Section: The American Interest (USA)
Putin’s Russia: A Moderate Fascist State
On June 24, 2016, the State Duma (the lower house of the Russian parliament), in its final session before the September elections, endorsed a highly controversial bill drastically expanding the capacity of the secret services to intervene in citizens’ private lives and introducing extrajudicial persecution of “extremist” acts. Even Edward...
Racist Russians Insult Obama Hoping for Trump’s Approval
Barack Obama’s final press conference was marked by an interruption by a Russian reporter from the state-run TASS news agency, the outlet that symbolized Soviet propaganda for decades. Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo cited a number of tweets from journalists present at the presser pointing out that TASS bureau chief, Andrey Sitov,...
Moldovan President Threatens To Scrap EU Agreement
Standing beside Putin in Moscow, Moldova’s newly elected president rebuked the EU and gave fresh proof of his intention to pivot toward Russia. FT: Moldova could scrap its trade agreement with the EU in favor of a rival Russia-led economic bloc, the country’s president said in Moscow on Tuesday.The announcement by Igor Dodon, who took...
Rosneft’s So-Called Privatization Gets Murkier
In December of last year, the Russian government privatized 19.5 percent of the oil giant Rosneft, an act hailed by some Western writers as a “personal triumph” of Vladimir Putin. It took less then a month for Russian media to more or less confirm the healthy skepticism of those familiar with how Putin’s regime operates: the so-called...
It’s the Corruption, Stupid
The stupidity I’m referring to is mine. In July 2015 I visited Moldova, a small, picturesque, impoverished country wedged between Romania, which is part of the European Union, and the breakaway region of Transnistria, which borders Ukraine and is mostly pro-Russian. My purpose was to observe the ground-level operations of Radio Free Europe,...
Will Populist Leaders Make Voters Love Putin?
Republican voters see Russia more favorably today than they did before the election of Donald Trump. The so-called “Trump effect” (named after the President-elect’s sunny disposition toward Russia and President Vladimir Putin in particular) dominated at least one news cycle a few weeks back, but it obscures a more interesting emerging...
The Great Unraveling
European policy on Russia beginning to crumble as French presidential candidates step away from sanctions. The WSJ: The two leading candidates, François Fillon and Marine Le Pen, are both avowed opponents of sanctions meant to punish Moscow for its annexation of part of Ukraine and its support for rebels in the country’s east.Russia’s...
Focus on Institutions, Not Personalities
The year 2016 may be remembered as marking the beginning of the end of the postwar international liberal order.The global rise of nationalism has in many cases coincided with the decline of social and economic openness, ascendant since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Across the world, voters are embracing leaders and policies opposed to freer trade...
The Quiet Revolution
The Soviet Union was bound to collapse eventually. But the fact that it collapsed as peacefully as it did exactly 25 years ago on Sunday is largely a tribute to one leader: George H.W. Bush. History will remember America’s 41st President for ensuring that so large and authentically historic an event could take place so casually.There are...
The Myth of a U.S.-Russian Global Agenda
This article is the second of three essays on U.S.-Russian relations in the transition to a new U.S. administration. The first is here.Realism takes reality as its starting point, and the reality is that U.S. policy over the past 25 years has failed to secure the transformation of Russia into a country that shares our perspective the way that...
