Section: The American Interest (USA)
How to Misunderstand What Didn’t Happen
In the nearly-a-month since I last wrote here about Syria, not a great deal has changed. The “cessation of hostilities” has been partial at best, with regime forces consolidating gains and maneuvering for advantage around Aleppo and to the west of it, preparing for if and when the next round of fighting begins. Rebel forces, notably groups like...
The Global Vote of No Confidence in Pax Americana
Defense spending is rising around the world, and it’s not because people feel safer. Bloomberg: Global military spending has begun rising in real terms for the first time since the U.S. began its withdrawal of troops from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.Defense budgets rose 1...
The Sanctions on Russia: How Hard Do They Bite?
Editor’s Note: How do Russia and the West see one another? What are the experts’ views on the confrontation between Russia and the West? How do the pundits explain the Russo-Ukrainian war and Russia’s Syrian gambit? What are the roots of the mythology about Russia in the West, and why has the West failed to predict and...
Big Leak, Big Corruption, Deep Rot
The weekend’s biggest story by far: the leak of a massive trove of documents, over 2.6 terabytes of data, from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specializes in creating offshore companies. The documents were handed over to the German paper Süddeutsche Zeitung under mysterious circumstances. The paper shared the documents with...
Condemned to Frustration
Either a new American administration will regard Russia as a distinct civilization marked by its own value code and special rights sanctified by history, or it will treat Russia just as a target. —Boris Mezhuev, “Why Henry Kissinger Came to Moscow,” February 12, 2016Positive change may be expected no sooner than seven or eight years from now,...
The Exit Solution?
Editor’s Note: How do Russia and the West see one another? What are the experts’ views on the confrontation between Russia and the West? How do the pundits explain the Russo-Ukrainian war and Russia’s Syrian gambit? What are the roots of the mythology about Russia in the West, and why has the West failed to predict and...
The Malthusian Holocaust
“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting,” wrote Milan Kundera about the struggle against communism. After totalitarianism, this struggle is against selective forgetting. Official Russia today “remembers” the Soviet and Russian efforts to save the countries between Russia and Germany from foreign and...
Authoritarianism Goes Global
A new global competition in “soft power” is underway between democracy and autocracy, but only one side seems to be competing seriously. Many had assumed that the era of globalization would give democracies a huge advantage in this sphere, the basic argument being that a more open global political economy and the relentless flow of information...
What Putin Wants
Secretary of State John Kerry was in Moscow on Thursday, where he met with Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in a bid to help wind down the Syrian Civil War. The Wall Street Journal report highlights the major sticking point: After four hours of talks in the Kremlin, Moscow and Washington apparently remain divided over a crucial...
Why Putin’s Turkey Sanctions Will Boomerang
Ever since Russia’s unforeseen invasion of Ukraine and intervention in Syria, Vladimir Putin has been characterized as full of surprises. And at times he certainly is. But Putin is also quite predictable. When a neighbor cozies up to NATO, resists Russian military and energy domination, or displeases Putin in other ways, he responds with...
