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While deterrence as a concept has always been paradoxical, it is poorly equipped to handle today’s most significant nuclear challenges: proliferation and terrorism. Nuclear arms control must move beyond the deadlock of deterrence.
It may be years before we have an authoritative account of what went on in Andijan on May 13, 2005, one that includes accounts of both the Uzbek government and of the demonstrators. Given Uzbek authorities' refusal to allow an international inquiry by either the U.N. or the O.S.C.E., the task may fall to historians of some future generation.
U.S.-Russian relations are "rather precarious" and could spiral downwards. The Russians are struck by what looks to be a sort of breathtaking exercise of double standards on the part of the Bush administration.
Russia's two decades of geopolitical decline started with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and included the disbanding of the Warsaw Pact and the collapse of the Soviet Union. But it is possible that 2005 may be viewed retrospectively as a historical turning point -- the end of Russia's decline. This recovery might be based on the shaky foundation of high oil prices, but it's real nonetheless.
The present era may be shaping up as yet another round in the conflict between liberalism and autocracy. The main protagonists on the side of autocracy will not be the petty dictatorships of the Middle East theoretically targeted by the Bush doctrine. They will be the two great autocratic powers, China and Russia, which pose an old challenge not envisioned within the new "war on terror" paradigm.