Russia's New Cold War. It is pleasant to be proved right - up to a point. With the body count rising and Kiev's Independence Square in flames, illusions about Vladimir Putin's Russia are smoldering too. I have been decrying the Putin regime since its inception. As Moscow bureau chief for the Economist until 2002, I was one of a handful of foreign journalists who did not welcome the new era of stability and decisiveness at the top. I feared where it might lead. The current fanfare over the Sochi Olympics masks the fact that fears about the rise of Vladimir Putin were entirely justified. Where President George W. Bush looked into Mr. Putin's eyes and got a "sense of his soul," others could look into his background and see a man steeped in the values of the KGB, who had held high office in St. Petersburg, the most gangster-ridden city in Russia. The chances of his making Russia democratic, law-governed or friendly were next to nil. But such views were unfashionable in the days when Mr. Putin was feted in every Western capital. In 2007, people began to wake up. Anna Politkovskaya, the dissident journalist, was murdered on Mr. Putin's birthday. The London-based migr Aleksander Litvinenko was poisoned with a sophisticated radioactive weapon; British authorities suspected the Kremlin's hand but drew back when Russia refused to cooperate in the investigation. Estonia came under cyberattack. Russia cut natural gas to Ukraine. Mr. Putin gave a venomous anti-Western speech at the Munich Security conference. I started writing a book. When The New Cold War was published in 2008, I argued that Russia under Vladimir Putin was a danger to itself and others. Inside Russia, there was the erosion of media freedom, the hollowing out of institutions, the neo-Soviet approach to history, the economy's over-dependence on natural resources. The book also outlined the deep anti-Westernism of the Kremlin's thinking, its use of bluff, subterfuge, energy blackmail and divide-and-rule tactics against an inattentive West. It pointed out that Russia is adept at using the West's biggest weakness: money. Russia's biggest export is corruption; its biggest effects are in our financial and political systems. Reaction was mixed. Many people wanted to believe that the arrival in the Kremlin in 2008 of Dmitry Medvedev, nominally as president but in fact as Mr. Putin's sidekick, marked a new era of liberalization. Russia's invasion of Georgia in 2008 rattled the West, but many people blamed both sides. The Obama administration tried to "reset" relations - a much-hyped gambit that brought negligible results. Six years later, the Medvedev era is forgotten. Russia has showed a formidable knack for diplomatic stunts, such as midwifing the deal on Syria in which the Obama administration and others agreed not to try to stop Bashar Assad's war on the Syrian people in return for his promise (unfulfilled) to get rid of chemical weapons. Then there is Russia's new alliance with the authoritarian regime in Egypt that replaced the elected government. But nobody mistakes deal-making for friendship. [Read more: Lucas/WallStreetJournal/19February2014]
skullduggery pleasant book 9 epub download
2ff7e9595c
Comments