Ambassador McFaul's or Mike's, as friends and colleagues call him, first steps on arrival in Moscow were marked by a mammoth scandal in the media, internet, Duma and elsewhere. However, it is my strong suspicion that Mike felt victim to some intrigues in the higher places in Washington.

McFaul's record is well-known and pretty illustrious: a Stanford man, about the best Slavist and Russian specialist (some say, Russophile) America has to offer, author of numerous monographs on Russia, etc. etc. Politically he is best known - one might say renowned -- as architect of the "reset" policy in the relations between the USA and Russia, President Obama's helpmeet in the difficult task of straightening out those relations that cried to be straightened out.

All that, however, belongs to his life and times before he donned diplomatic togs. As a diplomat, McFaul has to be part of - and be held responsible for - acts and situations for which he would presumably hate to be held accountable. This article is not an attempt to endorse all McFaul views since I often disagreed with him in the past but if one takes into account the current highly negative atmosphere towards Russia in Washington Mike is probably not the worst option.

However, meeting them on the first or second day of his new post in the Spaso House and in the middle of highly emotional Russian presidential campaign is totally out of question. That is if he did not get a direct order from his superiors.

After that ill-fated meeting McFaul has been saying to all who will listen that he had nothing to do with it, that he was merely accompanying, according to protocol, his boss William Burns, that he kept silent throughout that meeting merely listening, etc. etc.

However, although it is true that Burns was in charge of this meeting to believe that it was his idea is even more impossible.

William Burns is one of the best and most qualified American diplomats with the extraordinary experience in Russian affairs. Even if he had a high fever that day he would never dream up a potential huge and embarrassing conflict with the same Kremlin leaders with whom Washington would have to deal at least for the next six years.

That leaves Burn's boss Hillary Clinton who presumably ordered the welcoming reception for opposition - as a poke in Putin's eye for his charge that the recent rallies in Moscow in the wake of elections to the Duma were inspired and in part instigated by Madam Secretary and other "democracy promoters" in Washington.

All these intrigues do not augur too well for the new ambassador's career in Moscow - the political constraints are too harsh. Fresh proof of this came with certain aspects of President Obama's latest State of the Union address. McFaul had confidently predicted that in that address Obama would announce Russia's graduation from the infamous Jackson-Vanik amendment. This did not happen despite McFaul's strong recommendation - apparently because Obama did not want to enter into another fight with Congress over this matter.

It is clear that Michael McFaul as an intellectual free to study his chosen field and Michael McFaul as a cog in the byzantine diplomatic machine are two different personas.

Edward Lozansky is president of American University in Moscow and Professor of the Department of World Politics at the Moscow State University.

Edward Lozansky is president of American University in Moscow and Professor of the Department of World Politics at the Moscow State University.

Anthony T. Salvia is the former Special Advisor to the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs (appointee of President Ronald Reagan)

A reform-minded Russian blogger, Alexei Novalny, was the target of a photoshopping scam that tried to link him to the discredited plutocrat Boris Bereshovsky. It looks like something the old KGB might have done, so fingers pointed to the Kremlin where Novalny's blog have been unwelcome lately. To retaliate against whoever smeared him, Mr. Navalny ran the real picture, which showed him standing with presumptive Presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov, a likely rival for Vladimir Putin in the March 4 elections. Then Novalny photoshopped a hilarious procession of other figures--from Stalin and Napoleon to Putin himself to even a Space Alien. And posted them on his blog.

The message: in the age of the Internet you can't photoshop as in days of old. Come clean!

The Putin regime has little to fear from the latest public protests which, despite drawing large crowds, are apolitical. True politics will only become possible in Russia when both the opposition and the regime focus on the tedious work of practical politics, says Nicolai N. Petro in his highly personal view of recent events.

Kudos are due to both the Russian police and opposition leaders for having managed the second successful mass protest in Moscow without incident and in an appropriately festive spirit. After the Christmas eve demonstration in Sakharov square, the crowd was told that the next protest meeting would be held some time in February since, obviously, nobody wants to disrupt the extended Russian winter holidays which last well into January. By February, presumably, holiday cheer will have subsided and it will be time for another manifestation of civic outrage. As Putin quipped during his televised Q&A with the nation, if these protests are a product of 'the Putin regime,' he is only too happy to take credit for them.

All this mock civility suggests just how smoldering this 'protest of the satiated,' to use journalist Andrei Kolesnikov's memorable phrase, truly is. The opposition and the regime are shadow boxers in a co-dependent relationship. They joust, they jab, yet they also need each other to survive.

The organizers of the Moscow rally estimated the number of participants from 100 000 to 120,000. Nationalist, liberal and communist groups and activists could be seen there but the main part of the crowd was Moscow's educated middle class.

For now, at least, the Putin regime is quite comfortable with such protests. First, because they are an argument for pushing through the reforms that president Dmitry Medvedev has been promoting these past four years.

'...the only thing that the protesters seem to have in common is a deep loathing for all things political, including all political leaders and all political parties. This contempt is not reserved just for Putin and United Russia. It assails the very notion of politics as careful social management or, to use Max Weber's words, as 'the strong and slow boring of hard boards, managed with both passion and perspective.'
Almost overnight Medvedev was able to produce proposals that vastly simplified procedures for registering political parties and reintroduced gubernatorial elections, making it is clear that these initiatives had been in the pipeline for quite some time and could be 'pulled off the shelf' at a moment's notice.

Far from objecting to these rallies, as the Kremlin's former chief ideologist Vladislav Surkov explained to the newspaper Izvestia, the regime expects to benefit from them. By demonstrating that 'even strong turbulence is . . . but a variant of stability,' Russia can show that it is as resilient as any traditional democracy. In fact, the government and the opposition actually share the same values, which is why the government is doing everything in its power to recapture 'the moral high ground' by fostering 'renewed, open, honest political institutions that people can understand.' If public discontent were to be quelled by force, it would play into the hands of the opponents of modernization, but so would political apathy. What reformers in the Kremlin want, therefore, is an impressive, but peaceful, display of civic activism that puts continued pressure on recalcitrant bureaucrats. Surkov then went out of his way to thank the protesters for demonstrating such initiative. 'If you think strategically,' he says, 'and listen to the minority, you will find tomorrow's leaders among them."'1]

While Surkov's reasoning is clearly self-serving, there is another reason why the regime is at ease with the current protests--they pose no threat to the regime because they lack any actionable political agenda.

Take a look at the five demands of the opposition: immediate freedom for all political prisoners and 'those unfairly convicted,' revocation of the last election results, the firing of the head of the Central Election Commission, the registration of 'all opposition parties' by February, and the holding of 'new, open, and fair elections.' Each demand sounds reasonable, but could only be imposed by fiat. And since these demands are specifically tailored to suit the opposition, it would undermine any semblance of impartiality on the part of government institutions. This is the exact opposite of the rule of law that Russia needs.

Yet it could hardly be otherwise, for the only thing that the protesters seem to have in common is a deep loathing for all things political, including all political leaders and all political parties. This contempt is not reserved just for Putin and United Russia. It assails the very notion of politics as careful social management or, to use Max Weber's words, as 'the strong and slow boring of hard boards, managed with both passion and perspective.' [2]

This indictment, by the way, comes not from one of Putin's cronies, but from Nikita Belykh [14], the former head of the Union of Right Forces, who resigned in 2008 rather than see the party become a Kremlin 'project.' He later accepted President Medvedev's offer to become governor of the Kirov region. Two years in government, he says, have opened his eyes to a lot of things, including the paternalism that pervades Russian politics in both its official and opposition versions. He seems to suggest that the opposition has yet to develop the courage and maturity needed to enter the political arena. Could the impressive mass protests of December 2011 help to overcome this? So far the signs are not good.

Five groups of the protest movement

As presently constituted, the protest movement can be divided into roughly five groups:

(1) The most popular group consists of artists, poets, television personalities, writers, and journalists. People like Artemy Troitsky, who came to the last rally dressed as a condom, Leonid Parfyonov [15], Boris Akunin [16], Dmitry Bykov [17], Olga Romanova [18], singer Alexei Kortnev, and socialite Kseniya Sobchak [19]. They all make it a point, however, to declare that they are 'non-political,' that their concern is to give the nation back its 'moral voice.'

2) Another large group at these protests have been Russian nationalists like Vladimir Tor, and 'true communists' like Sergei Udaltsov [20]. Udaltsov, a scion of the Old Bolshevik elite--one of Moscow's streets is named after his great-grandfather--parted ways with other communist organizations when the failed to adequately reflect, in his view, worker's interests. His latest project, the Russian United Labor Front--Left Front [21], also objects to mere party politics and calls for power to be transferred directly to the working masses. Tor, on the other hand, is one of the perennial leaders of the right wing 'Russian March,' which also counts blogger Alexei Navalny among its participants.[3] He also abjures the divisive term 'party politics', preferring to speak on behalf of the whole Russian nation.

While many at Sakharov Square might wish to distance the protests from his appeal 'Russia for Russians,' as Tor pointed in his address to the crowd, the nationalist protesters in Manezh square in Moscow who battled riot police last February [22] share one important bond with the current protests--an uncompromising hostility to political authority. 'Without the heroes of Manezh,' Tor reminded the audience, 'there would never have been a Bolotnaya.'[4]

(3) Smaller in number, but much better known, are the perennial leaders of the Old Opposition, figures like Vladimir Ryzhkov, Boris Nemtsov, Mikhail Kasyanov, Garry Kasparov, and Grigory Yavlinsky. While some have worked in the government, they have all publicly broken with Putin, and now demand that the entire political system be reconstituted. Their personal ambitions have prevented them from agreeing on a common political strategy, much less a joint list of candidates. As a result, while theoretically they could represent the beginnings of a political opposition, in practice they have placed themselves at a safe remove from the political process.

The blogger and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny was released from prison on 20 Dec, four days before the Moscow rally. He was jailed for 15 days for marching in one of the previous unsanctioned opposition protests. 'I see enough people here to take the Kremlin and the White House right now, but we are a peaceful force,' Alexei Navalny told the crowd. (Photo: drugoi.livejournal)

(4) A fourth group is one I call the new Internet Opposition. It is composed of people like Alexei Navalny, Evgenia Chirikova, Grigory Melkonyants, and Ilya Yashin, who have developed a core following among Russia's rapidly burgeoning internet community. Navalny is the most charismatic of this group. He has made clear that he considers himself a politician, and that he will run for office (under a different system). For now, however, his political views are hard to pin down. He is all things to all people, refusing, for example, to even discuss whether a (hypothetical) political party he might lead would be on the left or the right side of the political spectrum.[5]

With the exception of Navalny and Yashin, who were once active in Yabloko (Navalny also served briefly as an advisor to Belykh in Kirov), their rise to prominence has been largely due to persecution by the authorities and devotion for a single cause, be it corruption, the environment, or election monitoring. Their persecution has garnered them "street cred," but not much else. Some in the Old Opposition thinks these youngsters look to them for guidance, and that they will ride into political office on the latter's coat tails. I very much doubt it.

(5) The latest addition to protest movement are individuals who have been part of, or directly benefited from, the Putin regime but have since abandoned it. They include former finance minister Alexei Kudrin, oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, and "A Just Russia" deputy Ilya Ponomarev. While they too reject the Old Opposition and share the values of the Internet Opposition, at the last two mass rallies they were met by resounding disapproval. Prokhorov, for example, chose not to address the crowd in Sakharov Square after being hectored by shouts of "Go back to Courchevel"--the Swiss ski resort favoured by Russian nouveau riches. The crowd's antipathy to individuals with practical political experience are once again on full display here.

Thus, by default, the government retains the sole practical political agenda and, as such, its dominance is unassailable. It can easily afford to wait for opposition leaders to devour each other as they have so often in the past. It can then step in to co-opt the best and the brightest by giving them the opportunity to apply themselves in the only meaningful political game in town.

'... the government retains the sole practical political agenda and, as such, its dominance is unassailable. It can easily afford to wait for opposition leaders to devour each other as they have so often in the past.'
Despite what opposition leaders may say, the fault for this lies primarily with them. They have ritualistically rejected any meaningful political dialogue with the government, despite the fact that under president Medvedev attempts were regularly made to set the stage for a liberal political party. But no matter what the Kremlin did to encourage the emergence of such a party--simplifying party registration, reducing the percentage quota for a parliamentary seat from seven to a five percent minimum, guaranteeing federal funding and air time to parties that get even three percent of the popular vote--the opposition has been either unable or unwilling to assume its proper political role in a democracy, that of constructive gadfly.

Those few opposition leaders who have accepted the challenge of constructing real political life from the ground up, however, have found the current regime to be, if not a friend, then at least a receptive partner. Asked about his differences with his former aide Alexei Navalny, Nikita Belykh summed them up as follows: 'By my actions I am attempting to mitigate the crisis [of confidence in government] and improve relations between government and society. He is attempting to tear apart what connections remain.'[6]

Belykh did not attend the meeting on Sakharov Square in Moscow. Instead, he attended the rally in Kirov and spoke to a small crowd of opposition supporters that gathered there. His impromptu remarks were an appeal for the kind of personal civic engagement that could transform 'opposition to everything' into a true revival of politics. "I believe that civic activism must be constructive in nature, not destructive. In my opinion, the government took a step in our direction today. A major and truly significant step. And we need to seize this opportunity, instead of telling the government to go to hell. The ball, he says, 'is now in society's court.'[7]

Dr. Nicolai N. Petro is professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island. He is the author or editor of eight books on Russia, including Crafting Democracy: How Novgorod has Coped with Rapid Social Change (Cornell University Press, 2004), The Rebirth of Russian Democracy: An Interpretation of Political Culture (Harvard, 1995), and Russian Foreign Policy: From Empire to Nation-State co-authored with Alvin Z. Rubinstein (Longman, 1997). He served as special assistant on Soviet affairs in the U.S. Department of State in 1989-1990, and as advisor to the mayor of the Russian city of Novgorod the Great in 2001-2002. His web site is www.npetro.net.

This article was first published by Open Democracy on December 29, 2011.

----------------------------

NOTES:

[1] Vladislav Surkov, "Sistema uzhe izmenilas'," Izvestia (December 22, 2011). Available online at: (accessed 12/23/2011).

[2] "Die Politik bedeutet ein starkes langsames Bohren von harten Brettern mit Leidenschaft und Augenmaß zugleich," Max Weber, Politik als Beruf. München und Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1919, p. 66.

[3] BBC Monitoring, "Russian Protest Icon Navalnyy Discusses Plans, Ambitions in Marathon Interview," Ekho Moskvy Radio, December 26, 2011.

[4] Lucian Kim, "A Russian Fairy Tale for Christmas," http://lucianinmoscow.blogspot.com/, December 25, 2011,

[5] "Russian Protest Icon Navalnyy Discusses Plans."

[6] Nikita Belykh, "Chto mozhet delat' v Rossii odin gubernator?" Polit.Ru (June 3, 2011). Available online at: (accessed 6/3/2011).

[7] "Miting 'Za chestnye vybory-2'. Nikita Belykh prishel, otvetil," Gorod Kirov, http://www.gorodkirov.ru/article_view?a_id=23784#ixzz1hsBjKUBF, December 26, 2011.

Russia Blog Editors wish you a very happy new year! We hope that 2012 will be prosperous and successful for you in every possible way! Please, come back soon for more fresh content on Russia, Former Soviet Union, and U.S.-Russia relations.

There are several issues about democracy under discussion in Russia. One is corruption and the stories of major public officials, including V. Putin, enjoying lavish palaces--and owning them?--on a government salary. Powerful elected officials after a few years in any country often come to chafe under the limits to personal wealth that coexist with their much less limited public power. That resentment is the seedbed of public pilf in any country, and that seedbed is apparently well-watered in Russia now. The official typically thinks, "Why is it that I can make others rich, but get nothing for myself?" The public thinks, "If you don't like your job, quit!"
But Putin isn't quitting.

In America, presidents are limited to two four year terms, after which they get a reasonably large annual pension and office staff, plus a presidential library named after them. They also can cash in, or not, in the private sector, based on their friendships and name. That seems to suffice. Almost no US presidents are accused of personal enrichment while in office.)

A second issue is whether freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are truly honored in Russia today, or are they offered only as window dressing? In the past, protests were small and could be ridiculed and criticized officially for not following proper procedures for permits, etc. The size of the recent protests make such ridicule ridiculous itself, and thanks, perhaps to calmer voices in the Kremlin, the approach of mockery has been muted.

In short, the recent poor showing of Mr. Putin's United Russia party and the way the prime minister has been booed on occasion mark a humbling of a leader who is known for his arrogance. On the other hand, a humbler Putin might be just the ticket for electoral success next March. The protestors are only a small slice of a vast population and polls still show that Unite Russia, headed by Putin, is likely to win the coming Presidential elections. It's just that the Kremlin is being reminded that in a democracy the people are sovereign, and you can alienate them.

But that still leaves issue number three: the recent apparent electoral fraud. There have been a few firings and promises of investigations. But a truly confident regime would conduct real investigations, come to honest conclusions and admit fault as appropriate. That might do more to gain credibility for the regime than anything they could do right now.

Don't count on it anytime soon.

What one can say is that politics should not be criminalized (to use Mark Helprin's useful phrase). There may be some corrupt politicians in jail, but there are surely many more in prison on trumped-up charges, guilty mainly of threatening the political prospects of their opponents. In the popular view, courts treat elected officials more leniently than ordinary people. But the opposite is often the case if the official or former official is a dissident.

Thus, at its inception, missile defense had a fruitful purpose-to bring to a close the Cold War, i.e., the division of Europe into mutually antagonistic blocs. Reagan was so concerned that his plans for missile defense not destabilize the nuclear balance and thus deepen and prolong pan-European discord that he offered to share the technology with Moscow that was still the capital of the Soviet Union.

The Obama Administration, having launched its wise and admirable reset by canceling President Bush's plans to deploy a missile system on Russia's borders, has since revived that very bad idea, and thereby torpedoed one of its few solid foreign policy achievements. It plans to park elements of a missile defense system in Poland and Romania, prompting Russia's once and presumably future president Vladimir Putin to ask publicly: "So where is this reset?"

Sadly, Obama has shown himself unable to withstand the pressures of powerful lobbies and factions within his own party for empire-that is to say for the maintenance and expansion of our globe-girdling hive of compliant states.

Our impending insolvency may yet save us from this potentially disastrous course. Why disastrous? Because it thoroughly undoes the heroic and beneficent work of Reagan and Gorbachev who laid the groundwork for a new pan-European zone of security and economic cooperation stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok and embracing North America. They aimed to put a definitive end to the European civil war that dated back to the outbreak of World War I and the subsequent Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, and continued through World War II and the Cold War.

Many in U.S. foreign policy circles reject the notion that Russia can be a reliable partner ostensibly because it does not share our values. They have long made Putin out to be neo-Soviet, indeed Stalin reincarnate, and now feel justified in that laughably slanderous misconception on the strength of alleged voter fraud in the December 4th State Duma elections. What they fail to mention is that for the first time in the history of Russia a ruling party has been rebuked at the polls, effectively losing the election. A significant loss of support for United Russia was predictable; nevertheless, the government allowed a largely free (though clearly imperfect) process to proceed. When it takes office, the new State Duma will approximate to the real shape of public opinion, and will credibly serve as a legitimate forum for debate and political action.

Thus, Russia continues its long, sometimes halting, but inexorable march away from totalitarianism. America, meanwhile, continues to march in the opposite direction: once a free Republic, it strives for global strategic dominance, and pays a heavy toll in disregard for civil liberties as its bossy, unaccountable, and incorrigible elite throws its weight around in every nook and cranny of the globe. Our militarized foreign policy, the monopolistic duopoly of the Republican and Democratic parties, the ubiquity of embedded regime media (msnbc on the left and Fox News on the pseudo-right, for example) conspire to render the quaint, non-interventionist, commercial Republic of George Washington as remote and defunct as the lost world of Atlantis (unless Ron Paul wins, and/or the global economy crashes, and even then a restoration is far from certain).

The reset needs to be more than a temporary suspension of our efforts to strategically encircle Moscow as we extricate ourselves from interminable foreign wars. It needs to be the first step towards divesting ourselves of empire and constructing a new pan-European entente cordiale for the sake of the moral, cultural and spiritual renaissance of the Northern Hemispheric nations of greater Europe.

Pan-Europe will revive by recuperating the heritage of Athens, Rome, Jerusalem, and Constantinople or not at all. And this will happen only in accord with Russia. It will not happen otherwise.

Under Vladimir Putin, Russia, like the U.S.A. under Ronald Reagan, is back. Those of us who fought to relegate Marxism-Leninism to the ash heap of history did so in the hope and expectation that Russia would emerge from under the rubble of a failed ideology still breathing and conscious.

Americans should be proud of their contribution to Russia's revival, and work with Russia's leadership to fashion a new zone of economic and security cooperation spanning the Northern Hemisphere.

To this end, the 2012 Republican Party platform should contain a plank calling on Moscow to reaffirm the sovereignty of all former satellites and Soviet republics. At the same time, it should insist that NATO halt further expansion eastward, and desist from basing military forces, including missile systems, anywhere east of Germany.

Thus, the newest NATO members would have the benefit of Article 5 protection while post-Soviet Russia would achieve stability on its borders, thus allowing it to develop internally, and repair the damage of 70 years of Marxist-Leninist misrule. The path would then be open to a strategic partnership with Moscow -- much needed if pan-Europe is to meet the strategic challenges posed by a rising East Asia and resurgent Islamic extremism.

In addition, the U.S. should scrap any notion of deploying missile defenses in Europe pointed towards Russia, and instead opt for a joint U.S.-Russian system designed to defend against threats from rogue states -- if indeed it proceeds with missile defense at all.

Republican candidates for president should call for an agonizing reappraisal of American foreign policy with a view to pan-European solidarity rather that a global hegemony we do not need and cannot afford. We should have done this in the immediate wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall, but never did. We must make up for lost time. The time to act is now.

James George Jatras is the former Foreign Policy Analyst, U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, former U.S. Foreign Service Officer

Edward Lozansky is president of American University in Moscow and Professor of the Department of World Politics at the Moscow State University.

Anthony T. Salvia is the former Special Advisor to the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs (appointee of President Ronald Reagan)

No country's history proceeds on its own anymore, uninfluenced by events elsewhere. Thus, there was a great deal of interest in Russia in the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, just as there were with the Arab Spring. Yet, in the aftermath of the demonstrations against Vladimir Putin and United Russia that followed the parliamentary elections, Putin is blaming the public displays on--Hillary Clinton.

This is like politicians in the American South during the civil rights movement who blamed the demands for change on "outside agitators." If Putin merely expressed annoyance with the tone of U.S. scolding, it would be hard to disagree. Whether it is Clinton or her predecessor, Condolezza Rice, moralizing U.S. Secretaries of State seem to think that they should be constantly announcing what other governments "must" do. It's hard to know what such near-daily lectures accomplish, other than infuriating heads of state with whom we must deal. Once in a while? Sure. All the time; it is a little hard to take.

Nonetheless, Putin cannot imagine that his problems with the Russian people are the result of comments made by Hillary Clinton and the United States government. There was too much Internet evidence of fraud in the elections. One blogger became famous for the beatings he endured in government hands. These protests hardly look like the work of Ms. Clinton or the CIA.

Russia is suffering from crony capitalism, a politicized form of mercantilism: state sponsorship of industries, state manipulation of supposedly private companies, preferential regulations and official corruption that hobbles new businesses. It isn't fascism, but it is hardly the kind of free marketplace of ideas and enterprise that Russians thought they were getting twenty years ago. Sadly, the first efforts at liberalism after the fall of communism were chaotic and badly delivered, and the consequent economic collapse brought about the Putin reaction. Had his party spearheaded more serious reform and resisted the temptation to enrich its leaders and managers, Mr. Putin ciould have succeeded much more than he has. Had he merely decided to limit his leadershi to the twelve years he has put in so far, he would have retained his popular standing. He probably could have kept (and still may keep) the mansions he has built for himself since assuming public office.

Instead, Russia now serves as an example of how persistent, unyielding crony capitalism can demoralize an economy and democracy. People are right to object. Paired with the fiscal failures of Social Democracy--through over-spending--in most of Europe, you have twin dangers that should flash political warning lights in America during our own lesser, but very real crises.

President Medvedev's stern warning to the United States and NATO on the eve of parliamentary elections seems to be directed at domestic audiences, to rally nationalist votes. However, if his intension was to influence U.S. or NATO policies on missile defense, it most likely misfired. Obama is in no position to yield to the Kremlin's demands, and the only thing that Medvedev has achieved with this outburst is to supply ammunition for the White House critics who keep crying foul of the 'reset' policy. Additionally, Medvedev's threat to quit START sounds pretty irrational since this treaty was praised by Moscow itself as one of its most successful diplomatic efforts in recent years.

This is not to say that U.S. missile defense policy is justified. Russia has many valid reasons to complain, but if it wants its voice to be heard, it should use a different approach. Issuing threats and saber rattling did not work even in the Soviet era, and it definitely will not work now. One should add that Moscow's proposal for 'sectoral' defense responsibilities is not very serious, either. Justifiably, NATO says that it cannot delegate its members' defense to a third party.

However, the Kremlin's strong card is its offer to the West to develop and deploy a joint missile defense system. This offer has fundamental meaning since it proves that Russia is absolutely serious about its wish to be part of the global security infrastructure.

It looks like the present Republican leadership, as well as some Democrats, prefer to forget these statements. When Russia proposes something along the same lines, these proposals are largely ignored or flatly turned down. To sweeten the bitter pill, the West is offering plenty of fine words about its strong desire for cooperation. However, there is little or no substance to this language, and Moscow suspects, perhaps quite rightly, that Washington wants to take Russia for a ride again, like it did with NATO expansion, Kosovo, Libya, etc.

To sum up, 20 years after the collapse of communism there is little to show for progress in doing away with Cold War mentality. As far as defense issues are concerned, Moscow is clearly less to blame for this sad state of affairs than Washington and Brussels.

With no offense intended to any of the 28 NATO member states, it is easy to see that of all them the United States alone contributes technologically and financially to the development of a modern missile defense system. On the other hand, Russia does have both the intellectual capabilities and the cash to join the United States in this effort.

Taking into account the United States' astronomical $15 trillion national debt and the colossal economic and financial mess in Europe, it looks like without Russia's help America will have no alternative but to keep digging its own financial grave by borrowing more from communist China in order to build a serious missile defense system. Thus the nearsighted geopolitics promoted by the anti-Russia lobby in Washington is damaging to U.S. security interests. It should be reconsidered before it is too late.

Edward Lozansky is president of American University in Moscow and Professor of the Department of World Politics at the Moscow State University.

RT (Russia Today TV News Network) has covered the Occupy Wall Street movement so extensively and boldly that it begs the question: What does the Kremlin have to do with the OWS movement? From what I have observed in both Russia and the USA, the answer is: Very little or nothing at all, to my regret, which I'll explain later. More than a month-- from September 17 when the OWS started in New York to October 21 when I returned from Moscow to Washington--I watched OWS the way Russians see it, through government-controlled TV channels.

I was struck by how little attention Russian media paid to this massive explosion of discontent that was clearly embarrassing to US government and media pundits who would much rather talk about "lack of democracy" in Russia than American about 1% "plutocrats." After checking online reports from Truthout, I realized that in OWS did not receive a coverage it deserved. So I had remained unaware of the movement's huge scale until I came back to my Alexandria home--and to a new TV set supplied with dozen channels, including RT. Now I'm glued to RT every morning. And what do I see?

I am not much of a TV watcher. Last time I watched RT was more than a year ago at my friend's home. Now I am pleased with how much RT programming has grown and matured. I hear RT buzz from my neighbors, tennis partners and casual acquaintances. I hear them saying: "We learn more about the USA from RT than from any American channel."

RT's American Success Story

I switch back to CNN, Fox, and NBC I've watched for years. Cindy Lohan is in trouble again, as she was half a year ago; Herman Cain's sexual peccadillos are on display. So is Sandusky's alleged pedophilia. The brutality of some, NOT ALL, Middle East dictators is routinely condemned. Click RT. It's not just OWS coverage. RT deals with serious domestic and global issues. An array of competent reporters covers all corners of the world. Max Keiser dissects financial and economic woes. Thom Hartman frames them into The Big Picture. Peter Lavelle's Crossfire juxtaposes diverse views from a broad political spectrum.

Who else but RT would break the taboo on a discussion of Israeli nuclear arms? Among RT guests former US Senator Mike Gravel or Paul Craig Roberts and former Assistant Secretary in the Reagan administration. Both call attention to Benjamin Netanyahu's dangerous gambling with world peace, as he plans an Israeli attack on Iran's alleged nuclear weapon production sites. As US media retches up Iran's demonization, the task of a gadfly of US politics falls on RT shoulders. No wonder that now RT is the second most-watched foreign language channel in the States after BBC. In fact, RT's coverage of the United States is so good that it could be just as well called UST.

But where is Russia?

If RT's coverage of US is commendable, this cannot be said of its coverage of Russia. To be sure, it has some good Russian programs, from Al Gurnov's Spotlight to a raucous travelogue with Mark Ames. American viewers enjoy watching reels on the revival of Buddhism in Kalmykia, fate of Jewish diaspora in Caucasus and survival of exotic languages in Siberia.

With the approach of December 4 Russian elections, the Spotlight is aptly focused on leaders of major political parties vying for the seats in the State Duma. Still, I wish there were more RT discussions of Russian politics and foreign policy. What is missing on RT is Russia herself. There is no sustained narrative of Russian history, religion, literature, philosophy, architecture, art, and culture in general. RT.com has a link to Russian language instruction, but "The Sexiest Philologist in the World" is more likely to distract from language leaning. There seems to be no room for a discussion of Russia's socio-political system. There is no indication that there might be a special Russian perspective on the unrest in Middle East, EU financial crisis and the OWS movement.

Is Russia Still Shocked?

Since the disintegration of the USSR in 1991, Russia seems still dazed by "Shock Therapy" of early 1990s. It regained its historical name but not yet its national conscience. Russia remains a country of divided mind. On the one hand, the country's traditional name is now restored. After all, ethnic Russians constitute over 80% of the population. The remaining 20%, assimilated in various degrees, can handle Russian language. Russia's national symbols, the Eagle and the Tricolor flag, have replaced the ideological Hammer and Sickle, Red Star and Red Flag.

On the other hand, Russia's official name, The Russian Federation, harks back to the USSR. President Yeltsin made it a successor state to neither Russia of the tsars nor the Provisional Government which had ran the country until the Bolsheviks overthrew it on November 7, 1917. It was Tsar Nikolai's successor, his younger brother Mikhail, who empowered the Provisional Government to conduct general election to Constituent Assembly which was to decide on the form of government. (For more read my 2010 article "June 12: Russia Day or Remember Tsar Mikhail II Day?" target="blank")

Upon learning that they lost the election, Lenin's Bolsheviks forcibly dispersed democratically-elected Constituent Assembly. Willingly or not, Russia's present leaders got stuck with this illegal and violent legacy of Soviet State that goes against the grain of their democratizing aspirations. Lenin's embalmed body still lay in the Mausoleum on the Red Square as a symbolic reminder that Russia's 73-year-long dalliance with Communism has not yet been buried. The question remains: Would Russian leaders want to emulate Russia's first democratic enterprise with universal suffrage and Constituent Assembly? Or do they feel fealty to dictatorship that spurned the will of the people?

That's where I wish that "the Kremlin," or whoever manages RT, would provide a Russian perspective on OWS and global unrest in general. Since the Kremlin pays for RT's budget, one would expect that RT would serve Russia's national interests, while eschewing censorship. One would expect that RT handling of OWS would be infused with a Russian perspective. There is none. What is really Russia's view of OWS? I suspect that not only RT managers, but the Kremlin too cannot articulate one. Of course, the Kremlin likes to see the US embarrassed by OWS as well as by rough police tactics to suppress it. The brutality of Russia's own police in curtailing Moscow's own demonstrations begins to look "not so bad" when compared with the American pepper sprayers, man-handlers, and tear-gas canister throwers. The Kremlin can indeed feel a perverse pleasure at the fact that all Russian demonstrations are MINISCULE compared with those in the States.

Which is worse, Oligarchy or Plutocracy?

But this is not a perspective. It's more like a glee at the distress of your competitor. The Kremlin is not too eager to show OWS scenes to Russian viewers lest they get inspired for Occupying Russian Banks.

The truth is that Russia's economic system is not so much different from that of the USA. After all, the implementation of Jeffrey Sachs's "shock therapy" reforms was entrusted to a Harvard team of Neo-Liberal economists headed by Professor Andrei Shleifer and overseen Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, both of whom headed Treasury under Clinton. Comparing what the two did to the US economy with what the now jailed swindler Bernard Madoff did to his investors, the columnist Robert Scheer came to the conclusion that the two secretaries are "Too Big to Jail" as his recent Truthdig article is titled.

As to what the Harvard team has done to Russia, via the Anatoly Chubais clique next to Yeltsin, read Janine Wedel's "Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe," E. Wayne Merry's PBS interview "Return of the Tsars," and my own 2006 article "Would Harvard Ever Help Russia?"

The US-sponsored "Russian reforms" resulted in the oligarchic system of state-controlled crony capitalism. With Vladimir Putin's rise to power, the wings of a few oligarchs were clipped, but the oligarchic system has remained intact, insinuating itself into all pores of Russian economy. Using their access to the Yeltsin government during 1991-1997, a score of unscrupulous "reformers" simply robbed Russia of its collective wealth. The wealth had been accumulated, first, by "communization" of all factories, shops, private property and farms during and after the civil war. Then it was greatly increased by the labor of all Soviet people, including GULAG prisoners, during 73 years of "sweat, blood, and tears" Soviet rule. The robbers came to be collectively called the "oligarchs." Now economic disparity in Russia between the super-rich and ordinary people is most certainly greater than in the USA. It is more like .01% versus 99.99%

The oligarchs have both the means and the reasons to keep the corrupt system intact. Powerless to rein them in, the government seems content with maintaining a semblance of stability, helped by wind-fall profits from sales of hydrocarbons and other natural resources. Whatever political and even military-strategic differences the Kremlin may have with the US and NATO, these are overshadowed by the fact that Russian economy has been subordinated to the demands of "global economy" which, in turn, is controlled by the might of US dollar and US military machine.

The "success" of Neo-Liberal intervention in Russia has sent its US sponsors on a spree of exploiting "deregulated markets" at home. This spree precipitated the 2008 global crisis. The American big media bemoans the death of democracy in Russia under Putin. But if Bill Moyers, speaking of the United States, is right that "Plutocracy and Democracy Don't Mix," then one can surely say that the greatest obstacle for democratic development in Russia is not Putin, but the oligarchy.

Is the Kremlin Learning from OWS?

Far from being the Kremlin's "puppet", RT may yet teach the Kremlin important lessons. If it watches RT coverage of OWS, the Kremlin may well realize that Russian revolutionaries have misled Russia nation into not ONE, but TWO most tragic follies of the 20th century.

First, following Karl Marx's dogmas, they revolted against capitalism, nationalized all factories and collectivized all farms. Second, some seventy years later, their descendants reversed the course 180 degrees. Setting Russia on the course of Milton Friedman's "unfettered capitalism," they "privatized" just about everything. Russia moved back to Square One. However, property was not returned to its original owners, but went to crooks and the offspring of those who had once nationalized it.

Did Russian reformers have any choice but follow the Neo-Liberal "Washington consensus"? Would it not have been better to take a more gradual approach and follow, say, the Swedish model which combined the principles of free-market with socialist welfare state? They would probably reply that the IMF, to whom the Russian government was indebted, gave them no choice. They simply had to follow Neo-Liberal precepts then in vogue--and in power--and ignore such outstanding critics of "market fundamentalism," as Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, the author of "Globalization and Its Discontents" (See especially his June 2000 interview in The Progressive magazine) or Russia's native son Wassily Leontief, also a Harvard economics professor and Nobel laureate.

A Third Way for Russia?

At any rate, Russia should not have thrown away its unique experience in running centrally-planned economy, no matter how ineffective it was. Instead, it plunged back to the very same "capitalism in its highest imperialist form," from which Lenin's Bolsheviks allegedly "freed" Russia in 1917 and which meanwhile evolved into "disaster capitalism," as Naomi Klein aptly calls it. Post-Communist Russia should have tried a third way that takes advantage of all the virtues of free market while retaining national planning and social justice for all.

In the very least, Chubais should have distributed the "vauchers" not into the pockets of oligarchs, but to factory workers to make them co-owners. To be sure, Western advice was needed in both organizing such enterprises and marketing their products. There was already considerable international experience in running such enterprises, like the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) in the United States which includes dozens of successful companies employing over 10 million people.

All that US government had to do was give the Russians a realistic choice of different forms of private enterprise, including ESOPs, so that they could take what was most compatible with their already "socialized" economy and their national tradition. Instead, US government gave the "Russian reform" contract to the now defunct Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID). According Wedel, the exclusive contract was granted after normal bidding procedure had been waived "for foreign policy considerations."

As it turned out, the Harvard team not only set Russia on a wrong macroeconomic course, but also violated US law. In 1997 the contract was cancelled as two team leaders, Professor Andrei Shleifer and Jonathan Hay, were accused of illegal investment in enterprises they "reformed." After a long litigation, in 2005 Shleifer and Hay agreed to repay the Treasury $2 million each, and Shleifer's wife was fined for $1.5 million. Harvard University, where Larry Summers became president, was forced to pay $26.5, the largest penalty in its history, back to US tax-payers. (For more see my article "Would Harvard Ever Help Russia?")

Secure a Free Market for Ideas First

First and foremost pre-condition for a normal functioning of free-market in global economy is the existence of "free market" for ideas, including the idea that each country has the right to choose an economic model that is suitable to its national character and history. Unless there is a free exchange of ideas, beyond the Neo-Liberal fetishism, the "free market" for finance and commodities will inevitably favor those who want to impose it, by guile (as in Russia) and force (as in Serbia, Iraq, Libya etc.), on the rest of the world.

What do we do next?

On Thanksgiving afternoon, November 24, I went to McPherson Square in Washington to see what occupiers were doing there. There was a camp of dozens makeshift blue-colored tents and a crowd of about two hundred people. The weather was balmy, the mood relaxed; some occupiers were throwing football; others small-danced, ate sandwiches, talked to onlookers and took camera shots. I talked to s
ome of them. None complained about police harassment.
The overwhelming concern was "What do we do next? Where do we go?" The consensus was that "we are not against capitalism as such, but against CRAPITALISM," that is against financial manipulation of global market by the 1% or fewer people. These manipulations threaten to undermine the very idea of free enterprise of which America is a great practitioner. After all, the US gave rise to such high-tech giants as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg. Perhaps their wealth is excessive but, unlike Russian oligarchs, they did not gain it by exploiting access to the White House.

Recently, Bill Gates joined forces with Warren Buffett, the financier, asking American billionaires to give half their wealth to charities. Russian oligarchs, by contrast, are not in a rush to embrace charitable causes.

Finally, this article could not have been written yet another American high-tech invention, the online non-profit Wikipedia, founded by Jimmy Wales in 2001. It has since become the most reliable, accessible, and quick (Wiki!) source of information for millions around the world, in their own languages. Thereby, Wikipedia has upheld the good image of the United States by far more effectively than all US/NATO wars "to spread democracy and globalization" to the "benighted" nations beyond our borders. Since Wikipedia staff upholds its operational integrity by refusing to accept commercial advertisement, they ask all users for donations. I am happy to contribute whatever proceeds I get for this article to Wikipedia. Oh, yes, don't forget to click Occupy Wall Street!

Dr. W. George Krasnow (aka Vladislav Krasnov) is president of Russia & America Goodwill Associates. Former professor of Russian Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and author of Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth, he resides in Washington D.C. and frequently visits Russia.

A mixed martial arts fight between a long-time Russian champion Fedor Emelianenko and an American fighter Jeff Monson resulted in the Russian's victory, and became the surreal stage for the unthinkable: 20,000 Moscow fans booed and whistled Putin off the stage. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin got up on the stage to personally congratulate Fedor with the victory. However, most of his speech couldn't be heard. People in the bleachers started whistling, booing and screaming "shame!" and "get out!" Prime minister's voice trembled for a split second, but he continued with his speech, speaking louder. Main government TV channel Rossiya was airing the show live, and was unable to edit the booing out. The other government channels edited the booing and whistles out, however, Russian free media exists, and Internet is unrestricted, thus we get the news.

This small event at an MMA fight may mean a big thing for a whole era. In Russia, Internet is free, so is the media, and so are the Russians. And even though Putin will still win the elections (due to the total lack of a viable competing leader) things have changed forever in Russia, on November 20, 2011.

Two decades after the fall of Communism, Ronald Reagan is as popular as ever. Praise for Reagan is routine on the right, but also emanates from the center and not infrequently from the left. This broad appreciation of Reagan is usually bound up with his deft handling of the Cold War's denouement, and yet not a few of his admirers are motivated by a Russophobia Reagan would have found alien. Thus, they wind up undermining his legacy, whether inadvertently or not.

Those who consider themselves admirers of Ronald Reagan, and we count ourselves among their number, should support the deepening of President Obama's reset with Russia under the next Republican administration, which we hope will take office on January 20, 2013, and not a resumption of the efforts of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to strategically encircle Russia.

This came as no surprise:

We remember in the late Reagan years how not a few of the president's supporters read him out of the Conservative Movement for the sin of concluding the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty with the USSR.

We remember how they excoriated him for declaring the Cold War a thing of the past while strolling arm-in-arm with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev through Red Square.

We remember how they demanded his head for offering to share missile defense technology with Moscow (then still Red Moscow) because he saw the merit in the Soviets' argument that the unilateral deployment of an ABM system would upset the strategic balance.

Reagan objected to Communism, not Russia as such.

Reagan objected to Communism, which he saw as morally unacceptable and the root cause of the Cold War, not Russia as such. It was peace he cherished and longed for, a world stepped back from the brink, shorn of ideology, restored to normalcy, and, thereby, to the prospect of a new pan-hemispheric entente embracing Europe, Russia and the United States.

One would think conservative Republicans, inhabiting an America on the cusp of insolvency, unable (unwilling?) to extricate itself from several wars of choice (none of them vital to national security, all of them tending, rather, to undermine it), facing rising Chinese economic and military power, and beset by crisis on its Mexican border, would see the prudence in Reagan's approach to the Soviet Union, and wish to adapt it to today's Russia, a country replete with flaws, but non-Communist and in full national and spiritual revival--the Russia Reagan helped bring about.

So one would think, but one would be wrong. For many conservatives at the recent Heritage Foundation conference:

- Russia is playing "neo-imperialist games" (that's rich in view of our own striving for global strategic dominance);

- Russia is "going in the wrong direction" (i.e., refuses to blindly acquiesce to US diktat);

- Russia's "sphere of influence is cause for concern" (yet none of them suggested the US withdraw from Korea or Germany, rescind the Monroe Doctrine, or dissolve its Middle Eastern Raj);

- Russia's energy policies are "politically motivated" (quite unlike ours, of course);

- Russia's economy is "statist," whereas ours is "liberal" (that would be news to central-economic-planner-in-chief Ben Bernanke);

- Russia's political system evinces "Soviet-style power and influence" (an accusation no more plausible than the one made by demonstrators in the streets of Athens who insist that Germany's dictation of economic terms to Greece indicates a restoration of Nazi-style power and influence in Berlin.)

For one of the Heritage conferees, Russia is not a "reliable partner." But it was Washington that unilaterally abrogated the ABM treaty, seen in Moscow as vital to its capacity to deter attack; it was Washington (under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush) that reneged on President George H. W. Bush's pledge to Mikhail Gorbachev not to expand NATO eastward (except to absorb the German Democratic Republic); it was Washington that betrayed Moscow when, in instigating and then recognizing Kosovo's so-called independence from Serbia (Russia's close ally), it flagrantly violated UN Resolution 1244 calling for the self-administration of Kosovo within Serbia.

Although US policy towards post-Soviet Russia (until the reset) amounted to little more than a skein of provocations, Moscow acted repeatedly in ways beneficial to the United States: it supported US efforts to win support for the first Gulf War at the United Nations, acquiesced in the break up of the former USSR; accepted (however reluctantly) the absorption of the East European and the Baltic States into NATO; and spared the Alliance the pain and humiliation of having to introduce ground troops in Yugoslavia by abandoning Milosevic at the last minute.

Vladimir Putin emerged as Washington's staunchest ally in the immediate wake of the September 11th atrocities

The Kremlin's pro-Western line culminated in Vladimir Putin's emergence as Washington's staunchest ally in the immediate wake of the September 11th atrocities. Russian intelligence-sharing proved invaluable, and its support for the Northern Alliance prescient compared to Washington's misguided pre-September 11th policy of benign neutrality towards the Taliban.

Since the dissolution of the USSR, Moscow has provided important, and sometimes crucial, support to the West during times of international crisis

Since the dissolution of the USSR, Moscow has provided important, and sometimes crucial, support to the West during times of international crisis (sometimes even contrary to Russia's own interests and better judgment, as in the cases of Kosovo and Libya.)

What did Russia get in return? Until the reset, nothing--just lectures on democracy from a country that embraces such sterling examples of Jeffersonian political rectitude as Georgia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the absolute denial of Russia's right to have, much less defend, vital security interests along its borders, and efforts to deploy a new missile system on Russia's doorstep, ostensibly aimed at Iran.

Sadly, Washington is not in the habit of reciprocating. It takes but it never gives. It offers Russia one of two options, both unpalatable from Moscow's point of view: content yourself with satellite status, or we will consider you a sworn enemy, a fit candidate for encirclement.

We believe President Reagan would have offered another option--that of partner, and even of friend.

Would a US-Russian strategic partnership be a good thing? How would it benefit the United States and the world? How should US leaders approach Russia in the likely event Vladimir Putin returns to the presidency?

We will address these matters in a new commentary in the near future. Watch this space.

The article is co-authored by James George Jatras, former Foreign Policy Analyst, US Senate Republican Policy Committee, former US Foreign Service Officer, Edward D. Lozansky, President, American University in Moscow and Political Professor of the Moscow State University, and Anthony T. Salvia, former Special Advisor to the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs (appointee of President Ronald Reagan).

Although it is still a year to the US presidential election, the fight for the White House is in full swing. In this fight, everything goes, and the Republicans are determined to take away every chance of Obama winning. As he has done rather better in international affairs than in the economy, and the Reset in relations with Russia is among the brightest feathers in his cap, it clearly has to be compromised at all costs, even if the US own interests may suffer in consequence.

One would have thought that John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, has little time to waste. Congress is fiercely debating the impending dramatic budget cuts, attempts to reduce unemployment, and lessen the national debt that is nearing the astronomical $15 trillion, i.e. over 100 percent of GDP. The Occupy Wall Street protest movement is on the rise, and several cities have already seen serious clashes with the police.

All of that notwithstanding, Boehner drops his pressing agenda and goes to the Heritage Foundation, to announce to the wide world that the Reset is a total failure and benefits Russia alone. I suspect that Boehner's appearance at that session was due not least to the exceedingly active Georgian lobby, whose members were spotted among the audience. Besides, the theme of "Russian aggression" against Georgia recurred not just in the speaker's piece, but in most of the other, fairly numerous, speeches. The leitmotif of all those speeches - no dissenting voices detected among them -- could be summed up as follows: the Reset is doing harm both to the economy and to US security, and so has to be instantly discontinued.

Logic is best forgotten at this point. Every single US company trading with Russia - and there are hundreds of those, including some of the top numbers in the Forbes 500 list - believe precisely the opposite: the Reset is good for them. They also resolutely back Russia's accession to WTO and advocate the repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, as they believe that this would be both in their corporate interests and in the interests of the country as a whole.

As for security, the mere instance of Russia providing corridors for delivery of military and other supplies to the troops of the United States and NATO along the Northern route to Afghanistan makes the Reset indispensable. It is a known fact that taking those supplies along the Southern route via the territory of the US so-called ally, Pakistan, has frequently ended in transport convoys blown up and even occasionally casualties among US servicemen. It is hardly a secret that, although the strikes were delivered by the Taliban, they acted with direct support from Pakistani secret services.

Or you take the problem of Iran. None other than State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, as well as other officials of the Obama Administration, said repeatedly that Russia's stand on the Iran issue was most productive.

Michael McFaul, the new US ambassador to the Russian Federation, likewise said in no uncertain terms at the Senate hearings that the Reset was based strictly on those positions that benefit America, and that the Obama Administration had never made gifts to Russia, nor did it intend to. I appreciate this honesty, as normally diplomats resort to a florid style that merely clouds issues, while here it is all perfectly straightforward. En claire, so to speak

So who is more concerned about US interests here, supporters or opponents of the Reset? Even in the Republican Party itself opinion is divided. There are some who flatly refuse to sacrifice the country's interests to momentary gains in the presidential race, or to please foreign lobbyists trying to channel US policies toward Russia to suit their own interests, and to hell with those of the United States. The reference here is not just to Georgian or East European lobbyists, but oddly enough, also to Russian ones. One of such lobbyists is Garri Kasparov, who was also invited to speak at the said conference as "a Russian opposition leader."

Honestly, I am not sure that many other members of that opposition would accept the definition. For one thing, Kasparov's popularity ratings at home (actually, one is not even sure where his real home is; New York, most likely) are less than a percentage point. For another, quite a few people see him as hardly more responsible or mentally stable than the fickle ex-chess champion Bobby Fischer. Actually, to have an opponent of the Kasparov caliber is good news for the Reset, as he has notoriously bungled every project he has ever been involved in. In view of this, his efforts to torpedo the Reset are quite likely to do that policy a world of good.

However, this is not so much about Kasparov, or even Boehner. There are enough sober-minded people in the United States, including Republicans, who agree with McFaul that the Reset, that is, a constructive Russia policy, helps improve the US national security and benefits its economy. So, who is for or against Reset, raise your hands, please.

Edward Lozansky is president of American University in Moscow and Professor of the Department of World Politics at the Moscow State University.