In a year when Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize and green became the new red, white and blue; when the combat in Iraq showed signs of cooling but Baghdad’s politicians showed no signs of statesmanship; when China, the rising superpower, juggled its pride in hosting next summer’s Olympic Games with its embarrassment at shipping toxic toys around the world; and when J.K. Rowling set millions of minds and hearts on fire with the final volume of her 17-year saga””one nation that had fallen off our mental map, led by one steely and determined man, emerged as a critical linchpin of the 21st century.
Russia lives in history””and history lives in Russia. Throughout much of the 20th century, the Soviet Union cast an ominous shadow over the world. It was the U.S.’s dark twin. But after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russia receded from the American consciousness as we became mired in our own polarized politics. And it lost its place in the great game of geopolitics, its significance dwarfed not just by the U.S. but also by the rising giants of China and India. That view was always naive. Russia is central to our world””and the new world that is being born. It is the largest country on earth; it shares a 2,600-mile (4,200 km) border with China; it has a significant and restive Islamic population; it has the world’s largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction and a lethal nuclear arsenal; it is the world’s second largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia; and it is an indispensable player in whatever happens in the Middle East. For all these reasons, if Russia fails, all bets are off for the 21st century. And if Russia succeeds as a nation-state in the family of nations, it will owe much of that success to one man, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
No one would label Putin a child of destiny. The only surviving son of a Leningrad factory worker, he was born after what the Russians call the Great Patriotic War, in which they lost more than 26 million people. The only evidence that fate played a part in Putin’s story comes from his grandfather’s job: he cooked for Joseph Stalin, the dictator who inflicted ungodly terrors on his nation.
Putin presides over a dying nation where the 30% of babies not aborted will run a gauntlet of drug addiction, AIDS, alcoholism and rampant state corruption. Male life expectancy is a third-world 59 years.
Rather than address these pathologies, Putin grabs for power and loot, again aligning his nation with evil. He’s Man of the Year, much as Der Fuehrer was.
Putin is a Russian nationalist who pursues a foreign policy for the benefit of Russia and not for someone else. Would that we had the same in a US president.
The hostility to Russian nationalism among Republicans puzzles me. Russia and its Orthodox Church, after all, are natural allies of the West against Islam.
To quote Time Magazine:
It is all about selling magazines.
[blockquote]The hostility to Russian nationalism among Republicans puzzles me. Russia and its Orthodox Church, after all, are natural allies of the West against Islam. [/blockquote]
Then you had better get the Metropolitan of Moscow to whisper something else into Putin’s ear. The old KGB apparatchik has been nothing if not congenial to Islamists like Ahmadinejahd for years (domestic Islamists who defy the Kremlin is a another story, obviosuly). Putin has assumed a reflexively anti-US foreign policy, and that has put him in bed with some rather unsavory Allah-botherers.
Re #2: Perhaps the hostility is due to those who remember or have studied (1) the period when National Socialism was seen as a natural ally of the West against Communism, or (2) the period when Stalinism was seen as a natural ally of the West against Fascism. Totalitarianism is never an ally to anyone other than itself.
Putin assumes a reflexively anti-US policy because the US pursues a reflexively anti-Russian policy. And again, this is antagonism to a country that is ruthless against restive Muslims in its own lands. Russia allies with Iran as a counter to US meddling in the region and does so without a second thought, because Iran and Russia both know that no Islamic “reconquista” will be allowed in Russia. This is a strength of will that Putin–being a Russian nationalist–has and Bush lacks.
What a great way to oppose totalitarian Islam: sell it everything it needs to build the bomb.
In case you missed it, Reactionary, this reflexively anti-Russian pesident has offered to include Russia under its SDI anti-missile shield. The threat is presumed to be from the very nation Putin is arming: Iran.
If you believe a missile shield based in Poland is for protection from Iran, may I offer up Spaghetti Junction for sale.
The missile shield proposed for Poland is defensive in nature, and no threat to anything Russia might want to do other than invade Poland. We’re supposed to feel guilty about that?
An ABM facility in Poland and the Czech Republic in 2010 would be no present threat to Russia, or a diminishment of its nuclear threat potential. But that same facility, upgraded over 20 years from 2010 by 2030 might be very much a diminishment of both Russia’s and Iran’s missile threat potential, both non nuclear and nuclear. Comments like #8 are facile because they are only in the present tense.
If Poland feels threatened by Russia, then Poland can put up a missile shield. US taxpayers have no obligation to undertake the defense of Poland, an especially ironic undertaking given that Americans lack even the strength of will to prevent the Mexican reconquista.
Also, it is naive to think that a missile shield is purely defensive in nature. Putin is rightfully suspicious that the shield would be used to defeat a retaliatory strike. It is the equivalent of watching a man with a sniper rifle putting on body armor. This is certainly how we would view things were the shoe on the other foot. And again, the hostility toward a newly nationalistic and Orthodox Christian Russia is simply inexplicable, until you realize it is mainly driven by a group of ex-Trotskyites.
I stopped taking the “Man of the Year” award seriously a long time ago. By [i] Time [/i] ‘s own criteria, it should have been bin Laden in 2001, but they (rightly) didn’t want to feed his ego, so they picked Mr Giuliani. In 2002, it was The Whistleblowers (who??). The only thing sillier was in 2006, when they chose [url=http://history1900s.about.com/library/weekly/aa050400a.htm]me[/url] .
“Time” proves its irrelevancy once again. It should have been General Petraeus. By all accounts, including a number of Democratic Congressmen, Iraq has turned around this year.
Is Al Gore going to ask for a recount? 😉
[blockquote]If Poland feels threatened by Russia, then Poland can put up a missile shield. US taxpayers have no obligation to undertake the defense of Poland, an especially ironic undertaking given that Americans lack even the strength of will to prevent the Mexican reconquista.
Also, it is naive to think that a missile shield is purely defensive in nature. Putin is rightfully suspicious that the shield would be used to defeat a retaliatory strike. [/blockquote]
We can debate the virtues of the US taxpayer funding the project, but when the shield is put around Russia, it is not very likely it will be used against Russia, no? Your laughable assertion that US policy is “reflexively anti-Russian” doesn’t really hold water, does it?
Jeffersonian,
US policy is to encircle Russia with NATO, and we are perfectly willing to cast our lot with Muslims in the Caucasus and Balkans to do so. It is a shortsighted, bizarre policy.