While it is good that the Russian narrative is reproduced in leading news outlets, the arms-length approach implies confusion in the editorial offices over how to handle these developments which do not match the image of Russia as the West’s enemy…
Continue reading “News Blackout: Civil society living in near total ignorance”
Europeans can take pleasure in the rare phenomenon these days of diametrically opposed narratives on major international issues being laid out before them on the single most watched news channel. This is something friends in America can only envy. Where this will lead Europe in policy choices remains to be seen.
It is improbable that any of the glaring contradictions and sources of weakness in NATO will deal it a fatal blow. However, in conditions of near-hysterical concern over how to cope with the refugees and still more fears of terrorist attacks, the true role of NATO in undermining rather than bolstering European security is becoming more widely appreciated.
The real parallels between the then as described by Lieven and now are not at the level of the international landscape but within Russia itself. This is so not merely because it seems to be the case to a casual reader like me, but because that relevance is understood by the leaders of Russia’s government today who act accordingly.
Continue reading “Then and Now: A Review of Dominic Lieven, ‘The End of Tsarist Russia,’ 2015”
Any change we see in Germany’s thinking on Russia may be attributed to something that is also influencing such thinking across Europe, and is even beginning to turn minds on Capitol Hill in the USA, namely the Russian campaign against the Islamic State in Syria which began one month ago.
A refreshing new interpretation of Russia’s Information War by a Lieutenant Colonel with responsibility for ‘Info Ops’ in the Belgian Army holds open the possibility that we all have been ‘dupes of Putin,’ both those of us who have sought to explain the Russian position to the world and those in the anti-Putin, anti-Russian camp
The ‘Concert of Powers’ that global leading minds have been invited to discuss by the Valdai Club this week is an irrelevancy. We are well and truly back on track to a bipolar world, which, in any case, many IR experts have long believed is more stable, hence more promising of global peace, than an ever shifting balance of power among five or six major players.
Continue reading “Valdai and the ‘Concert of Powers’ Approach to World Governance”
“Mr. Putin had to go into Syria not out of strength but out of weakness because his client Mr. Assad was crumbling.” President Obama, Friday, 2 October 2015
“I will tell you that, in terms of leadership, [Putin] is getting an ‘A’ and our president is not doing so well…They did not look good together.” Donald Trump, 29 September 2015
Continue reading “The Week in Review: Putin in the UN and Russian forces in Syria”
In a newly published book, professor of history at the LSE Dominic Lieven puts all of the anti-Russian generalizations that Kissinger continues to peddle in the context of the long tradition of disdain for Russia within the Anglophone world that had its origins in the 19th century competition between empire builders. Henry Kissinger could profit greatly from adding this one book to his reading list.
Continue reading “Book Review: Henry Kissinger’s ‘World Order,’ 2014”
“He became a traitor not because he was forced into it but of his own free will. While still in Muscovy he did not wish the state well but left his country for the enemy and fought against the Orthodox lands, and having become a traitor he wrote a rude letter to the Sovereign.”
Russian ambassador to Poland, April 1581, denouncing Prince Andrei Kurbsky
Gilbert Doctorow 