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23 Aug 2008 07:59 am

Barnett On Russia

A stimulating vent:

To a certain extent, Russia's rebirth was inevitable (it's got a ton of stuff and it's a highly literate population), and as we've seen in past history, its depressive phases are always followed by some manic episodes. Again, we've had years and years to work this one and we did little to prepare for this moment. If I'm king of the West, Russia is already deep inside a revamped Northern Hemispheric Security Alliance (a term from an old CNA pub I did in the mid-90s that looked ahead to roughly now). Would that have prevented all such turbulence from Russia? No. But better to finesse it within that context than to face what we face now: Russia is simply marking its sphere of influence more overtly and proposing its own rule set for its management. We didn't invite Russia properly into our 21st century, so, denied any acceptable ownership of its own 20th century history (better it be all buried, say I), it slipped back into its 19th (quelle surprise, mes ami!), and yeah, that makes our management of Russia's membership in the Core a lot more complicated. We denied them proper attention for a long time and now they're acting out to garner negative attention: "You don't let us decide some of your rules, then we'll simply decide on our own where we can!"

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