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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Russia's Putin prefers soul-searching Bush to Kerry |
| 2004-10-12 |
MOSCOW, Oct 12th, 2004 (AFP) - George W. Bush once said he looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes and saw the former spy's soul -- a gaze of lasting impression that many here believe has left the Kremlin gloomily apprehensive about prospects of a Democrat making the White House his home. "I've got a good relation with Vladimir, and it's important that we do have a good relation because that enables me to better comment to him and to better -- to discuss with him some of the decisions he makes," Bush said during his first debate with John Kerry in September. His Democratic rival was more blunt: "Mr. Putin now controls all the television stations. His political opposition is being put in jail," said Kerry before adding: "Freedom on the march? Not in Russia right now." With foreign policy -- albeit mostly concerning Iraq -- a trigger issue in a US presidential election for the first time in decades, Russia is treading water lightly as November 2 nears. "We are glad to see that all of the candidates agree on the need to develop dialogue between Russia and the United States," a Kremlin official told AFP. "We respect the choice of the American nation." But conventional wisdom in Moscow is of strong opinion that Bush -- the man who Russia feared in 2000 because of his missile defense and NATO expansion plans -- is the far more pliable option here than a Democrat concerned with how Russia itself is actually run. Russia's last experience with a Democratic White House in the 1990s saw economic advice -- delivered by US economists shipped to Moscow -- that at one stage fed hyperinflation and later introduced the sell-off of prized state property to insiders for a song. And Kerry's saber rattling about Putin's recent authoritarian streak -- including his proposals for the president to pick and sack both regional governors and judges -- has seen Russian lawmakers rise to the Kremlin's defense. "Kerry has long surrounded himself with people who never had a very balanced view about Russia," said nationalist Russian lawmaker Dmitry Rogozin. The Democrat's criticism has also been largely ignored by Russia's state-controlled media. "I think that Putin really supports Bush and he would expect few unpleasant surprises from the Republicans," agreed Dmitry Simes of the Nixon Center in Washington. "Meanwhile Kerry's staff includes many people from the Clinton administration involved in Russia's early democratic reforms -- and who often resorted to direct pressure," Simes wrote in Vremya Novostei daily. Simes said some of those advisers were closely linked to Russia's so-called oligarchs who made fortunes in the Yeltsin era but who fell into disrepute under Putin's regime. The Putin years meanwhile went hand in hand with those of Bush -- and of a Russian economic boom that for the large part relied on rising global oil prices rather than on Moscow's own economic strategy. Putin also became Bush's ally in the war on terror -- using the September 11, 2001 attacks to justify his own war in predominantly Muslim Chechnya that had been roundly condemned at its start in 1999. Republicans say that Bush has learned over the years to "engage" former KGB spy Putin rather than criticize him as Democrats would likely be tempted to do. Some Republican advisers said Bush would rather trade a clampdown on media freedoms here in exchange for Putin's passive acceptance of the war in Iraq and potential US investments in Russia's lucrative energy market. "Bush and Putin have been working together on different issues for four years," said Thomas Harvey, who has worked in various Republican administrations, including that of the elder George Bush. "The two men and their two teams know each other and that is important," said Harvey. Democrats meanwhile agree that Bush would probably have been as strong in his criticism of recent Putin policies as some of his European counterparts had he not relied on Putin in strategic spheres like oil and his anti-terror campaign. "I doubt that Mr. Bush or Mr. Kerry will be terribly different in regards to Russia," said Donald Fowler, former co-chairman of the Democratic National Committee. "My guess is that if Mr. Bush was not dealing with Iraq he would be dealing with some of the issues here" in Russia, he said. But Fowler added: "I feel that Mr. Kerry would be an activist just like president Clinton was." Meanwhile the latest polls show that Russia's warm embrace of all things Western that came in the first chaotic post-Soviet years has turned far more tepid. A recent Romir poll said that 60 percent of Russians feel that Americans have a negative effect on their country and less than one third of respondents have a positive view of the United States. Agence France-Presse, 2004 © AFP2004 |
| Posted by:Mark Espinola |
| #3 Monica! Sharpen your teeth!" hahaaaa.. I really believe that Americans and Russians can get along. Ok..so screw Lennin and Marx. They forced themselves on the poor Russian people anyways. Ok..ok...so they are a bit more cruel than we are...but what do you expect with all of those murading raiders constantly passing through. Pukin is supporting Bush, which highlights the obvious. We have common goals - despite our differences. Just like, together, we sent Hitler to his grave, we can send bin Laden and his ilk to theirs...not that some of them are not already there. In a wierd sort of way, I think it will be Russia and Germany (as well as the Britian, Australia, Poland...and others excluding the genetically inferior French) who, with the US, will send the Islamic fanatics packing... The islamics are cave men in the 21st Century and as such don't stand a chance. While they can hurt us in much the same way that a car can run us over, they are just dying beasts flailing with dangerous claws before they become extinct. |
| Posted by: 2b 2004-10-13 5:11:04 AM |
| #2 Meanwhile the latest polls show that Russia’s warm embrace of all things Western that came in the first chaotic post-Soviet years has turned far more tepid. A recent Romir poll said that 60 percent of Russians feel that Americans have a negative effect on their country and less than one third of respondents have a positive view of the United States. Simply laughable. Russian antipathy has nothing to do with Bush. For Russians, Clinton was almost certainly the most hated president of recent history. Why don't the clownish authors of this article compare today's survey results with Russian sentiments in April 1999, when the Clinton admin bombed the bejeezus out of their brataslavyanskiye in the balkans? At that time, english-speaking foreigners were attacked on the streets of Moscow, shots were fired at the US Embassy, and Russia's elite university students at MGU marched under banners with slogans such as "Monica! Sharpen your teeth!" Russians' basic distaste for not just America but also western Europe stems from two facts evident long before 9/11: --the degrading experience of being viewed by western consular officials and all and sundry as a mafioso or a 'ho every time they even so much as wish to travel to the west, and -- the now-obvious western complicity in their nation's slide into Third World status (as Havel put it, "better a sick Russia than a healthy Soviet Union)." |
| Posted by: lex 2004-10-12 6:32:06 PM |
| #1 Democrats meanwhile agree that Bush would probably have been as strong in his criticism of recent Putin policies as some of his European counterparts had he not relied on Putin in strategic spheres like oil and his anti-terror campaign. In other words, "If US security and economic health didn't depend on Russia, Bush would have been less diplomatic." Which candidate is supposed to be the bumbling fool, and which is supposed to be the sophisticated internationalist? It's getting hard to tell. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-10-12 6:05:50 PM |