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POINT OF VIEW
‘The Cold War Is Long Over’
Sergey Lavrov 8/23/2008 12:00:00 AM
This month Georgia's Saakashvili chose to achieve his political vision through violence.
POINT OF VIEW
The Rise of the Putin Doctrine
Josef Joffe 8/23/2008 12:00:00 AM
True, Georgia's Mikheil Saakashvili is not a very smart president. A pro would not have walked into the trap the Russians and their local thug-in-chief (a.k.a. "president"), Eduard Kokoity, had set up in South Ossetia. A wise leader would have done some elementary intelligence work and then recoiled in horror. Across the border in (Russian) North Ossetia lay waiting Russia's 58th Army, steeled by annihilationist warfare in Chechnya and considered their best trained. It has 600 tanks, 2,000 armored troop carriers and 120 combat planes. Even if only half smart, the president could have saved his country from disaster by simply closing the Roki Tunnel, those two miles under the Caucasus Mountains that were the only way in for the 58th. In poured 15,000 men and 150 tanks, and that shut up the mouse that roared.
INTERNATIONAL
A New Ice Age?
Andrew Bast 8/18/2008 12:00:00 AM
There's an irony in the fact that when Belgium laid out the month's "Programme of Work" at the U.N. Security Council, this last week was absent an agenda. Since Russia's invasion of Georgia, the diplomatic community has been rather preoccupied. The United States and Western Europe have flailed about, ultimately unable to check Russia's unabashed aggression. Defying a host of threats from the West, which now include military posturing in Poland, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have invaded a neighboring country with impunity.
Pushing Russia’s Buttons
Michael Hirsh 8/12/2008 12:00:00 AM
There is no excusing Vladimir Putin's bloody invasion of Georgia (yes, it was Putin; Dmitri Medvedev has been the president since May, but it was now-Prime Minister Putin who flew to a border staging area to confer with Russian generals). Still, we ought to try to understand what is motivating Putin and his fellow Russian revanchists. And, as the West confronts its own weakness in response—Putin well knows that NATO is bogged down in Afghanistan, America is stretched thin in Iraq and Europe depends on his energy lifeline—we should acknowledge that at least some of the blame lies, as it does so often, with our own hubris. Since the cold war ended, the United States has been pushing the buttons of Russian frustration and paranoia by moving ever further into Moscow's former sphere of influence. And we have rarely stopped to consider whether we were overreaching, even as evidence mounted that the patience of a wealthier and more assertive Russia was wearing very thin.
WORLD VIEW
Russian Moves in the Americas
Jorge Castañeda 8/9/2008 12:00:00 AM
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's surprising announcement in early August that his country would seek to "re-establish" ties with the Soviet Union's old allies in Havana stirred up excitement in many foreign newsrooms, and raised eyebrows in a few foreign ministries around the world. Coming in the wake of a three-day visit to Cuba by a high-level Russian delegation, led by Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, and of reports about the possibility of the Russian military's using the Caribbean island as a fueling station for its Bear bombers, which are capable of carrying nuclear weapons, the flurry of news evoked memories of the 1962 missile crisis and a new "threat" to the United States from across the Florida Straits.
PATRIOTISM
Sing Along With Stalin

Can a song, a banner and a symbol keep Russians' minds off how tough their lives remain? Vladimir Putin has to hope so. Last week the Russian Parliament voted 381 to 51 to approve the president's choice for a national anthem. They also voted overwhelmingly in favor of his proposal to keep the white, blue and red national flag and the tsarist two-headed eagle as the national coat of arms. The Communist opposition leader, Gennady Zyuganov, particularly praised the "majestic" melody--an enthusiasm shared by none other than Joseph Stalin, who in 1943 picked it to replace the revolutionary hymn "Internationale" as the Soviet anthem.