September 24, 2008 — Contents

WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 24 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Annals of Vladimir Frolov, Pathological Liar

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Sarah Palin, Right on Russia

(3)  Totten on Russia’s Georgia Problem

(4)  Ouch! The FT Blasts the Russian Economy

(5)  Golts on Russia’s Neo-Soviet Hypocrisy

(6)  A “Third Way” on Confronting Russia?

NOTE:  The blog Cafe Turco writes about an e-mail from a Russian who opposes the Russian war in Georgia and posts photographs of Russians protesting against the war.

EDITORIAL: Annals of Vladimir Frolov, Pathological Neo-Soviet Liar

Kremlin stooge Vladimir Frolov

EDITORIAL

Annals of Vladimir Frolov, Pathological Neo-Soviet Liar

Surely one of the most shamelessly mendacious Russia commentators in the world is Vladimir Frolov; you know all you need to know about him when you know that regularly publishes his pro-Kremlin propaganda tracts on Russia Blog, which we’ve repeatedly discredited as the blatant Putin shill it is, and Russia Profile, which is actually operated by the Kremlin itself.  We’ve previously exposed the relentless torrent of lies issued by Frolov (indeed, that Publius Pundit piece appears on the first page of the Google return when Frolov’s name is searched on their engine), but on September 22nd, Frolov, seething with neo-Soviet hatred and bile, published an op-ed in the Moscow Times in which he plumbed new depths of dishonesty.

Frolov called the U.S. Secretary of State “bizarre” for suggesting that it was a bad idea for Russia to isolate itself. He argued that, quite to the contrary, isolation is a fine idea, and proclaimed:  “Russian leaders are taking sweeping measures to insulate the economy from the financial contagion that is now sucking the United States into an economic black hole.”

Frolov is, of course, lying. His frenzied pathology of anti-Western loathing and jealousy, needing to use words like “bizarre” and “contagion,” is plain for all to see, as is the extent to which it blinds him not only from basic facts but also from the ability to see how embarassingly transparent the resulting lies really are.

EDITORIAL: Sarah Palin, Right on Russia

EDITORIAL

Sarah Palin, Right on Russia

Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has come under attack recently from certain crazed leftists who accuse her of being a war monger because she stated that, if Russia attached Georgia after the latter’s admission to NATO, the U.S. would “perhaps” go to war with Russia to defend her ally. Then she explained:

I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help.  What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against … We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to. It doesn’t have to lead to war and it doesn’t have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.

There is nothing the least bit unusual or unreasonable about this view, but the moonbats have never let that stop them before and so it must have come as a rather disturbing shock to them to hear both former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright say exactly the same thing recently. 

Totten on Russia’s Georgia Problem

Ace reporter Michael Totten has a piece on Commentary magazine’s website relating his oberservations from ground zero in Georgia:

Russia has a problem. Moscow’s recognition of Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia a few weeks ago has already encouraged some of its own disgruntled minorities to push harder for independence from the Russian Federation. Russia’s semi-autonomous republics of Ingushetia and Tatarstan have both ratcheted up their demands to secede.

Ouch! The FT Blasts the Russian Economy

An editorial in the Financial Times:

In a week of extraordinary events, Friday’s 30 per cent bounce in Russia’s stock market ranks with the best of them. The $130bn support package stitched together during Moscow’s two-day market shutdown achieved its immediate goal. But, like the bigger crisis 10 years ago, Russia’s crash of 2008 has long-term implications.

First, it punctured the conceit that Moscow can soon become a global financial centre. The market plunge exposed deep cracks in its financial infrastructure. Russia must deepen its domestic capital pool, accelerate moves to get pension funds into equities, and develop its retail investment market. It must cultivate properly functioning domestic bank lending so that businesses can finance themselves on competitive terms. And it must ensure future central bank liquidity injections are more efficiently disbursed into the financial system.

Golts on Russia’s Neo-Soviet Hypocrisy

Alexander Golts of Yezhedevny Zhurnal, writing in the Moscow Times:

The Kremlin’s vision of global affairs after Moscow’s victory in the war with Georgia is rife with contradictions. On one hand, President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin justify Russia’s actions by claiming that the West — and primarily the United States — violated international law in Iraq and Kosovo. They further explain that Moscow had no other option but to repel Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia. But they apparently forgot that Russia’s foreign policy guidelines adopted just one month prior to the war clearly assert that “only the United Nations Security Council is authorized to sanction the use of force in order to enforce peace.” It appears that the moment Moscow concludes that international relations have broken down, it has no choice but to resort to force.

A “Third Way” on Russia?

Dominique Moïsi, a founder and senior adviser at Ifri (French Institute for International Relations) and currently a Professor at the College of Europe in Natolin, Warsaw, writing on European Voice, argues for a “third way” of confronting neo-Soviet Russia. By no means are we suggesting we fully (or even partially) agree with him.  Just food for thought.

“Let’s engage Russia if we can, but contain it if we must.” These two alternatives defined Western strategy toward Russia in the mid-1990s. Since then, Russia may have changed dramatically, but not our questions about it. What do you do when your big neighbour widens the gap that exists between its culture, which is European, and its political system, which is becoming increasingly ‘Asian’, at least in the bad old sense of ‘Oriental despotism’?