In this interpretive essay, I will focus on what the speech tells us about the hierarchy of considerations driving the Kremlin’s policy with respect to Crimea, with respect to Ukraine, with respect to its ‘Near Abroad’ and the world at large. These are the factors that should determine the Western response if it is to rise from its present amateurism. Read on…
Continue reading “Vladimir Putin’s Speech to the Federal Assembly on Crimean Accession: Commentary”
Name calling, i.e. ad hominem arguments, are just one of a whole series of violations of the ancient art of public debate that America’s War Party practices daily with regard to the Ukraine crisis. What we have here is a ‘burn before reading’ mentality, a new know-nothing-ism. Read on…
Continue reading “‘Apologists for Putin’ and America’s discussion of the Ukraine crisis”
The threat to the safety and security of Russian-speakers in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea which Mr. Putin’s government cites as its overriding motive for any military intervention is derided as exaggerated by the West. However, even before the incipient civil war being egged on by Pravy Sektor today spills blood, the experience of the Baltic States shows what shabby treatment awaits Russian speakers in a Ukraine run by the Maidan even with a fairy godmother from Brussels looking on.…
Continue reading “Latvia’s 300,000 Non-Citizens and the Ukrainian Crisis Today”
Since the United States and Europe have whipped up the anti-Russian rhetoric to the levels of the worst days of the Cold War, no one should be surprised if the Russian approach to Ukraine is following the famous one-liner attributed to Nikita Khrushchev: “what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is negotiable.” Read on…
Continue reading “EU-US Sanctions and the Russian Annexation of Crimea”
I contend that Vladimir Putin has all along seen the Crimea not as a prospective fruit of conquest or consolation for loss of the Ukraine but as a bargaining chip for ensuring the interests of the substantial populations of Russian nationals and Russian speakers in East Ukraine, the Crimea and the Odessa region are formally taken into account by the constitutional arrangements of the country. Read on….
Continue reading “Vladimir Putin, Clausewitz and Sun Tzu: Grammar lessons for today”
Regrettably, the latest, 28 February online issue of Foreign Affairs magazine shows that this iconic forum of America’s foreign policy establishment has descended into puerile, cartoon like depictions of the most serious international issues of the day, in this instance the unfolding developments in Ukraine. Read on..
Continue reading “Foreign Affairs magazine as a cartoon strip: the 28 February online issue”
Take a close look at post-Sochi Russia, this new teddy bear or Mischa. And if the unfolding events in Ukraine evoke alarmist remarks about the Kremlin’s encouragement of separatism or designs on Crimea, I advise Western politicians to consult the mirror and reconsider how they are overplaying their hand by spurning Russia’s proposed three-way cooperation in Ukraine. Read on…
The greatest lesson of the Belgian experience in governance is that divorce is utterly thinkable and possibly preferable to a bad marriage of peoples who have aspirations, cultural orientation and economies as different as East Ukraine and West Ukraine have today. Read on…
In the rapidly evolving New Cold War, not all Russian responses to the psychological warfare coming from America are healthy. Their mass media and, in particular, state television, show a steadily rising level of propaganda, pushing aside entertainment or news reporting to save the nation’s soul from the falsehoods being disseminated by both Western and home-grown enemies. Read on….
Continue reading “Russian State Television and the Information War”
Paradoxically, the vile propaganda offensive directed against Russia in US and European media these past few weeks has had a positive outcome in the emergence from their relative silence and defensive postures by some of America’s most responsible, experienced and well-informed thinkers on Russia. In this essay I join their dialogue with some related observations.
Gilbert Doctorow 