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To dismiss Medvedev as a mere Putin puppet would be a mistake; Medvedev was chosen to recruit an internet savvy and generally more liberal Russian constituency to the Kremlin’s program of conservative modernization.
On a global stage, losers of the decade include the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, who are suffering from violence, poverty, and extremism. Global winners include Google, J.K. Rowling, and Hugo Chavez, who has proven more resilient than expected in surviving both his opponents and his own misdeeds.
A new procedure in Russia’s gubernatorial elections that allows the party dominating the regional legislature to nominate gubernatorial candidates only perpetuates the worst problems of the previous system of appointments.
As the war in Afghanistan begins to enter a new phase, it is important to reexamine some of the premises of U.S. policy in the Central Asian region and to consider whether the conditions in the region have changed in the last decade.
As the world headed to Copenhagen to talk about climate change, Russians were largely silent on the subject; by most accounts, the average Russian citizen doesn’t think about global warming at all.
Although Prime Minister Putin’s eighth annual call-in show was much livelier than the typical state television coverage of the government’s public policy, it will take much more than a yearly show to establish a genuine two-way dialogue between the government and the people.
In response to the diverse challenges facing the region, the Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative—an international commission to build the intellectual framework for an inclusive transatlantic security system for the 21st century—has been launched.
The best way to begin accounting for and reducing obsolete U.S. and Russian battlefield nukes is to finalize the new START agreement and, as the Obama administration has suggested, begin a new and more comprehensive round of talks early next year to arrive at limits on all types of U.S. and Russian nuclear forces.
Signs of strength are emerging in the Russian economy, aided by increasing exports, oil prices, and industrial production. However, weak domestic demand may hamper the recovery’s sustainability.
President Medvedev’s modernization program seems more like another attempt to freshen up Russia’s democratic façade while maintaining the status quo, which could potentially worsen the country’s stagnation and perhaps make it irreversible.
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