma, then spoke at a reception for Democratic donors in Seattle in the evening. At this fundraising dinner, Biden warned Democrats and the American people that an Obama Administration would be tested by an international crisis within the first six months of 2009.
"Mark my words: It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Watch, we're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."
Continue reading "Was Joe Biden Talking About Russia in Seattle?" »
A Russian tank next to a Georgian military base, August 2008
Fred Weir, a longtime correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor in Moscow, writes in this week's edition of the German magazine Der Spiegel that many middle and upper middle class Russians (his own friends included) express frustration over the way Russia is portrayed in the West. Weir emphasizes that his circle of friends includes academics with liberal leanings and middle managers working for large Western corporations operating in Russia -- professionals who enjoy access to the Internet and direct contact with Westerners and yet nonetheless feel “betrayed” by the West.
Weir's friends and acquaintences seem to have experienced rising personal incomes and careers in the past several years, with some going from poverty to affluence in less than a decade. However, the fact that Russia's economic growth story (unlike, say, that of China) seemingly has not earned “respect” from America gnaws at these successful Russians. They resent what they perceive to be Washington's double standards and support for governments in Russia’s “near abroad” that are hostile to the Kremlin.
We are not endorsing this view, just reporting it. One does notice that “respect” is an emotional term and that “Washington” jumps out as a surrogate for “the West” as a whole.
Click on the extended post to read an extensive excerpt from Weir's article.
Continue reading "Der Spiegel:
Russian Patriotism Unleashed by Georgia War" »
Another interesting insight that appears, instructively, first in Europe, not the U.S.
Grozny in 2000...
...and Grozny in 2008.
It's Over, and Putin Won
Chechnya is being rebuilt with Russian oil cash and its leader obeys Moscow. Separatist ideas are on ice
By Jonathan Steele in Grozny
The Guardian
Originally published on September 30, 2008
No corkscrew. That's the first surprise about Chechnya. Unlike in Baghdad today or Kabul during the Soviet occupation, planes don't arrive high above the airfield and then dip one wing in a steep and terrifying spiral so as to reduce the risk of ground fire as they land. In Grozny they glide in over woods and villages, apparently confident there are no resistance fighters lurking in wait.
Surprise number two is the amount of reconstruction in the Chechen capital. Five years ago when I last visited Grozny it still looked like the ruins of Dresden or Hiroshima, street after devastated street. Now new nine-storey blocks of flats, shops, and cafes flank the main streets. In the central square workers are laying the last paving stones outside what is described as Europe's largest mosque, a concrete replica of Istanbul's Blue Mosque, financed and largely built with Turkish aid and Turkish engineers.
Continue reading "The Guardian Reports on Chechnya, Terrorism, and Wahhabism " »
The article in the International Herald Tribune by two prominent Republican secretaries of state, Henry A.Kissinger and George P. Schultz (LINK), is likely to be read closely in Washington and Moscow alike. Isn’t it interesting that it ran first in Europe?
Finding Common Ground
By Henry A. Kissinger and George P. Shultz
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
The crisis over Georgia raises an issue familiar from history: In 1914, an essentially local issue was seen by so many nations in terms of established fears and frustrations that it became global in scope and led to the First World War.
There is no danger of general war today. But there is the risk that a conflict arising out of ancestral passions in the Caucasus will be treated as a metaphor for a larger conflict, threatening the imperative of building a new international order in a world of globalization, nuclear proliferation, ethnic conflicts and technological revolution.
Continue reading "Cold Warriors Kissinger and Schultz Scope Out Today’s Russia" »
John Wohlstetter, Discovery Institute’s Senior Fellow, was quoted in an article published by a Russian financial firm BCS. Below is the translation of the original article.
The Republican Party is actively working on the strong boost of “international experience” of Sarah Palin, as a vice-presidential candidate. Analysts believe that this flaw might neutralize the positive factors that the Alaskan governor is believed to be bringing into John McCain’s campaign.
During the annual UN General Assembly on September 24 Sarah Palin will conduct meetings with the presidents of Georgia and Ukraine, as well as with leaders of Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Colombia, and India. The “conversations” with the world leaders should help Palin in her preparations for the pre-election television debates with Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden. At the moment, he leads the Senate Committee on International Relations.
Continue reading "Short Course of Sarah Palin Features Opinion from Discovery's John Wohlstetter" »
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, left, and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, right, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, back view (Photo by AP).
A report (download the report in PDF format) from a British group called the DAIWA Institute (a research organization affiliated with the European branch of a Japanese investment firm) is interesting in several respects. Nonetheless, the blame-pointing is not necessarily sound and the picture of both American and Russian policy options is, at best, mixed. I think the idea of a “Medvedev Doctrine” also seems peculiar. When did the United States ever say that it supports a “uni-polar” world? That would be ridiculous. But that apparently is what the report says Medvedev wants the world to think America is proposing.
As for Russia’s reserving to itself the right to protect Russian citizens anywhere, it is a striking concept, but it needs to be carefully defined. The U.S. has often intervened in the past to protect U.S. citizens around the world, sometimes deploying military forces to do so (the invasions of Grenada, to name one examples in the last thirty years). But then again, the U.S. does not do this often, for various reasons. So claiming the “right” to do so is strange. It would seem that every nation has the right to protect its citizens, but that right has to be clearly hedged by circumstances. So I can’t say I am impressed with this alleged new Doctrine.
The warning about nuclear conflict is correct, if even in the abstract. There really should be fewer public pronouncements now and more serious diplomacy behind closed doors where leaders from both sides can be both frank and mutually respectful.
Russian Roulette CD cover by Accept
By Richard Hainsworth
Originally published in Moscow Times
When Russian troops moved into Georgia, foreign investors moved out and the Russian market plummeted. When U.S. troops moved into Iraq, foreign investors hesitated but the U.S. market barely blipped. Is this a double standard?
Not really. The difference lies in the way investor perceptions are challenged or fulfilled by the political decisions of a country's leadership. Investors create models about their investments -- how much they are promised at the point of sale and how much they are likely to get back in a variety of circumstances. These models can be simple, ranging from a conceptual understanding about a company and the environment it operates in, to a complex econometric simulation with all the macro indicators included. Investor models implicitly include uncertain factors, such as interest or exchange rate movements. Geopolitical decisions must also be included because investors need to know in advance the possible trajectories of government action.
Continue reading "Moscow Times:
Russian Roulette for Investors" »
The Kremlin may or may not have been justified in its initial attack (or counter attack) in South Ossetia. But its decision to keep pressing ahead and not to leave even the Georgian territory (the so-call buffer zone) is costing the Russian economy a lot. This article may be an "opinion" piece, but the figures are daunting.
Maybe "it doesn't matter." But is there a point where it does matter? Is it really smart to put the screws to Poland and Germany on gas supplies?
Please visit the extended post to read the original article.
Continue reading "Economic Consequences of the Georgia War" »
Wars often start for seemingly absurd reasons connected to tendentious issues of honor, perceived military commitments and, most of all, erroneous expectations that escalation can be limited and managed. No one anticipates a war now between Russia and NATO. That is what is worrying. Only when a nuclear exchange is imaginable does controlling one become truly feasible. Even if the chances of a larger war are small, the stakes are stupendous and ought to give leaders and opinion leaders a pause.
Please pause. The hot rhetoric could start an unnecessary fire.
Remember that World War I, the granddaddy of 20th century folly, was triggered by the act of an anarchist in the Balkans. When forces already are poised for confrontation, as they were then, it doesn’t take much to launch hostile actions, and often the fuse is lit by a minor figure.
In retrospect, it is clear that Russian-Western tension before the Ossetia debacle was much greater than almost anyone realized. This dispute is not just about ethnic rivalries and boundary lines in the Caucasus, but rather the whole post-Soviet relationship and “New World Order.” It is bigger even than Russia’s fear of “encirclement” or the fears of its near neighbors that Russia wants to swallow them up. Both sets of fears are genuinely held, but it is likely--as good diplomacy could show--that neither set is justified.
Continue reading "Russia and the West Are Entering the Danger Zone" »
Many Americans blame George W. Bush for the disastrous state of U.S. foreign policy in the region, but to be fair, the blame should go to the older Bush and Clinton as well...
It looks like the Western leaders, and especially two U.S. Presidential hopefuls, Barack Obama and John McCain, are trying to outdo one other in condemning Russia’s recognition of independence for Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Meanwhile, an impressive armada of U.S. and NATO military ships is docking in the Georgian port of Batumi or is on the way to the Black sea while Russia also sent three missile boats to show the flag. At the same time, British foreign secretary David Milliband has arrived to Ukraine to promote the idea of building some kind of anti-Russian coalition, and other EU leaders are making very tough statements too.
There is a great danger that if this verbal war continues at some point the inflammatory rhetoric will get out of control. To save face the West might be forced to follow words with deeds and we would arrive not just at the new edition of the Cold War but to something much hotter, perhaps close to 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, or even worse.
Continue reading "Is the West Ready to Fight Russia
to Preserve Stalin’s Legacy?" »
Download the PDF version of the report
"Behold the Bear: Ten Reasons Americans Should Care About Russia"
The war in South Ossetia and Georgia, though appalling, resulted in fewer deaths and damage than originally reported. It is still not "over" and probably won't be for some time. Meanwhile, it definitely did serious damage to Russia's relationship with the West. In some ways, relations are worse than at any time since well before the collapse of the USSR--in other words, in roughly a quarter century.
We are going to say a lot more on this, and we are not inclined to be particularly laudatory to any of the players. The war has not made any country look good.
Meanwhile, before the war we wrote a report on Ten Reasons Americans Should Care About Russia. It follows, and, as you will see, it remains valid. Perhaps as tempers cool, people of good will can consider what is at stake; what there is to gain, and what there is to lose.
Download the PDF version of the report, or proceed to the extended post to read the online version of the publication.
Continue reading "Behold the Bear:
10 Reasons Americans Should Care about Russia" »
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili (left) and Russian President Dimitri Medvedev
Russians and Georgians fight it out--in print. The Financial Times has scored by publishing articles by both Dimitri Medvedev and Mikheil Saakashvili. (P.R. firms representing both sides must be working overtime.) Obviously, both presidents are biased, but their points of view could have not been presented more clearly. Medvedev's "Why I had to Recognise Georgia’s Breakaway Regions" and Saakashvili's "Moscow’s Plan Is to Redraw the Map of Europe" in the order of their appearance in the FT:
Why I had to Recognise Georgia’s Breakaway Regions
By Dmitry Medvedev
Financial Times
August 26, 2008
On Tuesday Russia recognised the independence of the territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It was not a step taken lightly, or without full consideration of the consequences. But all possible outcomes had to be weighed against a sober understanding of the situation – the histories of the Abkhaz and Ossetian peoples, their freely expressed desire for independence, the tragic events of the past weeks and international precedents for such a move.
Continue reading "The Battle of the Dueling Presidents:
Take Your Pick or “None of the Above"" »
It may take 50, 100, or even more years before historians acquire a proper understanding of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's legacy. For his contemporaries, however, he is first of all the literary giant who almost single-handedly delivered the most powerful weapon in the East – West ideological confrontation with his works. This weapon helped the West to defeat the "Evil Empire" with the collateral result of crushing the Communist International and "reeducating" the European Left, which to some extent was sympathetic to the Soviet experiment.
History knows other cases when words were more powerful than guns. Without going into dangerous religious waters one could point to Karl Marx, who published a powerful indictment of a capitalist system which eventually led to the enslavement of nearly half of mankind. And it took Solzhenitsyn to undo the work of Marx. For this, the world and especially Russia should be forever grateful to this man. However, when it comes to modern times, Solzhenitsyn's ideas of rebuilding his native land did not find too many followers, at least so far.
Continue reading "Alexandr Solzhenitsyn Street
The Legacy Begins to Clarify" »
To be published in the International Herald Tribune.
Like the heroes in Leo Tolstoy's short story, Russia and America have become "Prisoners in the Caucasus," their options constrained by the irreconcilable positions of protagonists whose hostilities dates back centuries.
But while Russians have more than two centuries of historical, political, cultural and military experience to guide them in this crisis, the Bush administration is a novice to the region.
It shows. The administration's main argument for supporting Georgian sovereignty seems to be that Georgia has a rare combination of two virtues: 1) a staunchly pro-American strongman, Mikheil Saakashvili, whose lapses into martial law and seizure of opposition television stations are quickly forgiven; and 2) the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which connects the Caspian oilfields to the Black Sea.
Continue reading "Prisoners of the Caucasus Unite" »
By Mike Wussow and Bruce Chapman
A Russian gas rig in Siberia. Russia currently produces over 9 million barrels of oil per day and has the world's largest proven reserves of natural gas, giving Moscow significant geopolitical clout
(Note: Some of the issues described in this post - particularly U.S. oil dependency and energy security - will be the focus of a major conference hosted jointly by Discovery Institute's Cascadia Center and Microsoft on September 4-5, 2008. Participants will include Anne Korin and James Woolsey, both of whom are also referenced in this post. Details are available here.)
The Russia-Georgia conflict brings uncomfortably to the surface the question of energy security. Like much of the rest of the world, America is addicted to oil, most of it now imported. We rely on petroleum to fuel just shy of 100 percent of our transportation. America imports from its neighbors, Canada and Mexico mainly, but almost as much from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Nigeria. Russia supplies 762,000 barrels each day to the U.S. according to numbers released by the U.S. government in June.
Continue reading "To Reduce Russia Stand-off,
Reduce Western Oil Dependence" »
"Russians in Georgia: Behind the harrowing individual tales of destruction and want, analysts see a clash between the US and Russia reminiscent of old Cold War divisions," reports BBC News.
The Washington Post has perhaps the best report so far on how the war in South Ossetia and Georgia got started. It is astonishing how this episode ignited a torrent of abuse and prejudice, second guessing and histrionics on both sides.
Link to the recommended article
Continue reading "Classic "What Were They Thinking?"" »
“George Bush's Administration is promoting interests of candidate John McCain,” said Dr. Markov. “Defeated by Barack Obama on all fronts, McCain has one last card to play yet - the creation of a virtual Cold War with Russia..."
Wild rumors somehow still make the news. The silly efforts in Moscow to link the outbreak of war in Ossetia/Georgia to the U.S. Presidential race effectively treats this whole tragedy as farce. Does this mean it also is not being taken seriously?
From The Times (London)
By Charles Bremner in Moscow
August 15, 2008
Link to the original article
Kremlin dusts off Cold War lexicon to make US villain in Georgia
Russians were told over breakfast yesterday what really happened in Georgia: the conflict in South Ossetia was part of a plot by Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, to stop Barack Obama being elected president of the United States.
Continue reading "Treating War as Political Farce" »
Georgian troops fleeing under attack from Russian forces.
The scene on the ground would have been very different today if Georgia had been able to move past Tskhinvali after they shelled the city last week. Of course, it is not known if moving forward was the plan.
The route by which Russian troops, weapons and humanitarian supplies came south while thousands of refugees went north is a single narrow road from the Roki Tunnel built in 1985. Readers are invited to “drive” this road on Google Earth. If one does so, one comes to a large bridge where the road turns south in a defile at 42°21'29.61"N 43°54'2.58"E. This location is about 25 kilometres from the South Ossetian border.
Continue reading "Could the Georgians Have Done Better?" »
Russia Blog's editors found this article informative and interesting.
Vladimir Putin's Mastery Checkmates the West
Russia has been biding its time, but its victory in Georgia has been brutal - and brilliant
The Times
By Michael Binyon
August 14, 2008
Link to the original article
The cartoon images have shown Russia as an angry bear, stretching out a claw to maul Georgia. Russia is certainly angry, and, like a beast provoked, has bared its teeth. But it is the wrong stereotype. What the world has seen last week is a brilliant and brutal display of Russia's national game, chess. And Moscow has just declared checkmate.
Continue reading "The London Times:
Vladimir Putin's Mastery Checkmates the West" »
President Sakozy (left) and President Medvedev (right). "President Nicolas Sarkozy has shown a flair for the high-profile diplomatic intervention," reports BBC. (Photo by AFP). Russia and Georgia declared today, August 13, 2008, a Day of Mourning for the victims of the conflict.
France, which currently holds the Presidency of the EU, in the persons of President Sarkozy and Foreign Minister Kouchner, has induced President Saakashvili to sign the Medvedev-Sarkozy agreement.
According to both President Medvedev’s office and a French news agency the terms are as follows:
1. Tbilisi must make a commitment not to use force to settle its secessionist problems.
2. Georgian armed forces must cease fire.
3. Georgian armed forces must return to their barracks.
Continue reading "War in Georgia:
Now Comes the Hangover" »
The Wall Street Journal offers good coverage of the events from the heart of the conflict.
Russian Troops Still Pour Into South Ossetia
Scarred Area Vents; Anger at Georgia; Death Toll Unclear
By ANDREW OSBORN and MARC CHAMPION
August 13, 2008; Page A8
Link to the original article
Russian soldiers sit atop military vehicles in South Ossetia
TSKHINVALI, Georgia -- The Kremlin said Tuesday that it was suspending military action in the separatist enclave of South Ossetia inside Georgia, but huge Russian military convoys still snaked toward the scarred capital, Tskhinvali.
After five days of fighting -- Russia's biggest use of force outside its borders since the 1991 Soviet collapse -- a victorious Russian army offered a small group of foreign journalists a carefully controlled glimpse of the territory it went to war over.
Continue reading "War in Georgia:
Interesting Reporting by WSJ" »
By John C. Wohlstetter (special to Russia Blog)
Georgian soldiers helping an injured comrade. Georgian troops are wearing U.S. Marine camouflage uniforms; the only difference - the Georgian flag badges.
Ethnic separatism once again has further destabilized world geopolitics, with the outbreak of military conflict between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway regions of South Ossetia & Abkhazia; Russia also attacked Georgian targets in Abkhazia—and as of midday Monday has invaded Georgia and occupied Gori (Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s birthplace), just 55 miles from the Georgian capital of Tblisi.
While President Bush, out to lunch in China, watches swimming, basketball & baseball in Beijing, here is what one Georgian farmer told a British reporter: “Why won’t America and NATO help us? If they won’t help us now, why did we help them in Iraq?”
Four lessons come immediately to mind:
(1) the risk minor powers pose to major-power relations;
(2) the risk of excessive compartmentalization in policy;
(3) the risk from grossly misplaced strategic focus;
(4) the risk of making a fetish of democracy promotion--especially in the form of volatile multi-ethnic states.
Continue reading "Russia v. Georgia: Four Painful Lessons" »
Ossetian survivors of Georgian army attacks on Tshinvali are hiding in the basements of destroyed buildings without food and water
This article will ask and attempt to answer three questions:
1. War in Georgia: Russian aggression against an independent country or an indiscriminate Georgian assault against Ossetians overlooked by the U.S. media?
2. What would the United States have done if a bordering country (let’s say Mexico) slaughtered 1,400 U.S. citizens and 10 U.S. soldiers overnight, leaving U.S. citizens by the tens of thousands without food and water?
3. If ethnic cleansing on Russian borders is none of Russia’s business, and should not result in a Russian military response against the aggressor, how can one explain NATO's bombing and occupation of Serbia in 1999, a country that did not share a common border with the U.S. or other NATO members?
Continue reading "War in Georgia:
Putting Things in Perspective" »
Georgian army rocket batteries firing on Ossetian cities and villages Friday, August 8. As the result of this bombardment, 1,400 civilians, including women and children, and 10 Russian peacekeepers died the first night of the Georgian attack. Hours later, Russian troops responded to protect Russian citizens and soldiers in the region.
Mr. Charles Johnson, of the influential conservative weblog Little Green Footballs, has noticed our site:
“In addition to promoting the anti-science hoax of ‘intelligent design,’ the Discovery Institute runs a pro-Russian site called ‘Russia Blog,’ and today they come out in favour of Russia’s brutal assault on the breakaway republic of South Ossetia”.
As a contributor to this blog, I want to answer Mr. Johnson’s guilt-by-association allegation. I personally have no use for "intelligent design" or other claims against evolution, but one would search Russia Blog's website in vain for any mention of this topic. And Mr. Johnson's characterization of “Russia’s brutal assault on the breakaway republic of South Ossetia” gets it exactly backwards. Chronology is the key: it tells you here, as it so often does (in evolution as well) what is actually happening.
Continue reading "War in Georgia:
Misreading Ossetia -- Chronology Matters" »
Russian peacekeepers at an anti-aircraft gun in the disputed region of South Ossetia
Yesterday, after Russia sent reinforcements to back up its peacekeepers under seige by the Georgian army in the tiny disputed territory of South Ossetia, Arizona Senator and Republican Presidential candidate John McCain denounced the move as "Russian aggression" against Georgia. Nevermind that it was the Georgian army which launched the offensive that ignited the present round of fighting, and thousands of refugees have been streaming out of South Ossetia into Russia in the last few days.
The reported death toll of over 1,400 is the worst the region has seen since 1992. In that year, the Soviet Union was formally dissolved, and South Ossetia and Abkhazia, both regions with strong ethnic ties to compatriots in Russia, were ceded to Georgia within their Soviet-drawn borders. After the U.S. and NATO countries recognized the independence of Kosovo in early 2008, the South Ossetians and Abkhazians decided that they could declare their independence from Georgia, which has sparked the recent violence.
UPDATE - August 10, 2008 Welcome, Instapundit and Little Green Footballs readers! Please click here to read Russia Blog contributor Patrick Armstrong's excellent post responding to LGF blogger Charles Johnson. Click on the extended post to read the author's response to some of the questions and comments written elsewhere about this post.
Continue reading "War in Georgia:
Yawns and Kneejerks in America" »
by Paul J. Saunders and Brooke Leonard
A t-shirt celebrating Senator Barack Obama's recent speech in Berlin
Senator Barack Obama loves hope and change. And it’s easy to understand why—hope is a powerful motivator and change can often bring important improvements to America or to the wider world.
But turning hope into change isn’t easy. Among other things, it requires considerable realism in assessing current realities, understanding what is simpler or more difficult to change, who needs to be involved to create change that sticks, and how change in one area might affect others. This is where Senator Obama comes up far short of what the United States needs in a President.
Continue reading "McCain's Wrong on Russia
...And So Is Obama" »
Czar Nicholas II and his family were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918
Editor's note: In the fourth part of his masters thesis, "The Misconception of Russian Authoritarianism", St. Petersburg University graduate Kevin Cyron examines the history of political and economic reforms in Russia from the 19th century Czars to Mikhail Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Click on the links to read previous installments in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Click on the extended post to read part four of this extended essay.
Continue reading "The Misconception of Russian Authoritarianism:
Part 4 - From Reformist Czars to Gorbachev " »
This article was inspired by Barack Obama's speech in Berlin.
(Photo by The New York Times)
President Dmitry Medvedev's plan to redesign Europe's security system with Russia as its integral part, followed by the Russian foreign ministry's tough statements aimed at America and intended for McCain and Obama's consumption, show that the new Kremlin administration is serious about becoming a global player on the international geopolitical arena.
Interestingly, practically at the same time Pentagon came out with its new military doctrine which mentions Russia as a potential security threat. Here is a direct quote from the June 2008 National Defense Strategy report: “Russia’s retreat from openness and democracy could have significant security implications for the United States, our European allies, and our partners in other regions…. Furthermore, Moscow has signaled an increasing reliance on nuclear weapons as a foundation of its security. All of these actions suggest a Russia exploring renewed influence, and seeking a greater international role.”
Continue reading "The Looming Crisis" »
by Paul J. Saunders
If you were running the largest newspaper in the capital city of the world’s sole superpower, which foreign-policy issues would you select as your top priorities? The war in Iraq? Terrorism? Nuclear terrorism, something that could change the American way of life forever? Energy policy, which is already severely affecting many Americans’ lives? If you don’t like these, what about China, India, Iran, North Korea, the Middle East peace process or climate change?
The Washington Post’s answer to this question may surprise you: it’s Georgia (the one ruled from Tbilisi, not Atlanta). In barely more than five months since the beginning of January, Lexis-Nexis shows that the Post’s editorial pages have carried at least nineteen separate contributions focused on Georgia and its relations with Russia—almost one per week—if one combines editorials (seven) and opinion pieces (twelve).[1] The vast majority of these (but not all) have the same thesis: that Georgia, under grave threat from Russia, must be rescued by the United States, usually through accelerated membership in NATO and American pressure on weak-kneed Europeans.
Continue reading "The Washington Post
...or Tbilisi Post?" »
Solzhenitsyn (right) with the late Fr. Alexander Schemann
Just over thirty years ago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Алекса́ндр Иса́евич Солжени́цын), who passed away at his home outside of Moscow last weekend at the age of 89, was greeted warmly by a group of students at the commencement for Harvard University's class of 1978. The Harvard graduates likely expected to hear some typical words of inspiration before going out into the world, or an analysis of Solzhenitsyn's novels, or the progression of the Cold War. What they received instead was a sermon, a jeremiad hurled against the very society they were about to join as adults, as well as against the dying Soviet system that had exiled Solzhenitsyn to the West. On the audio recording of the speech, many graduates can be heard applauding loudly, while others murmur, probably wondering when this old man they regarded as a crazy, reactionary Russian would finally shut up.
To read excerpts from one of Solzhenitsyn's final interviews, click here.
Click on the extended post to find more thoughts on Solzhenitsyn, and to read a transcript of his most famous speech.
Continue reading "Remembering Solzhenitsyn: A World Apart" »
Solzhenitsyn in Vermont near his U.S. home in exile
Yesterday The New York Times and National Review offered contrasting profiles of the great Russian dissident and writer, who passed away at his home outside Moscow on Sunday. Russian Orthodox funeral services will be held tomorrow at the Dimitri Donskoy Monastery in Moscow, where Solzhenitsyn requested to be buried. The Donskoi necropolis houses the tombs of many prominent families and liberal scholars from 19th century Russia, the graves of Red Army soldiers who died defending Moscow from the invading Nazis, and anonymous victims of the NKVD buried by the Church. Solzhenitsyn, who fought his way into East Prussia in 1944-45 as a Red Army artillery officer, wanted to be buried close to his comrades.
Continue reading "Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Age 89, Passes Away" »
Russian stores on Brighton Beach in New York
"I think this will hurt immigrants' long-term assimilation into American society, both socially and economically," predicts Russian émigré Yuri Mamchur, director of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute's Real Russia Project. "Most workplaces require them to speak English. This policy does them no favors."
By Deroy Murdock
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
August 2, 2008
NEW YORK - If you like bilingualism, you will love septalingualism.
Big Apple Mayor Michael Bloomberg's latest brainstorm outstrips his notorious war on trans-fats, both for its audacity and sheer senselessness. America's largest municipality soon will conduct official business in English and Spanish - which would be bad enough - plus five other foreign languages: Russian, Chinese, Korean, French Creole and Italian.
Continue reading "New York City Says It - Officially - in English, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Korean, French Creole and Italian" »
Tsar Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible) depicted after murdering his own son in a famous painting by 19th century Russian artist Ilya Repin
Editor's note: In this third part of his thesis, St. Petersburg University master's program graduate Kevin Cyron examines the history of U.S.-Russia relations and of Russian representative government from medieval times to the 18th century.
Click on these links to read Part 1 and Part 2
Click on the extended post to read Part 3 in the series.
Continue reading "The Misconception of Russian Authoritarianism:
Part 3 - The Roots of Russian Democracy" »
Jack Matlock served as U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991
Ambassador Jack Matlock served as the point man for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in Moscow from 1987 to 1991, a period which saw the end of the Cold War. The Carnegie Council in Washington D.C. recently sat down with Ambassador Matlock to talk with him about the current state of U.S.-Russia relations. Ambassador Matlock's thoughts may surprise those who would claim that carrying forward the legacy of President Reagan means continued confrontation with the Russians in their back yard. Instead, Matlock points to the need for additional cooperation to tackle the consequences of global problems, including nuclear proliferation and climate change.
Click on the extended post to watch Ambassador Matlock's and other videos related to U.S.-Russia relations.
Continue reading "Jack Matlock, Reagan's Ambassador to the USSR
On U.S.-Russia Relations" »
Tom Barnett - strategist, consultant, Green Bay Packers fan
Thomas P.M. Barnett is the New York Times bestselling author of The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the 21st Century and Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating. Barnett's forthcoming book, Great Powers: America and the World After Bush will be released on February 5, 2009. In addition to writing books, Barnett works as a speaker and consultant, presenting his ideas to audiences around the globe ranging from top U.S. military commanders to Chinese businessmen. Barnett's consultancy, Enterra Solutions, among many other projects, has worked with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to open an IT support center in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Barnett recently gave an interview to the editors of the KatPol blog, a website focused on global foreign policy issues published in Hungary. It seems that if anyone should be concerned about Russia using energy as a political weapon, it would be the Hungarians. Like many of its Central European neighbors, Hungary experienced 45 years of less-than-voluntary membership in the Soviet bloc and to this day (in spite of some promising natural gas finds in the country) depends on Russia for over 90% of its oil and gas.
Click on the extended post to read the Russia-related excerpts from this interview.
Continue reading "Thomas P.M. Barnett:
"Russia Is a Business Masquerading as a Government"" »
Dimitry Rogozin is a retired three-star general and nationalist politician
The last time Dimitry Rogozin appeared on Russia Blog over two years ago, he was starring in a television ad for his nationalist Rodina (Motherland) Party, in which he depicted Azerbaijani immigrants in Moscow as scruffy watermelon-eating hooligans. In this notorious video, Rogozin and an elderly man confront a group of migrants over their insulting a young Russian mother pushing a pram. As action movie music blares in the background, Rogozin and the elderly man place firm hands on the ruffians and demand , "Do you understand Russian?" A slogan then flashes across the screen which translates as, "We will sweep the garbage from our city". The ad was so blatantly racist that it actually got Rogozin banned from running for a seat in the Moscow City Duma in 2006.
After throwing Rodina's support behind Putin and United Russia, Rogozin has been given a new platform to air his strong nationalist views, this time as Russia's Ambassador to NATO. However, it would be difficult to characterize the remarks he made at a recent speech delivered at the Nixon Center in Washington D.C as extreme, pugnacious, or chauvinistic.
Click the extended post to read highlights from Ambassador Rogozin's speech in Washington D.C. on July 1, 2008.
Continue reading "Russia's Ambassador to NATO Speaks Out in D.C." »
Russia's Central Bank does not hold Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debt - but what about the rest of its U.S.-mortgage backed debt holdings?
Over a year ago I wrote about Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert Kimmitt's trip to Moscow ("Is the U.S. Seeking Capital from Russia's Stabilization Fund?"). In June 2008 RosBusinessConsulting reported that Mr. Kimmitt was in Moscow to ask the Kremlin and Russia's Central Bank to invest more petrodollars in the U.S. Mr. Kimmitt gave RBC an interview, but provided few details about his discussion with Russian Central Bank officials, so the report was largely ignored by the Western media.
At that time, American media outlets were more focused on the prospect of Arab and Chinese sovereign wealth funds acquiring equity stakes in U.S. companies, and the potential political backlash to such moves. Russian companies such as Evraz and Severstal have proven to be saavy about their American acquisitions, (so far) flying under the radar screen of an increasingly unpopular and protectionist U.S. Congress, which clearly has much bigger fish to fry now than worrying about what the Russians are buying.
As we now know, most of the Russian money that was invested in America went into "safe" U.S. government-backed agency debt securities. After the collapse of IndyMac Bank in California on July 12, 2008, Russia's Central Bank denied that it held any Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac equity, and declared its billions in U.S. debt holdings to be safe. Today the New York Times is reporting ("Trouble at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Stirs Concern Abroad") that Russian buyers currently hold $75 billion worth of U.S. agency securities backed by pools of mortgages, farm credits, and other loans.
Continue reading "NYT: Russians Hold $75 Billion of U.S. Agency Securities The Consequences of Growing U.S-Russia Financial Ties That Bind" »
Some Notes on the Discussion of the Captive Nations Resolution at the
Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation, July 15, 2008
In the not-too-distant past, it would have taken only a few sentences from a speech made last week by Philosophy Professor Andrei Zubov, who teaches at the Moscow Institute of International Relations (today the most prestigious school for Russia's future top level diplomats) for him to end up in a Gulag for at least five years or more. Especially considering that in his opening remarks, he was talking about horrific Soviet crimes against humanity while looking directly at Philip Bobkov, former head of the KGB's feared Fifth Directorate, which was tasked with fighting ideological subversion by dissidents and other "enemies of the state".
However, this time no one was arrested. Despite a few shouting matches between the roundtable participants at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, all of the proceedings ended peacefully with drinks and endless toasts afterward, as well as mingling between leading Russian and East European scholars, former political prisoners, the editors and authors of Kontinent (an anti-Soviet underground magazine that was funded by the CIA) and former Communist apparatchiks who were top ideologists for the regime in Soviet times.
Continue reading "The Captive Nations Resolution: 50 Years On
Remembering Russian Victims of Communism" »
Then Russian President (and current Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin
saluting young soldiers
Editor's note: In part two of his thesis, "The Misconception of Russian Authoritarianism", St. Petersburg State University graduate Kevin Cyron asks whether or not Russia is an authoritarian state, and answers in the negative. Mr. Cyron then explores the role of the Western media and lingering Cold War stereotypes in shaping global perceptions of modern Russia.
Click here to read Part 1 in Kevin Cyron's series on Russia and the West.
Click on the extended post to read Part 2 in the series.
Continue reading "The Misconception of Russian Authoritarianism:
Part 2 - The Problems of Media Bias
and Cold War Stereotypes" »
In February, Mr. Abramovich bought a five bedroom, 5,600-square-foot house in Snowmass Village, Colorado for $11.8 million. Two months later he spent $36.4 million on another property only a few miles away: a 14,300-square-foot, 11 bedroom ranch on 200 acres.
Russian oligarchs, pop stars, and rich people have bought properties all over Europe, pushing real estate prices in Prague and London to new heights. After a visit to Southern France in 2005, a friend of mine commented that, “Russian was the major language of the French Riviera.” With wealthy Muscovites finding it easier to obtain visas these days, perhaps now the time has come for America to become a popular destination for Russian elites. Wealthy Russians have figured out that the U.S. has spectacular mountain and ocean views, fresh air, wide open spaces, which can be enjoyed for home prices far below those of comparable properties in the playgrounds of Europe or the Russian Riviera.
“Sergey Skaterschikov, a Moscow-based private-equity investor, is shopping for a house in Palo Alto, California, because his son will attend school in the area. With a budget of $3.5 million to $5 million, the five- and six-bedroom houses the 36-year-old Mr. Skaterschikov has looked at struck him as cheap compared with Moscow real estate, which he called "insane…" reports The Wall Street Journal.
Please visit the extended post to read the newspaper’s report and see the photos.
Continue reading "WSJ: From Russia -- With Cash" »
To be published in Harvard International Review
Summer 2008 (volume 30, issue 2), pp. 14-18.
This year, young people are coming out in record numbers to support their political candidates, not just in the United States but in Russia as well.
Although the phenomenon has been relatively ignored by the western media, young people in Russia have become markedly more politically active during Vladimir Putin's second term in office, a striking change for a country where young people (ages 18-35) have traditionally been among the most politically apathetic segment of the population. In the 2000 elections, for example, Putin's support among pensioners was significantly higher than it was among young people. Recently, however, young Russians have begun to display new patterns of both political and economic behavior that have led pollsters to refer to them as the "Putin Generation." The importance of this generation is epitomized by the rise of Dmitry Medvedev who, at 42, will not only be Russia's youngest president, but also the youngest leader in the G8. Its values will pose a fundamentally new and different challenge to the West— how to deal with an increasingly prosperous and self-confident Russia.
Continue reading "The Putin Generation:
How Will Its Rise Affect US-Russian Relations?" »
Can Russia be classified as a democracy - even an immature one?
Yes, says Kevin Cyron, an American graduate student in Russia
Editor's note: Kevin Cyron, an American living in the Russian Federation who recently graduated with a Masters degree in Sociology from St. Petersburg State University, has agreed to Russia Blog publishing his thesis titled, "The Misconception of Russian Authoritarianism".
Due to its length and detailed analysis, this extended essay will appear as a series of posts in the Articles and Essays section of Russia Blog.
Click on the extended post to begin reading this very timely and topical essay.
Continue reading "The Misconception of Russian Authoritarianism:
Part 1 - Defining Democracy in Russia" »
By Henry A. Kissinger
Presidents Bush and Putin meeting at the Russian resort of Sochi earlier this year
Last month Mr. Kissinger joined former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in addressing Renaissance Capital's 12th Annual Investor Conference in Moscow
President Bush's meeting with Dmitry Medvedev in Hokkaido yesterday provides an opportunity to review American relations with the new Russian leadership. Conventional wisdom treated Medvedev's inauguration as president of the Russian Federation as a continuation of President Vladimir Putin's two terms of Kremlin dominance and assertive foreign policy. But after recently visiting Moscow, where I met with leading political personalities as well as those in business and intellectual circles, I am convinced that this judgment is premature.
For one thing, the emerging power structure seems more complex than conventional wisdom holds. It was always doubtful why, if his primary objective was to retain power, Putin would choose the complicated and uncertain route of becoming prime minister; his popularity would have allowed him to amend the constitution and extend his presidency.
My impression is that a new phase of Russian politics is underway. The move of Putin's office from the Kremlin to the building housing the government could be symbolic. Medvedev has said that he means to chair the National Security Council and, as Russia's constitution provides, be the public face of foreign policy. The statement that the president designs foreign and security policy, and the prime minister implements it, has become the mantra of Russian officials. I encountered no Russian in or out of government who doubted that some kind of redistribution of power was taking place, although they were uncertain of its outcome.
Continue reading "Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger:
Finding Common Ground with Russia" »
President Bush (right) at the White House with Arizona Senator John McCain
According to the latest national polls, Barack Obama is topping the charts six to eight points ahead of his Republican rival John McCain. It is still a long way to the November election and things may easily change, but as matters stand now voters clearly favor the Democratic hopeful. The reasons are many, but several recent rows provoked by McCain's top aides certainly played some role.
For a start America's largest aviation company Boeing lost a hefty contract worth $35 billion to its European rival Airbus for supplying the U.S. Air Force with 179 aerial tankers. It turns out that the team of Airbus lobbyists included several of McCain's key advisors, like Tom Loeffler and Susan Nelson of The Loeffler Group, as well as John Green of Ogilvy Government Relations. Loeffler, a former congressman from Texas, headed the finance committee in the McCain election staff while Green acted as a Congressional liaison. Incidentally, Loeffler has been making some additional money on the side, lobbying for Saudi Arabia, too. Some observers believe that behind-the-scenes activities of McCain himself, who wrote several letters to the Pentagon, helped Airbus win the contract.
Continue reading "McCain Aides Are Pulling Him Under" »
Russian army soldiers in winter gear
Courtesy of Thomas P.M. Barnett's weblog and Wired magazine, comes an interesting story about high level U.S. defense strategy. According to Gen. Michael Moseley, who was recently dismissed from his position as U.S. Secretary of the Air Force, "there is almost zero chance we will fight a nation state" in the 21st century. Wired implied that Moseley was referring to Russia and China in his remarks. Actually, Moseley didn't mention Russia or any other country by name in the interview with the Air Force Times that Wired cites. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired Moseley after a series of embarrassing incidents for the service, including the shipment of advanced weapons parts to Taiwan and the inadvertent placement of a nuclear weapon on a B-52 bomber during a routine transcontinental training mission.
While senior American flag officers acknowledge the increasing unlikelihood of great power war in the 21st century, a handful of U.S. think tank pundits continue to argue seriously that Russia is rearming for a possible confrontation with the West. For example, bestselling author and Wall Street Journal contributor Mark Helprin recently wrote in the Claremont Review of Books:
...as Western Europe dismantles its militaries, Russia builds, encouraged as much by European pacifism as by the Russian view of America's struggle in Iraq as a parallel to the Soviets' fatal involvement in Afghanistan. Like Germany between the wars, Russia is now eager and determined to reconstitute its forces, and with its new-found oil wealth, it is doing so.
Continue reading "Ex-U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff:
"Zero Chance" of War Between U.S. and Russia" »
The Russians are coming West with money. Should we be scared?
There are some books that surprise you with their depth or give you a new insight on past, present or future world events. The new book by The Economist's Eastern Europe reporter Edward Lucas, The New Cold War: How the Kremlin Menaces Both Russia and the West does not fall this category. Rather, the book is largely a rehash of an argument anyone who has been paying attention to the Western media coverage of Russia over the past eight years will find familiar: after a brief flirtation with democracy under Yeltsin, the Russian people, led by their new Czar Vladimir Putin, are turning their backs on freedom in return for virulent nationalism and oil-fueled economic growth.
Continue reading "Dealing with a Resurgent Russia
A Review of Edward Lucas' The New Cold War" »
On June 22, 1941 Nazi Germany launched the largest invasion in history
Today is the 67th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. While Russians this year celebrated Victory Day and unprecedented peace and prosperity in Russia, the country remains deeply scarred by World War II. Some Western demographers believe that Russia's difficulty in maintaining its population is partially the result of the loss of nearly 20 million people in the Great Patriotic War. And a few older Russian military analysts fret that Russia may not have the manpower to maintain its borders in the 21st century.
The proposed installation of U.S. missile defense systems in Poland and Lithuania, combined with the possibility of NATO membership for Georgia, is rubbing salt in old Russian wounds. These "expand NATO eastward on autopilot" policies stand in stark contrast to the deliberate peacemaking President Reagan accomplished in the late 1980s, when he acknowledged the tremendous insecurities the Soviets felt as a result of their trauma from World War II. By offering to share missile defense technology, Reagan helped to convince Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders that the USSR could feel safe enough to end the Cold War. By promising no NATO military installations east of the Oder (a promise his successors did not keep), the George H.W. Bush Administration gave Boris Yeltsin even more confidence to break up the Soviet Empire. Interestingly enough, Russian President Dimitri Medvedev in his recent public speeches has revived the use of Gorbachev's phrase "from Vancouver to Vladivostok" to describe East-West relations after the Cold War.
Today the main threats to Russia come from within, rather than from without. Instead of Stalin's purges leaving the Red Army leaderless, the main problem today is cynical officers and NCOs all-too-often turning a blind eye to abuse and exploitation of the hapless conscripts under their command. Russia can and must do better. Russia should create an all-volunteer corps backed by reservists that can secure its borders against the main threats of the 21st century - terrorism, trafficking in people, narcotics and weapons, and natural disasters.
Click on the extended post to watch the PBS miniseries "Battlefield: The Battle for Russia" and for links to other Russia Blog posts about Russia's role in World War II.
Continue reading "Barbarossa: 67 Years Later" »
Joseph Serio's recently released book "Investigating the Russian Mafia" (Carolina Academic Press, Durham, North Carolina, 2008) is a detailed accounting of his study and personal experience on "Russian Mafia" related issues. He notes that the term "Russian Mafia" comprises elements of several ethnic groups in Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union.
Serio's work in Russia includes a research position in the then Organized Crime Control Department of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs. Afterwards, he worked for the international security consulting firm Kroll Associates, as director of its Moscow office, overseeing investigations across the former Soviet Union. Serio also served as an adviser to The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, BBC, Chicago Tribune and a few other news organizations. That work included television documentaries dealing with organized crime in Imperial Russia, the Soviet Union and former Soviet Union. Serio is currently a criminal justice doctoral student at Sam Houston State University's College of Criminal Justice.
Continue reading "Organized Crime in Imperial Russia, the Soviet Union and Former Soviet Union" »
When the Western Allies successfully landed in Normandy 64 years ago, they overcame tossing seas, heavily fortified defenses, and murderous fire from determined defenders on the beaches. What they did not have to face on June 6, 1944 were the Luftwaffe or over 80% of the German armies. Today Time magazine's Jordan Bonfante reminds his Western readers of the main reasons why:
By measure of manpower, duration, territorial reach and casualties, [the Eastern Front] was as much as four times the scale of the conflict on the Western Front that opened with the Normandy invasion of June 1944. The Nazis' initial invasion of Russia, Operation Barbarossa, involved 3.2 million German troops and 3,000 aircraft, and even after the U.S.-led invasion of Western Europe, the vast majority of German military resources remained deployed against the Soviets. By war's end, according to historian Norman Davies, the U.S.S.R. had lost 11 million troops.
Read the rest of the article at Time magazine online.
Click on the extended post for links to other Russia Blog articles about World War II.
Continue reading "D-Day: "A Red Flag Day"?" »
This document was distributed at the Eurasian Media Forum in Almaty, Kazakhstan and at the World Russian Forum in Washington, D.C. in April and May 2008. Please, upload the printable color PDF version here.
Please, visit the extended post to see the text version of the publication.
Continue reading "Russia & the West: New Leadership. New Relations?" »
By Andrei P. Tsygankov
Crew members of the U.S. Navy's guided missile destroyer (not the presidential candidate!), USS John S. McCain, carry U.S. and Russian flags as they march during World War II victory celebrations in the far-eastern city of Vladivostok May 9, 2007. (Photo by Reuters)
Most Russians are indifferent to the U.S. presidential elections and don’t expect better relations with America. One poll found that only 9 per cent of respondents think new Russian President Dmitry Medvedev should focus on improving the bilateral ties. Medvedev himself expressed desire to work with a “modern” U.S. leader rather than one ``whose eyes are turned back to the past.''
In the meantime, some Russian elites have voiced their support for Senator John McCain. This may seem surprising considering that McCain’s Russia record includes warnings of "a creeping coup against the forces of democracy and market capitalism", accusations of Kremlin involvement in nuclear blackmail, energy imperialism, cyber attacks, as well as multiple calls to expel Russia from the G-8. Although the Arizona Senator has recently expressed willingness to cooperate with Moscow on nuclear issues, there is hardly any doubt that he remains one of the toughest (and most prejudiced) critics of Russia in the U.S. establishment.
Continue reading "Russian Hawks Favor McCain" »
By James Schneider, Director of Save Europe
There are foreign workers like this one...
...and these ones.
A May 1, 2008 Washington Times article quoted CIA Director Michael Hayden saying that Russia’s declining population will require them to bring in foreign workers which will increase racial and religious tensions. The CIA analysts failed to see a more interesting and dangerous (for the USA) scenario.
What if Russia decides to keep out third world immigrants and instead welcome Europeans from anywhere in the world. Right now few people would go, but if Russia improves its judicial system and infrastructure and if Europe and the US continue their demographic changes, Russia will look more appealing. Even now poor whites living in a big American city would be better off (socially if not economically) living in Russia.
Continue reading "Russian Demographics Part Two
Foreign Workers" »
By Martin Walker
UPI Editor Emeritus
Originally published by United Press International
Russia does have a problem with drinking... (photo by English Russia)
PARIS, May 27 (UPI) -- An alarming new word has been born. It is "hypermortality," which might be defined as an extraordinary tendency toward death. It jumps from the first page of the U.N. Development Program report entitled "Demographic Policy in Russia."
"The Russian phenomenon of hypermortality comes to be observed primarily in working-age populations," it says. "Compared to the majority of countries that have similar levels of economic development, mortality in Russia is 3-5 times higher for men and twice as high for women." What this means, the report says, is that the size of the working-age population "will fall by up to 1 million people annually already by 2020-25."
Continue reading "Russian Demographics Part One
Walker's World: Russia's 'Hypermortality'" »
Arizona Senator John McCain is the Republican candidate for President
Note to Russia Blog readers: This article was originally published earlier today in the Moscow Times. Dr. Edward Lozansky is the organizer of the World Russian Forum, which is now underway May 19-20, 2008 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. -The Editors
The three presumed U.S. presidential candidates rarely mention Russia. When they do, their remarks are critical -- possibly because they are hoping to attract a few more votes from the numerous and well-organized ethnic communities from Ukraine, the Baltics and East Europe.
Still, Senator John McCain stands alone. McCain, the Republican hopeful with a good shot of winning the election, has practically included Russia in a new axis of evil, along with North Korea, China and Iran. McCain's advisers are openly lambasting President George W. Bush for being too chummy with President Vladimir Putin and promise that Moscow will be treated a lot more harshly in a McCain presidency.
Continue reading "McCain Is Alone on Russia" »
By Stephen F. Cohen
This article appeared in the May 19, 2008 edition of The Nation, and is republished with
The Nation's kind permission.
None of the remaining presidential candidates have seriously addressed, or even seem fully aware of, what should be our greatest foreign policy concern--Russia's singular capacity to endanger or enhance our national security. Overshadowed by the US disaster in Iraq, Moscow's importance will continue long after that war ends.
Despite its diminished status following the Soviet breakup in 1991, Russia alone possesses weapons that can destroy the United States, a military-industrial complex nearly America's equal in exporting arms, vast quantities of questionably secured nuclear materials sought by terrorists and the planet's largest oil and natural gas reserves. It also remains the world's largest territorial country, pivotally situated in the West and the East, at the crossroads of colliding civilizations, with strategic capabilities from Europe, Iran and other Middle East nations to North Korea, China, India, Afghanistan and even Latin America. All things considered, our national security may depend more on Russia than Russia's does on us.
Continue reading "The Missing Debate" »
This week Newsweek world affairs columnist Fareed Zakaria has provided the cover story for that magazine's issue: "The Post American World", with excerpts from his new book of the same title. Here are a few quotes from Zakaria's article "The Rise of the Rest" pertinent to U.S.-Russia relations in an era of unprecedented globalization and prosperity.
On the Need to Give the BRIC Countries a Stake in Solving Global Problems
"American parochialism is particularly evident in foreign policy. Economically, as other countries grow, for the most part the pie expands and everyone wins. But geopolitics is a struggle for influence: as other nations become more active internationally, they will seek greater freedom of action. This necessarily means that America's unimpeded influence will decline. But if the world that's being created has more power centers, nearly all are invested in order, stability and progress. Rather than narrowly obsessing about our own short-term interests and interest groups, our chief priority should be to bring these rising forces into the global system, to integrate them so that they in turn broaden and deepen global economic, political, and cultural ties.
"If China, India, Russia, Brazil all feel that they have a stake in the existing global order, there will be less danger of war, depression, panics, and breakdowns. There will be lots of problems, crisis, and tensions, but they will occur against a backdrop of systemic stability. This benefits them but also us. It's the ultimate win-win..."
Click on the extended post to read more excerpts.
Continue reading ""The Rise of the Rest" - Including Russia" »
Photo by Kavkaz-Center
Interview with Edward Lozansky, President of the World Russian Forum
(and Senior Fellow of the Real Russia Project).
Originally published in Washington Profile on April 18, 2008
Q.: The month of May is not far off, and in that month Washington will host the next World Russian Forum, a traditional event on Capitol Hill. Incidentally, what number will it be?
Lozansky: The twenty-seventh. The first one took place in May 1981, and ever since U.S. Congress generously provides one of its best auditoriums for this event. This is despite the fact that Russia is portrayed by the media as a very bad boy these days. Needless to say that we are extremely grateful to Congress for doing this.
Click on the extended post to read the rest of the interview.
Continue reading "John McCain is Invited to Debate on Russia
with American and Russian Experts" »
A popular design for a souvenir t-shirt in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Certain think tanks inside the Washington D.C. Beltway might want to consider stocking up on these for their future Russia-related events…
There is a popular saying: “A fool can ask more questions than ten wise men can answer”. What the expression means is that it is much easier to assert something than it is to refute it. A great deal of the commentary on Russia these days is little more than a brief for the prosecution: a list of easily made assertions that can only be refuted with difficulty. A recent piece provides a good example. I will not identify the author of this jeremiad except to say that he is an academic (X, we’ll call him or her) and the piece was published by a respected institution and an earlier version was published in a major newspaper. In any case, anyone who knows his way around Google can find the original quite easily. The piece is a cascade of easily-made accusations, many of which do not stand up to scrutiny. But, refutations of X’s throw-away lines are difficult and time-consuming.
Russia is important. It’s not the most important thing there is, but it’s important enough. It has been a major player in the world for a couple of centuries and there is every indication that it will continue to be. It is therefore of considerable importance to discuss it without clichés and without writing either briefs for the prosecution or briefs for the defence. It would be a grave disservice to ourselves and our descendents to make policy towards Russia based on “bumper sticker” analysis: loaded and imprecise words (all taken from X’s piece) like “belligerence”, “self-righteousness”, “authoritarian”, “cunning”, “menace”, “brutally” are poor preparations for actually dealing with the real Russia.
Continue reading "More Questions Than Can Be Answered" »
By Steve Nelson
Arizona Senator John McCain has wrapped up the Republican nomination for President
Last week was a typically schizophrenic one for U.S.-Russia relations. On one hand, we saw outgoing Presidents Bush and Putin agree to meet in the Russian resort city of Sochi in order to address their differences over a proposed American missile defense system in Europe. On the other hand, we saw Arizona Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate to succeed President Bush, argue that Russia should be kicked out of the G-8 club of industrialized nations.
In a speech delivered to the World Affairs Council of Los Angeles on March 26, McCain acknowledged both Russia and China as nations “that wield great influence in the international system”. But while McCain made a point to emphasize that the U.S. and the China were “not destined to be adversaries”, the Senator’s stance versus Russia was decidedly more confrontational.
Continue reading "McCain and Washington’s Doublethink on Russia" »
Presidents Bush and Putin at the White House in 2005
Presidents Bush and Putin became good friends at the beginning of their terms and it looks like both of them are trying to save this friendship despite many negative trends in U.S. – Russian relations. The recent Moscow trip of the two key figures in the Bush cabinet, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and State Secretary Condoleezza Rice did little to soften Russia’s tough stance on further NATO expansion and elements of the NMD systems in Eastern Europe. Therefore, Bush decided unexpectedly as the last resort to make another try by going to meet his pal Vlad in Sochi. The meeting between the two leaders will take place April 6 as Bush is wrapping up a trip to Ukraine, Croatia and the NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania.
This looks like a desperate attempt by Bush to do something about his legacy. Given his remarkably low popularity ratings hovering around 30 percent, the appalling situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, the financial crisis, and pretty dubious image of the United States in the world, a radiant picture of Bush’s legacy is hardly plausible. So it is extremely important for him to show a thing or two to climb at least a few points higher, to move away from the rock-bottom rating among all U.S. presidents where he is solidly stuck at present.
Continue reading "Helping Bush's Legacy" »
When it comes to Russia, the differences among the US presidential candidates are so slight that there is little reason for Russians to prefer one over another.
Senator McCain's foreign policy advisory team mixes "realists" Robert McFarlane, Brent Scowcroft, Stephen E. Biegun, Lorne W. Craner, Richard Armitage, and Henry Kissinger with neo-con "hawks" Max Boot, R. James Woolsey, Niall Ferguson, Robert Kagan and William Kristol.
This combination is likely to produce the same sort of intellectual schizophrenia that it did at the outset of the Reagan administration. During its first two years initiatives were generated opportunistically within the NSC and the CIA, culminating in the spectacular but ultimately pointless sabotage in June 1982 of the new trans-Siberian gas pipeline. Ronald Reagan eventually put a stop to these dangerous shenanigans in April 1983 and dramatically changed his thinking, thanks in no small part to Suzanne Massie, who helped him develop an appreciation for the culture and religiosity of the Russian people.
Continue reading "Should Moscow Root for Obama?" »
Tuesday, March 18 2008, Condoleezza Rice shakes hand of President Dmitry Medvedev during her visit with Robert Gates to Moscow (Photo by ITAR-TASS)
Since the presidential elections of March 2, Russia has almost disappeared from the Western news media. Both liberal and conservative think tanks apparently decided to take a “moment of silence” concerning Russia. No wonder! So much money and effort had been spent trying to brainwash Americans and Europeans into believing that Putin would stay for a third term - or at least, if Putin did not do so, then Russians, like a herd of sheep, would vote 99% for his hand-picked successor with a siloviki background; that Garry Kasparov would run for president, but most likely get killed by the evil KGB; and even if none of the above took place, something else very bad and undemocratic would most definitely occur in Russia.
None of the above happened, and good news from Moscow apparently does not merit column space. Only the Financial Times published a stunningly honest article “Let the Russians Sort out Russia,” and the New York Times wrote a wonderful profile of Metropolitan Laurus, who healed a decades-old rift in the Russian Orthodox Church, and died on March 17 at the age of 80 in Jordanville, New York.
Continue reading "Russia Who?" »
Before reading the article itself, we strongly recommend looking at the letter to the editor
"End Putinphobia and Try to Normalise Relations" that was sent by Professor Padma Desai to the Financial Times on March 14, 2008. Prof. Desai's letter is reproduced below:
Sir, Rodric Braithwaite's article “Let Russians sort out Russia” (March 12) marks a refreshing departure from the knee-jerk bashing of President Vladimir Putin of Russia in the Western media and think-tanks, and in several policy decisions of the Bush administration. Even pronouncements by American presidential candidates (although marginal) on the likely course of US-Russian relations under the recent leadership change in Russia reflect this counter-productive bias.
I have long argued, in virtual isolation, that such Putinphobia misses Sir Rodric's reminder that Mr Putin's policies have enjoyed a huge popularity in Russia, and that the Russian parliamentary and presidential elections, although flawed, reflect a thumbs-up support from the Russian people. Mr Putin has certainly profited from the oil boom; and that is the luck of the draw. But he has also avoided the "oil curse" and used the oil largesse productively by putting in place important policy measures that stand to benefit the Russian economy.
Click on the extended post to read more.
Continue reading "Financial Times:
Let the Russians Sort out Russia" »
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Metropolitan Laurus
Metropolitan Laurus, who led the overseas branch of the Russian Orthodox Church to a historic rapprochement with the Moscow mother church, from which it split after the Communist revolution in 1917, died Sunday at a monastery in Jordanville, N.Y. He was 80. Nicholas Ohotin, a church spokesman, said no cause had been determined. News reports from Russia made much of the day of his death: it was the Feast of Orthodoxy, when those who have given greatly to the church are venerated.
Metropolitan Laurus’s most historic moment occurred last May in the great rebuilt Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, which Stalin had once destroyed to build a swimming pool. As leader of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, he exchanged kisses on the cheek with the Patriarch of Moscow, Aleksei II.
Continue reading "NYT: Metropolitan Laurus, Who Healed Rift in Russian Orthodox Church, Is Dead at 80" »
By Graham Allison (Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School)
Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev wave to their supporters in Moscow's Red Square on March 2, 2008.
Though the outcome of the presidential election in Russia was a foregone conclusion, many questions remain about when and how which powers will be transferred from whom to whom. Partial answers to some of the questions about Russia's presidential succession are provided in the March 7 article in The Moscow Times, "Kremlin Enters Uncharted Waters."
Also included below are speculations from Russian colleagues about what the new administration and cabinet may look like.
Key questions about the Russia's presidential succession:
1. When will Medvedev actually assume the Russian presidency?
By law, Vladimir Putin remains president until May 7, 2008, four years to the day of his inauguration. On this day, president-elect and first deputy prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev will officially become Russia's new president.
Continue reading "The Transfer of Power in Russia
Russia Election Analysis" »
President Putin and the next Russian President, Dimitry Medvedev
Peter Finn's Washington Post article on Kremlin efforts to polish Russia's image abroad provides a pretty accurate and balanced description of various projects in this field, funded either directly by the government or by the private sector, when the latter gets a nod from the top. Unfortunately, so far this investment has brought only a few and rather modest results. The Western media bias regarding Russia is so overwhelming that even if the Kremlin increases its PR budget by one or two orders of magnitude, little will change.
Take, for example, the Washington Post's editorials. Contrary to their Moscow bureau chief Peter Finn's objective and neutral news reporting, the Post editorials are saturated with such vicious anti-Russian rhetoric that one wonders if the people who write them have some personal problems.
Continue reading "The Limitations of Russian Public Diplomacy" »
Dmitry Medvedev
It is important to distinguish between the electoral process, the electoral campaign, and the electoral outcome. Those who fail to do so seek to disparage the choice of the Russian people, rather than to understand it.
Few observers have challenged the election process itself, which was marred by glitches of the kind one routinely encounters in national elections. Instead, most of the criticism has been leveled at the electoral campaign, and while there is always room for improvement, they lack certain credibility since the same criticisms could just as easily be leveled at any European country.
For example, all countries regulate the participation of political groups by applying filters to their ability to participate in the elections process. Some, like the United States, apply these filters at the local level, through a complex set of fifty different state electoral standards. Typically, states require somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of the voters from the previous elections to register a party in the next ballot. This has reduced the people’s options to two.
Continue reading "Russian Elections –
Affirming Democracy or Confirming Autocracy?" »
Saying "Goodbye" to the presidency...
A consensus appears to be developing that Putin has contrived a means of staying in power indefinitely. The idea is that, one way or the other, Medvedev will be a dummy President and Putin, as Prime Minister will retain the real power. However, the accounts that argue this point – for example Christopher Walker at RFE – fail to consider one salient fact.
And that is that, had he wanted, Putin could easily have been elected President for a third term on Sunday. No one can doubt that one or two years ago Putin and his machine could have secured the necessary majorities to have removed Article 81. 3 of the Russian Constitution (“One and the same person cannot hold the office of President of the Russian Federation for more than two consecutive terms”). This is, after all, what the leaders Walker cites have done. It would have been by far the easiest way for Putin to stay in power: the Presidential machinery of power that Putin spent so much time building up would remain without change and with the same man in the chair.
But he didn’t. Therefore, any argument that Putin is staying in power has to explain why he didn’t take the easy route to that power.
Continue reading "Five Hypotheses About the Future of Power in Russia" »
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