Financial Times (May 23)
“India has a new prime minister; and each of Asia’s four most powerful nations is now led by a combative nationalist.” India’s Modi, Japan’s Abe, Russia’s Putin and China’s Xi make up the four “nationalist horsemen” who will transform Asia and perhaps the world. “The multilateralist assumptions of the postwar order are giving way to a return to great power competition. Nationalism is on the march, and nowhere more so than in the rising east.”
Tags: Abe, Asia, Assumptions, China, Combative, Competition, India, Japan, Modi, Multilateralist, Nationalist, Postwar order, Power, Prime minister, Putin, Russia, Xi
Financial Times (April 15)
“Putin’s insidious tactics in Ukraine” should convince EU leaders of the need to spell out the consequences of further incursion. “Russia’s Achilles heel throughout this crisis has been its economy. If Mr Putin persists in his attempt to destabilise Ukraine, European leaders need to be prepared to apply punishment – even if this means inflicting some pain on their own economies.”
Tags: Consequences, Crisis, Economy, EU, Insidious, Leaders, Punishment, Putin, Tactics, Ukraine
The Economist (April 5)
“Reducing Europe’s dependence on Russian gas is possible—but it will take time, money and sustained political will.” With his belligerence and threats, Putin has indirectly done Europe’s leaders a favor by galvanizing their collective will. “They already knew what to do. They just didn’t want to do it.”
Tags: Belligerence, Dependence, Europe, Gas, Money, Putin, Russia, Threats, Time, Will
Wall Street Journal (March 24)
The Obama administration announced plans “to give up U.S. control of the Internet to a still-to-be-determined collection of governments and international groups.” It’s hard to imagine this creating a better governing body. “It’s easy to imagine a new Internet oversight body operating like the United Nations, with repressive governments taking turns silencing critics. China could get its wish to remove FreeTibet.org from the Internet as an affront to its sovereignty. Russia could force Twitter to remove posts by Ukrainian-Americans criticizing Vladimir Putin.” Congress should override President Obama’s decision.
Tags: China, Congress, Critics, Governing body, Icann, Internet, Obama, Putin, Russia, Sovereignty, Tibet, Twitter, U.S., Ukraine, UN
Forbes (March 24)
“Vladimir Putin has made a strategic blunder that could rival the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Moscow, counting on Western weakness, may, in the short term, succeed in carving up the country or ending the 22-year existence of an independent Ukraine. But it has set in motion forces that will severely damage Russia, as well as Putin’s own reign.”
Tags: Afghanistan, Blunder, Damage, Moscow, Putin, Russia, Soviet Union, Ukraine, Weakness, West
USA Today (March 18)
“It would be foolish to think that Putin — basking in record popularity and surrounded by hard-line advisers — will do anything other than press the objective he has pursued for years: restoring the historic subjugation of Ukraine to Russia’s will.” The U.S. and “Europe, which has deeper trade ties to Russia” must not mislead themselves. They “must make clear how high the price of further aggression will be.”
Tags: Advisers, Aggression, Europe, Hard line, Objective, Popularity, Price, Putin, Russia, Trade, U.S., Ukraine
USA Today (March 7)
“If the Ukraine crisis were a poker game – and to a large degree it is – you wouldn’t want to be dealt the American hand, and you certainly wouldn’t want to overplay it in the false hope of a quick win. Russian President Vladimir Putin has carefully leveraged forces of history, geography and politics in ways that ensure there is no short-term victory to be had.”
Wall Street Journal (February 21, 2014)
“Americans are only waking up to the crisis” in the Ukraine, “but they should care how this turns out. The U.S. should want to pull Ukraine into the Western orbit as a matter of human dignity and strategic interest.” If the Ukraine leans toward Europe, it will “join the company of free nations and fulfill the aspirations of its people. A Ukraine tilted toward the corrupt authoritarian regimes allied with Moscow will be a source of regional unrest at best, and part of a revived Russian empire if Mr. Putin has his way.”
Tags: Authoritarian, Crisis, Europe, Human dignity, Moscow, Putin, Regimes, Russian empire, Strategic interest, U.S., Ukraine, Unrest
Washington Post (February 14, 2014)
Russia’s refreshingly independent TV Dozhd may soon be off the air as cable and satellite providers, apparently under duress, drop the channel from their offerings. “This knives-in-the-night approach is typical of the latter-day Putin regime. While Mr. Putin once caused a stir with a highly publicized takeover of the independent TV channel NTV, now he is stealthier, working his will from the shadows…. But the result is the same: It looks like yet another light in Russia’s democratic struggle—the refreshing openness of TV Dozhd—is about to go dark.”
Tags: Cable, Democratic struggle, Duress, Independent, Openness, Putin, Regime, Russia, Satellite, Stealth, Takeover, TV, TV Dozhd
Washington Post (September 5)
Russian President Vladimir Putin “has been a stalwart backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the civil war, but that does not give him license to ignore the facts and gloss over inconvenient truths,” especially since Syria’s chemical weapon stockpile has roots extending to the USSR. “The sarin gas attack near Damascus should not be so glibly dismissed as “ludicrous” by a Russian president. Instead of mocking the West, Mr. Putin should throw Russia’s support behind an investigation of this atrocity. A horrible crime was committed.”Russian President Vladimir Putin “has been a stalwart backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the civil war, but that does not give him license to ignore the facts and gloss over inconvenient truths,” especially since Syria’s chemical weapon stockpile has roots extending to the USSR. “The sarin gas attack near Damascus should not be so glibly dismissed as “ludicrous” by a Russian president. Instead of mocking the West, Mr. Putin should throw Russia’s support behind an investigation of this atrocity. A horrible crime was committed.”
Tags: Atrocity, Chemical weapon, Crime, Damascus, Investigation, Putin, Russia, Sarin, Stockpile, Syria
