Russia

How should Russia respond to President Obama's indefinite suspension of US missile defences in Central Europe? Most obviously, by displaying flexibility concerning negotiations on nuclear weapons cuts. Here is an opportunity for both sides to create the impression of successful co-operation while in fact sacrificing very little, since both have far more weapons than they need for an effective deterrence against any conceivable threat.

To realist pundits such as New America Foundation fellow and National Interest columnist Anatol Lieven, the democracy promoters are dangerously naïve, ...

Anatol Lieven, an analyst with King’s College London, doubted whether the Obama administration could really press on with NATO expansion. ...

For seriously predicting that the United States will break into six parts in June or July of 2010, Igor Panarin has suddenly become a Russian state-media celebrity. Hardly a day goes by without another interview or two for the KGB-trained, Kremlin-backed senior analyst. The clamor in Russia for his ideas is growing, he says.

According to blogger and foreign policy expert Steve Clemons, he has regularly "opposed false trade-offs between embracing Eastern European nations (and even helping to create new ones) and Russia's serious national priorities." LINK

In domestic policy, president-elect Obama faces the need for urgent and radical action, above all of course concerning the economy, but also on health coverage and financing social security. In foreign policy, matters are rather different. There, what he does not do will be just as important as what he does. After the hyper-activism of the Bush presidency, there is an urgent need for a long period of caution and restraint.

Military overstretch, financial constraints and cooperation with other powers to deal with the world economic crisis… more

In the course of the Valdai conference in Russia from September 7–14 we met with President Dmitri Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov and Deputy Chief of the General Staff Anatoly Nogovitsyn. There was no significant difference between them in what they said about Russian policy and Russian views. Nor have such differences appeared outside the conference.

Of course, it is possible that they exist in private and have so far been kept under wraps by strict discipline; but… more

In a way, Chechnya, which we visited in the course of the Valdai Club discussions in Russia last week, can stand as a more savage version of the Putin era in Russia as a whole: namely the successful restoration of order and progress, by methods which were often extremely ugly, but which may have been the only ones available under the circumstances.

Grozny, which I last saw as an immense heap of rubble, is now a truly impressive sight, with fine modern apartment blocks and… more

There were moments during the week I spent in Russia for the Valdai Discussion Club when I felt as if the world had begun to rotate backward. Chiefly, this was the result of having spent the previous six weeks in Pakistan, half of them based in Peshawar near the frontier with Afghanistan.

During my stay the bloody mayhem in Afghanistan continued unabated, with a French unit cut to pieces near Kabul. President Musharraf of Pakistan was forced to resign and was replaced by Asif Zardari, a… more