The Free Thinker

The Putinization of American Politics

"Fox Wars: The Obama Administration Wants to Delegitimize Any Significant Dissent" (Charles Krauthammer, 10/23/2009):

Rahm Emanuel once sent a dead fish to a live pollster. Now he’s put a horse’s head in Roger Ailes’s bed.

Not very subtle. And not very smart. Ailes doesn’t scare easily.

The White House has declared war on Fox News. White House communications director Anita Dunn said that Fox is “opinion journalism masquerading as news.” Patting rival networks on the head for their authenticity (read: docility), senior adviser David Axelrod declared Fox “not really a news station.” And Chief of Staff Emanuel told (warned?) the other networks not to “be led (by) and following Fox.”

Meaning? If Fox runs a story critical of the administration — from exposing White House czar Van Jones as a loony 9/11 “truther” to exhaustively examining the mathematical chicanery and hidden loopholes in proposed health-care legislation — the other news organizations should think twice before following the lead.

The signal to corporations is equally clear: You might have dealings with a federal behemoth that not only disburses more than $3 trillion every year but is extending its reach ever deeper into private industry — finance, autos, soon health care and energy. Think twice before you run an ad on Fox...

Fox and its viewers (numbering more than CNN’s and MSNBC’s combined) need no defense. Defend Fox compared to whom? To CNN — which recently unleashed its fact-checkers on a Saturday Night Live skit mildly critical of President Obama, but did no checking of a grotesquely racist remark CNN falsely attributed to Rush Limbaugh?

Defend Fox from whom? Fox’s flagship 6 o’clock evening news out of Washington (hosted by Bret Baier, formerly by Brit Hume) is, to my mind, the best hour of news on television. (Definitive evidence: My mother watches it even on the odd night when I’m not on.) Defend Fox from the likes of Anita Dunn? She’s been attacked for extolling Mao’s political philosophy in a speech at a high-school graduation. But the critics miss the surpassing stupidity of her larger point: She was invoking Mao as support and authority for her impassioned plea for individuality and trusting one’s own choices. Mao as champion of individuality? Mao, the greatest imposer of mass uniformity in modern history, creator of a slave society of a near-billion worker bees wearing Mao suits and waving the Little Red Book?

The White House communications director cannot be trusted to address high schoolers without uttering inanities. She and her cohorts are now to instruct the country on truth and objectivity?

Nationalization of major companies, attempts to muscle out critics in the press, efforts to rewrite history in favor of mass-murdering Communist tyrants... Wow. Note that Obama and Putin go after TV rather than print media; the National Review is safe. It's OK to have small freethinking cliques, but you can't give the other guy access to public opinion. By the way, I made a break with CNN last fall. The last straw was a story last October about people losing money in non-FDIC-insured banks, which was all fine up to the sting: they mentioned that McCain's nephew worked in one of these banks, or something. It was such a low blow. A mere pundit would have been ashamed to make such an ad hominem attack on a candidate's family. I would have been ashamed to see freerepublic.com sink to that level. That was the end. I will simply never watch CNN. I don't think it should be shown in public places, but it doesn't hurt me, because I can look the other way, and I always have an iPod to drown out the sounds. I never watched Fox News either but now I feel guilty about that. If I want to keep my First Amendment freedoms, shouldn't I support the network that is standing up for them, even if I don't like it?

The Wages of Appeasement

"India's China Obsession":

On June 21, two Chinese military helicopters swooped low over Demchok, a tiny Indian hamlet high in the Hima-layas along the northwestern border with China. The helicopters dropped canned food over a barren expanse and then returned to bases in China. India's military scrambled helicopters to the scene but did not seem unduly alarmed. This sort of Cold War cat-and-mouse game has played out on the 4,057-kilometer India-China border for decades. But the incident fed a media frenzy about "the Chinese dragon." Beginning in August, stories about new Chinese incursions into India have dominated the 24-hour TV news networks and the newspaper headlines.

China claims some 90,000 square kilometers of Indian territory. And most of those claims are tangled up with Tibet. Large swaths of India's northern mountains were once part of Tibet. Other stretches belonged to semi-independent kingdoms that paid fealty to Lhasa. Because Beijing now claims Tibet as part of China, it has by extension sought to claim parts of India that it sees as historically Tibetan, a claim that has become increasingly flammable in recent months.

Ever since the anti-Chinese unrest in Tibet last year, progress toward settling the border dispute has stalled, and the situation has taken a dangerous turn. The emergence of videos showing Tibetans beating up Han Chinese shopkeepers in Lhasa and other Tibetan cities created immense domestic pressure on Beijing to crack down. The Communist Party leadership worries that agitation by Tibetans will only encourage unrest by the country's other ethnic minorities, such as Uighurs in Xinjiang or ethnic Mongolians in Inner Mongolia, threatening China's integrity as a nation. Susan Shirk, a former Clinton-administration official and expert on China, says that "in the past, Taiwan was the 'core issue of sovereignty,' as they call it, and Tibet was not very salient to the public." Now, says Shirk, Tibet is considered a "core issue of national sovereignty" on par with Taiwan.

When Russia got away with naked aggression in the Caucasus, it showed bad guys everywhere what's possible. If this catastrophe happens, the West will be to blame for, as McCain put it in the last great statement of American purpose we're likely to hear for years, his brilliant Republican National Convention speech, "turning a blind eye to aggression."  Meanwhile, Russia's delusional insolence is accelerating:

"Let Medvedev Share Nobel with Obama":

It is a pity that President Dmitry Medvedev will not share the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize with U.S. President Barack Obama. In my view, he deserves it no less than Obama, whose principal accomplishments are still in the future.

Together with Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Medvedev is responsible for changing the tone and direction of international politics to craft a better world.

Not unlike Obama, Medvedev inherited a foreign policy plate that was driving his country into isolationism and debilitating self-pity.

In fits and starts in less than two years, he has managed to transform Russia’s international role from that of an estranged spoiler to that of a constructive problem-solver with a stake in a functional world order. Medvedev has gradually steered Russia away from the unilateralist initiatives taken by his predecessor.

He shares Obama’s penchant for multilateral diplomacy and has worked to make international institutions — from the United Nations to the nascent Group of 20 — stronger and more efficient.  His more pragmatic position on Iran is likely to make global efforts to stop Tehran’s secretive nuclear program more effective.

Medvedev commanded a successful war that was forced upon him. Like Obama in Afghanistan, he did not go wobbly in Georgia and proved his resolve to defend Russia’s interests and citizens. Medvedev’s toughest foreign policy decision has been to unilaterally recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Despite broad international criticism, Medvedev’s perseverance on this issue casts him as a world leader with a strong set of values. He does not crave popularity, just respect for his country.

I think it's true that Russians crave respect. That's why rolling back Russia could be so cheap: merely to send a loud signal that the world despised the cowardly, lying, thieving thugs and bullies of the Putin-Medvedev regime-- merely to, for example, announce a boycott of the 2014 Olympics-- while stating a justifiable high regard for the country's historic cultural and scientific achievements which contemporary Russia's aggression is sadly eclipsing, just might do the trick. But that would require a degree of geostrategic insight not seen since... well, the Bush administration.

From The Moscow Times:

In his speech before the United Nations General Assembly last week, U.S. President Barack Obama said we are entering a new historical era. He declared that the United States would cease taking unilateral actions and called on all people of all nations to join together in combating the challenges facing the world. Obama said we need the “cooperative effort of the whole world.” His foreign policy leitmotif has become the call to cooperate based on shared values. He made similar appeals during visits to Prague, Cairo and Moscow...

A recent survey by the Levada Center revealed that only 2.1 percent of all Russians consider the United States a friend, but 50.2 percent see Belarus as one, 17.6 see China that way and 17.4 percent consider Germany a friend. By contrast, 61.8 percent of respondents considered Georgia as Russia’s enemy, with the United States in second place at 45.4 percent.

The survey also found that 50.4 percent of Russians had either a “basically bad” or “very bad” attitude toward the United States, with only 1.4 percent holding a “very good” attitude and 34 percent feeling “basically good” toward Washington. What is most surprising to me is that Russians’ attitudes toward the United States have actually worsened during Obama’s first year in office compared with what they were during the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush, Russia’s heretofore-favorite whipping boy.

"His foreign policy leitmotif has become the call to cooperate based on shared values."  Wow.  It's the most damning summary I've read yet, precisely because it's so decorous and superficially favorable.  How provincial, how uncurious, how narcissistic, how trapped in an echo chamber of admirers do you have to be not to realize that much of the world doesn't share the values that America has traditionally stood for.  If we want to live by and promote values like freedom, democracy, and peace, that will sometimes bring us into conflict with others.  It would certainly bring us into conflict (though well short of war) with Putin's Russia.

Russians are right to continue mistrusting us.  Obama may wish to conduct an amoral foreign policy for the next four years, but he can't commit America permanently to ignoring democratic freedoms and appeasing aggressors.  The first order of business for the next Republican president will be to apologize for Obama's apologies and for shabby treatment of our allies in eastern Europe and elsewhere.  Then get back to leading the Free World.

Biden Gets It

"New Biden Criticism Surprises Russia" (NY Times, via Brothers Judd):

Just weeks after a summit meeting intended to show a thawing in relations between the United States and Russia, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. made blistering references to Russia’s failing economy, loss of face and a leadership that is “clinging to something in the past,” in an interview published on Saturday.

Speaking on the heels of his trip to Georgia and Ukraine, Mr. Biden said flatly that the Obama administration would make no deals and accept no compromises with the Kremlin in exchange for better relations.

Russia itself, he said, should find it in its own interest to repair relations.

The Kremlin immediately responded to the comments, made in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, with a demand for a clarification of the administration’s intentions toward Russia, saying essentially that it was receiving a mixed message so soon after President Obama had visited Moscow for the summit meeting.

Calling the criticism “perplexing” in light of the diplomatic overtures initiated by the United States and described as “pressing the reset button,” the chief foreign policy adviser to President Dmitri A. Medvedev told the Interfax news agency, “The question is: who is shaping the U.S. foreign policy, the president or respectable members of his team?”

The adviser, Sergei Prikhodko, said the atmosphere between the countries had improved since Mr. Obama’s visit early this month.

“If some members of Obama’s team and government do not like this atmosphere, why don’t they say so?” Interfax reported him as saying. “If they disagree with the course of their president, we just need to know this.”

In the interview, Mr. Biden set aside diplomatic finesse and offered an unflinching analysis of the state of affairs in Russia.

With falling oil prices, a corruption-ridden banking system and failing courts, Russia has seen the steepest swing from growth to recession of any major economy in the financial crisis.

Mr. Biden has a reputation for speaking volubly, and sometimes going beyond official policy. It was not immediately clear if he was sending an officially sanctioned message.

Well done!  More talk like this from Biden could erase the damage from Obama's biggest foreign policy error so far, his trip to Moscow, with its cowardly, sinister, and strategically inept signal of appeasement (calling for a "reset" in relations when the deterioration of relations was wholly due to unprovoked Russian aggression in the south Caucasus).  Biden is far better than Obama in foreign policy.  Obama should recall that it was largely thanks to Biden that McCain's massively superior foreign policy experience was neutralized.  In foreign affairs, November 2008 was as much Biden's victory as Obama's.

UPDATE: It is worth noting that even (to take a random example) the following comment by Obama during his Russia visit, seemingly a throwaway truism, isn't strategically sound at the present time:

Obama delivered a commencement speech Tuesday at a Moscow graduate school.

"America wants a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia," he told a large crowd at the New Economic School. "This belief is rooted in our respect for the Russian people, and a shared history between our nations that goes beyond competition."

The August 2008 invasion of Georgia showed the use to which Russian strength will be put, if the Putin regime and the paranoid nationalism that underlies it are not transformed.  Prosperity in Russia only strengthens the regime and magnifies the menace that Russia poses to its neighbors and to world peace.  It's not even quite true to say that "America wants," or that America should want, a "peaceful" Russia.  Some kinds of turmoil and upheaval in Russia-- liberal protest movements like those that have recently taken place in Iran-- would be very good for America and the world (and the Russian people), and in a rather grim and roundabout way even violent separatist movements like those in Chechnya and Ingushetia may serve not only America's interests but those of mankind as a whole by helping to tie Russia's hands.  A "strong" Russia in the only sense in which Russians can at the present time understand the phrase is bad for everyone concerned, not least the Russian people who take senseless pride in aggressive foreign adventures masked by lies that do no one any good.  One has to stretch words a lot to think of any sense in which a strong Russia is a good thing.  But at the moment even a prosperous Russia is not really something to be wished for.  Every drop in Russian GDP, every uptick in unemployment, weakens the Putin regime within Russia and weakens Russia in the world, and makes Russia's long-suffering neighbors a little safer and world peace a little more secure.  That has to be balanced against the harm to Russians, of course, but we should bear in mind that Russia is not really a poor country like India or Africa, or even China.

Only when Russia repudiates its Soviet past as Germany has repudiated its Nazi past can the world unambivalently wish well to the Russian economy.  America can indeed respect the Russian people, just as a man may respect a talented and courageous friend who, however, has been driven by depression to alcoholism and beating his wife.  Respect should take the form of an overriding insistence that Russia's regime and people mend their ways.

"The Russia/America summit" (Economist)

THE body language said it all. When Barack Obama arrived in Moscow for his first summit with the Russian president on July 6th, he sat on the edge of his chair, his eyes fixed on his host, Dmitry Medvedev. Mr Medvedev sat back, revealing a mix of reserve and polite attention to what Mr Obama had to offer. 

This scene reflected Russia’s general response to Mr Obama. America made the first approach and offered to “reset” the relationship. Although suspicious of Mr Obama’s intentions, Moscow nevertheless did not want to miss a chance. As Moskovsky Komsomolets, a tabloid, put it: “Why should we make a step towards Obama? Not least, because it is in our interest. Having won a war against Georgia, we confirmed our status as a great power, but ended up in isolation. Of course, we could live like this. But why not stop this isolation without ceding past achievements?”...

Mr Obama’s speech at the New Economic School in Moscow was an attempt to engage Russian society without trying to lecture it. He addressed the more neuralgic elements in Russia’s self-perception. He praised the Russian people for ending the cold war. He insisted that America wanted “a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia”. But he stressed that “pursuit of power is no longer a zero-sum game” and that Georgia and Ukraine were entitled to their sovereignty. He talked up the rule of law and freedom of speech “because they are moral, but also because they work”. And he added pointedly that “governments which serve their own people survive and thrive. Governments which serve only their own power do not.”

Mr Obama’s speech was broadcast live by only one cable TV channel with limited reach. The main channels highlighted his endorsement of a “great Russia” and managed to turn his comments about “dominating and demonising other countries”, a reference to Russia’s behaviour to its former republics, into a case of American self-criticism. Even students remained largely indifferent to Mr Obama’s speech. “I take what he said on board, but I am not going jump to a conclusion,” said one.

Such a reaction reflects the culture of cynicism and nationalism that has flourished in Russia in recent years. But it is also the result of Russian disillusionment with America. Vladimir Putin, Mr Medvedev’s prime minister, spent much of his two-hour breakfast with Mr Obama venting Russia’s grievances over America’s policy. He blamed George Bush for letting Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s president, twist American support into a green light for a war. But he allowed his talks with Mr Obama to be twisted by his own side. According to Yury Ushakov, Mr Putin’s chief foreign-policy adviser, “President Obama pledged to consider the regional significance of these countries for us.”

This line was amplified by Russia’s main TV channel, which presented it as America’s concession and Russia’s victory. It quoted Vyacheslav Nikonov, Russia’s main pro-Kremlin commentator, as saying: “All the sanctions that were imposed against Russia after the war in August 2008 are in the past. This shows that America realises the necessity to work together with the Russian Federation. America has understood what was going on last August. Today nobody in Washington would shake Saakashvili’s hand.”

In short, Obama's visit to Moscow achieved nothing substantive but was a propaganda victory for the Russians. And this was perfectly predictable. 

Obama's "reset" meme was the very opposite of what was needed. It implies that America is to blame for the deterioration of relations, whereas in fact the blame lies entirely on Russia's illegitimate ambitions and naked aggression against Georgia. "Reset" is another word for appeasement.

The Economist:

An opportunity lost

The end of the cold war in 1989 brought a sense of relief and satisfaction to America. As Jack Matlock, America’s ambassador in Moscow, described it in his memoirs, “The way we looked at it at the time, and the way Gorbachev looked at it, was that we all won the cold war. We ended it.” When the Soviet Union crumbled two years later, America was caught unprepared and scrambling for a policy. Its biggest concern was removing nuclear rockets from former Soviet republics. Yegor Gaidar, Russia’s former prime minister in charge of economic reform, says this was one of the most successful operations Russia and America have mounted together.

America’s policy towards Russia was not triumphalist. But nor did the West offer Russia a Marshall Plan to stave off a catastrophic collapse in living standards. As Mr Gaidar says, it was more concerned about recovering the Soviet debts which Russia had inherited than with stabilising its financial system. Poland’s debt was written off, but Russia’s was not. By 1993, when Bill Clinton took office and actively engaged with Boris Yeltsin, the crucial window of opportunity had closed. The funds Mr Clinton managed to accumulate for Russia were too little, too late.

For most of the 1990s, the thrust of Russia’s relationship with the West was about Russia’s transition to a normal, civilised country. But that clashed with NATO enlargement, which presupposed that Russia was a threat. For the West, enlargement was about bolstering security in Europe. In Moscow it was seen as a sign of mistrust and neglect of Russia’s aspirations. A new security structure could have been built to include a democratic Russia, but never was. Instead, NATO enlargement was coated in soothing language about Russia’s co-operation with the alliance inside the Russia-NATO council.

There is nothing legitimate about Russia's objections to NATO expansion and never has been.  The "mistrust" that motivated NATO expansion was perfectly understandable in light of 20th-century history and was proven wise by Russia's invasion of Georgia in August 2008.  "Russia's aspirations" which we were "neglecting" were aspirations to dominate its neighbors; if they were anything else, NATO would not have been a threat.  The root problem is that Russia has not repudiated and repented of the Soviet episode the way Germany has of the Nazi episode, or the way America has for slavery and segregation.  Only when Russians reject the Soviet legacy, and to some extent the tsarist legacy too, will they deserve the world's trust.  And they should accept, without resentment, that it may be a decade or two or three before the justified mistrust and contempt of their western neighbors for them fades.  By suggesting that "an opportunity" was "lost" through Western mistakes, The Economist is making very unwarranted concessions that can only encourage Russians in their unjustified sense of grievance.

"The Smell of War at Breakfast" (Moscow Times)

Will Russia launch a war against Georgia? That is the most important question that should have been decided during U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Moscow — or, to be more precise, during Obama’s breakfast meeting on Tuesday with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Everything else was of secondary importance. Compared with the Russia-Georgia conflict, what difference does it make what kind of agreement they reach to reduce strategic nuclear arms? After all, Russia and the United States will never use these weapons against each other anyway.

The pleasantries shared between President Dmitry Medvedev and Obama during their news conference and photo ops were just as meaningless. In the end, Medvedev and Putin will always support regimes that are antagonistic to Washington for one simple reason: to increase international tensions, drive up oil prices and give the Kremlin another chance to bask in its inflated self-image as a global energy superpower.

It was very important that Obama’s visit coincided with Russia’s large-scale military exercises “Caucasus 2009,” which were most likely held in preparation for a new war in the region. And whether or not Russia’s troops will be given the green light does not depend on military considerations, but on whether Putin, after meeting with Obama, believes that he can start a war without incurring repercussions from the West.

The only good reason to talk to the Russians is to order them to get out of Georgia.  Having no principles and no strategic vision, Obama has no idea what matters in world affairs.  Meanwhile:

"The Bush Doctrine is Still Working" (American Spectator)

A central theme of President Bush's administration was to promote democracy in the Middle East. He argued that establishing a full fledged democracy in Iraq in the heart of the Middle East would have transforming effects throughout the Muslim World. Even though the promotion of human rights and democracy had been a central theme of liberal foreign policy for decades, the Left ridiculed Bush's policy as hopelessly naïve. Even some on the right echoed this criticism.

But recent trends throughout the Middle East show that this policy is now producing a growing, very powerful effect in countering Islamic extremism and terrorism, just as Bush originally envisioned. The most recent example of this is the elections in Lebanon, where the pro-Western coalition in power there was reelected last month with a slightly increased majority over the Islamic extremist Hezbollah coalition, despite Iranian funding estimated in the billions for Hezbollah.

When the pro-Western coalition was first elected in Lebanon in 2005, it soon chased the Syrian army out of the country, ending the occupation started over 20 years ago during the Lebanese civil war. That was a huge victory for America and the West for which Bush received no credit.

Another recent example comes from Kuwait, where the public mostly voted for secular parties, rejecting the Islamic extremists in even electing women to the legislature for the first time, contrary to extremist strictures. Elections in Pakistan have probably been the most important of all, with the public overwhelmingly choosing secular parties over Islamic extremists. In the 2002 election, the extremists were revealed as a fringe element with only about 11% of the vote. In the more recent election in 2008, they got only 2%, winning only 6 out of 270 seats. This was another big victory, revealing the lack of appeal by the Taliban and Al Qaeda in that critical country.

In Iraq itself, we have seen the same results. The public votes for secular parties, not Islamic extremists. Indeed, despite all the talk from the Left about how Bush only alienated the Islamic street, we don't see anti-American candidates in Iraq even running let alone winning.

Another big turning point came in Morocco in 2007. The Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) was projected to win the parliamentary elections. But when the votes were counted, PJD had won only 14% of the vote, and a conservative party aligned with the traditional King had won. In municipal elections this past April, the PJD sunk to 7% of the vote. In Jordan in 2007, the Islamic Action Front won just 6 of the 22 seats it contested, down from 17 seats in the previous parliament.

Absent democracy, the roughly 10% of the public in Middle Eastern, Islamic countries willing to shoot their way into power in the name of Allah seems dominant. Actual elections reveal them to be fringe, extremist groups, greatly diminishing their power in favor of reasonable, secular leaders. As a result, the Bush doctrine of advancing democracy and human rights is now increasingly successful in combating terrorism and Islamic extremism.

Now we are seeing these same results in Iran. Where did the people of Iran get the idea that they were entitled to an honest election? They haven't had an honest election there in over 50 years. Maybe it comes from watching their Shiite brothers voting in honest, free elections in neighboring Iraq. And maybe it comes as well from watching the same in neighboring Afghanistan, which had formerly been seen as hopelessly backward for centuries.

Iran's recent sham election fiasco is the biggest victory of all for America and the West, again courtesy of the Bush doctrine of promoting democracy and human rights in the Middle East. All of a sudden, the Islamic theocracy in Iran has been discredited and exposed as illegitimate. Now that the ruling mullahs have had to turn to shooting their own people in the streets to stay in power, it is only a matter of time until their theocracy falls, and the popular will regains power. That result will be enormously beneficial for America, because Iran's theocratic regime is the central power in the Middle East supporting and spreading Islamic radicalism, terrorism, and continued war against Israel and the West. Once Iran's theocracy falls, and is replaced by a secular government, peace between Israel and the Palestinians will be possible and increasingly likely over time.

But these achievements will be lost if we let the Russians usher in a new age of aggression.  So far, the lesson of August 2008 is "crime pays."  If we don't reverse that lesson, we can expect to see more crime.

Who Lost Russia?

"Slippery Slope to Autocracy" (Moscow Times):

Authoritarianism is like a rock. Once it is dropped, it can only go in one direction -- down. Russia's path toward democracy was paved during former President Boris Yeltsin's presidency, but it has been steadily destroyed since Vladimir Putin became president in 2000.

Over the past eight years, the state has been gradually taking away the constitutional rights of Russians. First, the state crushed freedom of speech on television. Then, it deprived citizens of their elected representatives in the Federation Council. Next, it installed seven federal presidential envoys around the country to control governors because at that time they were still elected by the people. But in September 2004, after the Beslan terrorist attack, Putin used the tragedy as a pretext to cancel the elections of governors. From that point on, the notion of Russian federalism became fiction.

In 2007, the Kremlin then turned its sights on the parliament. Using the "fight against terrorism" as its justification, the state deprived voters of the right to elect individual deputies to the State Duma in single-seat electoral districts, replacing them with proportional representation for all Duma seats.

In addition, the Kremlin created United Russia, its own pocket political party. United Russia has established a monopoly over the country's political and legislative machine, creating a modern-day version of the Soviet Communist Party in Moscow and in the regions.

The Constitution also became a target for attack...

[The Kremlin] also thrust its way into Russians' minds, forcing a pro-Kremlin and anti-Western ideology on them. This was necessary because the authoritarianism and the dismantling of the Constitution required a compelling ideological foundation. This was most vividly articulated during Putin's speech immediately after the Beslan siege ended, when he referred to "enemies" who have encircled Russia and who are craving to seize parts of its territory and rich resources.

One of the first attacks in this new ideological campaign was the revision of teaching manuals to correct passages in textbooks that had tarnished the country's "glorious past." Schoolchildren were told that Soviet leader Josef Stalin was an "effective manager" whose mass murders, forced hunger and state terror were "justified."

Medvedev's latest move, on May 19, was the creation of a presidential commission "for counteracting attempts to falsify history to the detriment of Russia's interests." This opens the door to deprive Russians the freedom to know the truth about their own history. Now, state bureaucrats will decide which interpretation of history should be considered "falsified" and which is "true."

Playing with history is frightfully familiar. Under Stalin, the regime's mistakes and crimes were whitewashed or completely expunged from the public record...

Now, it seems that the Kremlin is determined to distort global affairs and rewrite history to fit the Kremlin's paranoid worldview. It will be filled with enemies and Russophobes, plots and secret operations against Russia requiring that the new dictator mobilize all of his forces in the fight against internal and external enemies.

To turn Russia from the deadly wrong trajectory it has embarked on under Putin, it is essential that the cost of Russian aggression against Georgia be made far higher than it has been so far.  This is for Russia's own benefit as well as the world's, since their post-imperial complexes have nothing to do with the well-being of the Russian people.

"At Munich Talks, Hopes for Thaw in U.S.-Russia Ties" (Moscow Times)

Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will join a prestigious weekend conference in Germany amid high expectations that it could presage a thaw in relations between Moscow and Washington.

The Munich Security Conference, which opens Friday, gathers a dozen world leaders and 50 senior diplomats and defense officials.

"I see signals that the U.S. as well as Russia are interested in a new beginning," Wolfgang Ischinger, the conference chairman and a former German ambassador to London and Washington, told Bonn's General-Anzeiger newspaper this week.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in an opinion piece printed in Munich's Sueddeutsche Zeitung, said it was a "positive sign" that Moscow last month said it would only go ahead with deploying missiles near the Polish border if the United States pushed forward with plans to install a missile defense system in Central Europe.

This year's conference is likely to focus on Afghanistan, which is a hot-button issue after Kyrgyzstan moved this week to shut a U.S. air base that is an important staging post for U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday that Russia and its ex-Soviet allies wanted to cooperate with the United States on stabilizing Afghanistan, but he appeared to link any help to changes in Western policy, including the cancellation of the U.S. missile defense plans.

Meanwhile, a Western diplomatic source said Thursday that the United States and Uzbekistan were close to a deal allowing Washington to open a new supply route for its troops in Afghanistan.

The deal with Uzbekistan is good news: with Russia having shifted to aggressive mode, we can't afford to be as scrupulous in dealing with tyrants like Karimov.  Though I'm still pessimistic about Obama's plans for a surge in Afghanistan.  But to back away from missile defense is a big mistake.  Russia has no legitimate interest in keeping Poland and the Czech Republic without missile defense.  Poland took a risk to agree to the deal, for better or worse.  Moreover, any thaw in relations with Russia, and certainly any "new beginning," is equivalent to condoning the dismemberment of democratic ally Georgia.

It's grimly appropriate that the talks are occurring in Munich.

New World Order

Moscow Times:

Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia expects to sign a deal within a few months allowing Russia to establish a naval base and an air base on its soil, a separatist official said Thursday.

NATO expressed concern Wednesday at reports quoting unidentified Russian military sources as saying Moscow planned a naval base in Abkhazia, one of two breakaway regions Georgia seeks to reclaim. There has been no Kremlin confirmation.

"This is true -- the Russian Federation and Abkhazia are in talks on setting up two Russian bases on Abkhaz soil, proceeding from our treaty on friendship and mutual assistance," Kristian Bzhania, a spokesman for the Abkhaz separatist leadership, said by telephone from the region's capital, Sukhumi.

In 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.  A few months later in 1991, George H.W. Bush and a global coalition expelled Hussein's forces from Kuwait.  The precedent thus set-- that sovereign borders must be respected, and that overwhelming force would punish any deviation from this rule-- paved the way for 17 years in which very few attempts to alter international borders by force occurred.  The exceptions, such as the Armenia/Azerbaijan conflict, the breakup of Yugoslavia, the independence of East Timor, were related to the breakup of states rather than expansionism.  Conquest was obsolete.

In 2008, the Iraq-Kuwait precedent was reversed when Russia attacked Georgia.  Some controversy remains about how the war began-- whether Russia sent tanks through the Roki Tunnel first, as Saakashvili claims, or whether Saakashvili started with an attack on Tskhinvali-- but as there is no question that any action taken by Georgia was provoked at least by heavy and accelerating provocations by separatist mercenaries if not by an actual incursion of Russian tanks, and as the whole war was fought on Georgian territory (there is no such thing as aggression on one's own territory), the episode is an unambiguous case of Russian aggression.  While Russia seems to have been surprised by the democratic solidarity the West initially displayed, this resolve rapidly melted away, and the West has yet to engage in even the simple decency of declaring a boycott of the 2014 Olympics, let alone undertaking substantive measures to make an example of Russia and show the world that aggression doesn't pay.  I think we can say at this point that the salutary precedent of the 1991 Gulf War is no longer operative.  Would-be conquerors can start looking wistfully at their maps again.