| Submit your comments on this article |
| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| The Putin Doctrine |
| 2007-02-16 |
| By Charles Krauthammer Vladimir Putin -- Russia's president, although the more accurate title would be godfather -- made headlines last week with a speech in Munich that set a new standard in anti-Americanism. He not only charged the U.S. with the "hyper-use of force,'' "disdain for the basic principles of international law'' and having "overstepped its national borders in ... the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations.'' He even blamed the spread of weapons of mass destruction, which the U.S. has been combating with few allies and against constant Russian resistance, on American "dominance'' that "inevitably encourages'' other countries to defensively acquire them. There is something amusing about criticism of the use of force by the man who turned Chechnya into a smoldering ruin; about the invocation of international law by the man who will not allow Scotland Yard to interrogate the polonium-soaked thugs it suspects of murdering Alexander Litvinenko, yet another Putin opponent to meet an untimely and unprosecuted death; about the bullying of other countries decried by a man who cuts off energy supplies to Ukraine, Georgia and Belarus in brazen acts of political and economic extortion. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #1 I had a Russian "Russian History" professor in the mid-seventies at Cal. State University in Sacramento. He had actually interviewed Prince Ussopov, one of those who killed Rasputin, shortly befor the Prince's death. The Professor often commented on the inevitability of a "thermodorean reaction" to the Russian Revolution like the ascendence to power of Napolean Bonoparte after the French Revolution. He said it would one day come to pass. Vlad may be the man. |
| Posted by: Sgt. D.T. 2007-02-16 16:09 |