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In writing of the need to bring democracy to the Arab world, Natan Sharansky makes repeated parallels with America's propagation of its democratic message to the subject peoples of the Soviet Union and eastern Europe.
The deeply regrettable death of the Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov at the hands of Russian forces means that the Kremlin no longer has an alibi for its failure to pursue a political process in Chechnya. The West must pressure Russia to fulfill its committment to allow elections.
In order to be successful, threat reduction programs must take into account the opinions of decisionmakers in recipient countries, as well as the lessons learned from threat reduction programs already in place.
Popular political mythology usually thinks of Russia looking east and west, like the double-headed eagle of its state emblem. In reality, Russia has always treated the east and the west very differently.
A semiauthoritarian present is
The ongoing conflict in and around Chechnya is helping to feed the wider international jihadi movement, and is endangering the West as well as Russia. Mutual recriminations over the conflict have badly damaged relations between Russia and the West. While most of the blame for this lies with Russian policies, the Western approach to the issue has often been unhelpful and irresponsible.
The "realist" argument for ignoring Putin's rollback of democratic practices in the name of national security interests can now only undermine Bush's credibility. Bush has made clear that he plans to promote liberty in every pocket of the world--surely including the largest country of all.
The retreat of democracy in Russia is nothing that has been forced upon President Vladimir Putin but an intentional result of his. This is demonstrated by the major events of 2004 and what they tell us about the nature of Putin’s regime and how it is evolving.