Putin v. Obama: Change is Stressful

By Alan Caruba

New times, we’re told, call for new thinking. Out with the old and in with the new. In America’s case, the new is President Obama. For the Russians in charge of the former Soviet Union it means figuring out who the new guy is.

For someone who spent most of his life during the Cold War, I have an almost nostalgic feeling about it. One knew who the enemy was and it was the Soviet Union. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union there was a feeling that a new, democratic Russia would replace it and, in many ways a new Russia has emerged.

I have a friend who visited Moscow in 2004 and again in 2008. Jim Camp is an internationally recognized negotiation coach. He described the difference that four years made as that of night and day. It was a grim place in 2004 but by 2008 he felt like he was in New York, a bustling city where Russians in the streets were smiling. CNN, he told me, is watched by everyone and English is a second language to Russians right down to taxi drivers.
(Read his commentary here)

In a recent article published in Yezhednevny Zhurnal, Alexander Goltz asked “Why is Russia’s leadership so annoyed with Obama?” Given his commentary’s open criticism of the Putin regime, one can see that some progress has been made.

Speaking of the televised inauguration of President Obama, Goltz reported that “I observed Russian journalists from the four government-controlled, nationally syndicated channels racking their brains, trying to outdo each other in slinging mud at the inaugural ceremonies.” Americans were described as “airheads” who had been duped by the Obama campaign propaganda. “Which begs the question: how has Obama—who has yet to do anything, good or bad—managed to irritate the Russian elite?”

Even a former foreign minister, Yevgeny Primakov, no fan of the U.S., was “amazed at the fact that nobody in Moscow is rejoicing over the complete absence of Neoconservatives (who swarmed around Bush and informed his foreign policy) in Obama’s circle.”

“As ridiculous as it might seem,” concluded Goltz, “I think it is because he is black.”

Whew! How politically incorrect can you get, but Goltz pushed on to say that the Russian governing elite have “an abiding conviction” that everything in the U.S. is the same as in Russia, i.e., “manipulated elections, strict control over the media, corruption, and nationalism. The Americans are just better at covering it up.”

Putin, like Bush, was operating from a Cold War frame of mind and both, in that respect, thought that they understood each other though Bush became less enamored of Putin over the years. It may account for why the invasion of Georgia caused so little alarm in U.S. foreign policy circles. The Russians were being Russians! And, having invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. was in no position to criticize,

It will probably require another generation or two of Russians before they finally let go of their fantasies about America and engage us and the rest of the world as a normal nation among nations. “Trust, but verify” said Ronald Reagan when dealing with the Russians. It’s still a good policy.

Whether President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can establish some new diplomatic rapport with Putin and his colleagues will be interesting to watch.

Georgia On My Mind

By Alan Caruba

Considering what was happening in a secessionist part of Georgia, invaded by Russia, the sight of President Bush and Prime Minister Putin chatting amiably Friday night at the opening of the Olympic Games was fairly astonishing. Russian troops were in the process of invading Georgia and their planes were even bombing Gori, the birthplace of Joseph Stalin.

Of course, it was Stalin who was not much upset when thousands of Georgians starved to death in the course of his advancing the power of the Communist Party over Russia and what came to be known as its satellite nations.

I had a brief mental picture of people running up and down the halls of the NATO headquarters in a panic until I realized that Georgia was not a part of NATO. What this means is that Europeans will watch from the sidelines as Russian tanks reassert their hegemony.

What is not known as this is written is whether the Russians will settle for taking South Ossetia away from Georgia. It is, not surprisingly, just across the border from North Ossetia.

What we do know is that the Russian army is very good at reducing to rubble anything they want. They wanted to retain Chechnya and they still have it. It’s mostly burnt out structural skeletons of buildings, but it still Russian burnt out structural skeletons of buildings.

As for the rest of Georgia, President Bush’s demeanor suggests that Vladimir told him that all those tanks, planes and troops are in South Ossetia purely for the purpose of liberating its people from the evil Georgians and that they—the Russians—don’t intend to grab any more land for now.

So it looks like the dogs of war will not be loosed upon the continent of Europe and the missiles will not be flying as was the fear from the bad old days of the Cold War. Wars are expensive and Russia is living mostly off its oil and gas revenues. There’s simply no point to expand this military adventure.

Moreover, they know the Europeans will stamp their feet and then do nothing. The parliament of the European Union may even convene a meeting for ten minutes or so to discuss the problem and then break for lunch.

Americans who invaded and have occupied Iraq since 2003 are not in a strong moral position to protest too loudly. And, anyway, who ever heard of the city of Abkhazia before last Friday?