FRIDAY JULY 9 CONTENTS
(1) EDITORIAL: The World Hates Vladimir Putin
(2) EDITORIAL: Russia Today, Seething with Anti-Americanism
(3) EDITORIAL: Economics for Russians
(4) Nemtsov in the Wall Street Journal!
(5) Russia Teems with Anti-Americanism
(6) The Seeds of Revolution still Live in Russia
NOTE: Kim Zigfeld’s latest installment of her Russia column on the American Thinker blog reviews the neo-Soviet crackdown on the media and the assertive thrilling attack on the Kremlin recently launched by Novaya Gazeta. Kim also has a column running on Pajamas Media (designated lead story, congrats KZ!) which has her take on Obama’s visit to Moscow, namely that it was a total mess that disappointed in a major way. We couldn’t agree more; we got our “hopes” up and O dashed them big time. It was better than Bush, but that’s not saying much at all. As always, required reading. We’ll have our own take on the proceedings in a Monday editorial.
11 responses so far ↓
penny // July 9, 2009 at 4:02 am |
Kim, good article at Pajamas Media, the comments are good too. Bush was bad enough. It’s been a long time since we had a Reagan that looked Russia in the eye and called them evil.
My feeling too that Boy Wonder blew it on his Russia tour. The Kremlin has a measure of him now and they own him.
What scares me is how many oil contracts he signed on with them that will surface later.
Obama is a huge disappointment, just ask the opposition in Iran that thought they had moral backing from the US to revolt. He failed to articulate that loudly when it mattered. They are being dragged out of their houses to mass graves now.
Anne Althouse on how silly the Russians made Obama look:
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2009/07/look-how-silly-russians-made-obama-look.html
penny // July 9, 2009 at 4:25 pm |
Claudia Rosett has a good critique of Obama’s visit to Russia in Forbes, an excerpt:
But the bulk of Obama’s visit was a mix of visionary kitsch, caviar and feckless horse-trading. He met with President Dmitry Medvedev, brought along Michelle and the kids for a look inside the Kremlin and breakfasted on beluga with Putin. Obama emerged with such prizes as a short-sighted strategic arms reduction “commitment,” for America to scrap real capabilities in tandem with Russia retiring some of its rusting junk. In a smart move, he met with some members of the political opposition. But he also managed to effectively sell them out, not only by praising authoritarian Putin for his “extraordinary work on behalf of the Russian people,” but also by delivering to a graduating class of students a Russian variation on his June 4 speech in Cairo.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/08/obama-medvedev-putin-communism-opinions-columnists-russia.html
Robert // July 9, 2009 at 5:27 pm |
@ Obama emerged with such prizes as a short-sighted strategic arms reduction “commitment,” for America to scrap real capabilities in tandem with Russia retiring some of its rusting junk.
I still can’t believe this is happening for real and no one in the government or the military protests.
larussophobe // July 9, 2009 at 5:54 pm |
It’s actually not a bad idea in theory, we don’t have a problem with it. The world would be better off if Russia were defanged of its nuclear arsenal and forced to compete with conventional weapons, much more expensive and cumbersome to manage. Besides, with so many lunatics in charge, who can say when Russia might fire off a nuclear volly?
The problem of course is managing the transition, if Russia would actually agree, which it probably wouldn’t. Likely that’s over Obama’s head, and he’s too popular right now for most to risk confronting him.
It’s also worth noting that this author’s grasp of the issue is not the final word. Alexander Golts, for instance, disagrees:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/1016/42/379393.htm
So the issue is a bit more complicated than the author makes it appear.
Robert // July 9, 2009 at 5:24 pm |
Will Russia launch a war against Georgia? That is the most important question that should have been decided during U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Moscow — or, to be more precise, during Obama’s breakfast meeting on Tuesday with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Everything else was of secondary importance. Compared with the Russia-Georgia conflict, what difference does it make what kind of agreement they reach to reduce strategic nuclear arms? After all, Russia and the United States will never use these weapons against each other anyway.
The pleasantries shared between President Dmitry Medvedev and Obama during their news conference and photo ops were just as meaningless. In the end, Medvedev and Putin will always support regimes that are antagonistic to Washington for one simple reason: to increase international tensions, drive up oil prices and give the Kremlin another chance to bask in its inflated self-image as a global energy superpower.
It was very important that Obama’s visit coincided with Russia’s large-scale military exercises “Caucasus 2009,” which were most likely held in preparation for a new war in the region. And whether or not Russia’s troops will be given the green light does not depend on military considerations, but on whether Putin, after meeting with Obama, believes that he can start a war without incurring repercussions from the West.
“Caucasus 2009” is strikingly similar to the Russian exercises that preceded the August 2008 war with Georgia. The smell of war is once again in the air. Counterterrorism operations have been instituted in the Prielbrusiye region on the Russian-Georgian border, many people have been evacuated from the region and Russia has beefed up its forces in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Like deja vu, the Kremlin is again accusing Georgia of aggression, and yet it is Moscow that has insisted that all observers from the United Nations and Europe leave the region to remove unnecessary witnesses to Russia’s planned aggression. It would be difficult to label these moves as simply blackmail. Russia is mobilizing for war.
The Kremlin’s foreign policy is driven by one basic principle: It will pursue an aggressive, hostile policy as long as it believes it can get away with it.
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/article/1016/42/379357.htm
penny // July 9, 2009 at 11:10 pm |
I’m skeptical that Russia will try another all out war with Georgia. I could be wrong about Putin mental state, but, the cost would be horrific. They would acquire rogue status similar to NK and Iran, investors would not be back and the EU would find an alternative gas route faster. Even the Putin’s faithful sheeple may not have the stomach for another foreign adventure.
I think Putin will be more circumspect in destroying the neighbors.
Tomek // July 9, 2009 at 7:16 pm |
Of course, if Russia does launch another war in Georgia, it may want to work a few kinks out first, like for instance trying to limit the number of its own aircraft it shoots down. 50% of the downed Soviet aircraft being brought down by ‘friendly fire’ seems a little high; maybe for the next war we’ll try to work that down to ‘just’ 25%….
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8142999.stm
dave essel // July 10, 2009 at 8:31 am |
I don’t know about you, but I think what we are looking at here is the result of a standard problem Russia always comes up against:
a) always start by telling a lie
b) generally fail to think more than a step (or even half a step) ahead.
So we have a fact: x number of planes (rather too many) were shot down. Well, the Georgians must be reviled at all times as useless and incompetent so say the Georgians didn’t shoot them down.
Ah, whoops! If the Georgians didn’t, that means we did. That makes us sound useless and incompetent.
Cripes, stumbling in our trousers again as we crawl out of the latrine!
My suggestion to the Russians: say it was CIA drones remote-controlled from Washington via a re-transmitter in a hollowed out stone with included video camera and radar lying in a field outside Tbilisi . That lie is always a safe bet although it does get a bit monotonous.
Robert // July 10, 2009 at 9:10 am |
Well, it can also explain some of the Russian reports of “we shot down a Georgian agressor plane over peace-loving South Ossetia” ;)
“But the BBC’s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes says losses sustained by the Russian side in just five days have led analysts here to question how Russian troops would fare against a bigger, better-equipped and better-trained enemy.”
Actually, I think it’s just a rhetorical question.
The large-scale clash of the Soviet-style army and the Western forces:
penny // July 9, 2009 at 11:05 pm |
Agree, Tomek, American and NATO observers rated them as pretty inept last time.
Tomek // July 11, 2009 at 1:58 am |
I remember Wojciech Mastny quoting a Soviet admiral in a report to his superiors in the mid-1980s saying something like, ‘In 1970, I was fairly confident that we (the Soviet Navy) could decisively defeat our NATO equivalents, but today, because of the technological gulf, I don’t know if we would survive a direct encounter with the Danish Navy.’
And that was before the Soviet military collapse….