Environmentalists push to keep U.S., others from oil drilling in Arctic

Okay, who am I kiddin’? It’s awesome for propping AK i.e. yours truly over well deserving others. ;-)

On a more pertinent note, despite the lack of recent posts I remain fully committed to Arctic Progress. However, RL priorities have sidetracked me from its active development for the time being; it isn’t a project I want to do in a half-assed way. Rest assured, it will not remain in limbo.

Two recent articles of possible interest to S/O readers (if you wish to comment on them please do so at AP):

• Photos Of Wrangel Island, An Arctic Apocalypse: A photo series by Sergey Gorshkov on the massive pollution and industrial debris left behind at the abandoned settlement of Ushakovskoe, Wrangel Island.
• ARCS Of Progress – The Arctic World in 2050: Move over BRIC’s! As the melting Arctic opens to shipping, energy production and settlement, the ARCS states – Alaska, Russia, Canada and Scandinavia – will become central poles of global economic growth.

My main aim is to make AP into the world’s leading Arctic news and analysis site in the world. Though it will take a backseat to AP, this blog will not die. I’ll continue posting here, just less frequently – so don’t disappear!

Best, AK.

My sincerest thanks for sharing in the S/O experience. The site now receives upwards of 500 daily visits and I’m confident we’ll continue overfulfilling the plan into the new year.

I’m leaving in 2 hours for skiing, so this time around I don’t have time to write a review, like I did last time. In the meantime, feel free to check out my latest posts on 2010 In Review, 2011 Predictions, and self-help books.

In the coming months, expect more core posts (e.g. a Decade Forecast; “Cliodynamics of Collapse”) and more material on my Arctic Progress blog (especially focusing on the many privatizations in Russia’s North that will be of interest to profit-minded investors). Ciao!

You can follow these interviews at Watching the Russia Watchers. They will consist of about 15 questions – most of them standard ones and a few specific to the interviewee. I’m not as nice as Andy, so you can expect the latter to be probing, even combative. I will try to avoid taking any ideological stance: I want to have every interviewee, no matter their beliefs, leaving the stage with fear and trembling.

I intend to conduct one interview every two weeks. If you want to be interviewed, write to me with your contact details. If you’ve already been interviewed by Siberian Light, I’m open for second rounds, but not before finishing with the newcomers.

1. This blog’s AJAX features are explained here: LiveSearch lets you type your search query and instantly have the results at hand, while Rolling Archives is the navigation bar that appears at the top of the page when you scroll down through the blog that allows you to navigate through archives and search results without having to reload the page. It’s a bit of a bandwidth and processing hog, however, so if few people use these features but many complain about long loading times, I’ll consider removing it.

2. Re-simplification, I could keep the current design, or I could try something minimalist like Rick Docksai’s Russia News blog (main difference there’ll be a static front page for navigation purposes).

3. Your responses as to what you like to read, and how you follow me, will contribute to shaping my priorities. For instance, if all of you are dying to get hold of my upcoming book, I will accelerate work on it.

4. Re-videos on YouTube. It’s technically quite difficult and the quality will be rather low since I only have my netbook camera. Hence, unless there’s great demand for it, I will postpone video-blogging for a few more months.

As for my thoughts, feelings, retrospection, on the occasion of the 2nd year birthday of S/O, there’s really very little I could add that I haven’t already said in Da Russophile, a Year On, Site History, and my interview with Siberian Light. I’ll quote from the latter:

What are your goals for Sublime Oblivion?

First, the need for alternate Russia coverage is far less pressing now than it was a year ago. The Kremlin is realizing the value of soft power and has acquired some heavy artillery over the past two years, such as the Russia Today TV channel and the Russia: Other Points of View information portal. As such, I now rarely feel the need to comment on current Russian news – demolishing the same Russophobe myths gets repetitive and boring after a while (much like grenade fishing), – speaking of which, I think I now understand why similar “Russophile” bloggers like Konstantin, Fedia Kriukov, and Kirill Pankratov jumped ship after a year or two.

Second, after a few months of blogging, I became more adventurous in my scope and ambitions. This moved me to make some major changes to the original Da Russophile, the biggest of which were: the transition from Blogger to self-hosted WordPress, the abandonment of the pseudonym stalker (yes, I love the film) in favor of my “true name“, and a certain moderation in rhetoric. I have largely abandoned activism in favor of observation and analysis. Most importantly, I’ve expanded the blog beyond focusing exclusively on Russia, to a more of an about-me-and-my-interests kind of thing – which at the moment and for the foreseeable future happen to be Russia, geopolitics, and future global trends.

As for my current plans:

• Continue my series of Sublime Strategic Reports on the global trends, regions, and geopolitical dynamics that will shape the 21st century.
• Build up the Sublime Oblivion Forums community.
• Do more Russian-English translations of uncommon and interesting material.
• Continue monitoring developments in Russia’s demography, on which I have an extensive and original portfolio.
• Expand my presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube (videoblog), and LiveJournal (на русском).
• Make forays into journalism and / or related research as time permits.
• My most ambitious project is my forthcoming book on future history, which I hope to finish by spring 2010 and publish soon after. See the last question for more details.

The only thing I can really add is that I started the Collapse Party to “… Reinforce resilience… Inform the people… Prepare for collapse!” (see party manifesto for more details). I hope we can get a community going there in a few months once we reach a critical mass of people to keep the blog and forum active.

I will be on “hiatus” for the next week (skiing in Park City, Utah). Expect more stuff from mid-January.

Best, AK.

Happy Birthday, Da Russophile!

As of today, it’s been exactly one year since I started the Da Russophile blog. Although I have been aware of hostile or condescending Western attitudes towards Russia for a long time, reflected in its mass media, I was finally provoked into joining battle by a particularly annoying and dishonest ‘editorial’ on the La Russophobe hate-blog.

This was and remains its motto:

Their Thesis: the Western media tells us Russia is in a death spiral,
its economy is one giant oil bubble, suffers from endemic corruption,
inequality and lawlessness and is presided over by a KGB kleptocrat
dead-set on resurrecting the USSR and launching Cold War II.

Our Antithesis: Russia is a normal country with a booming non-hydrocarbons
economy underpinned by a well-educated and secular workforce.
The Putin administration has affirmed democratic values, worked to improve
human rights and pursued Russia’s national interests abroad.

Your Synthesis: ?

I started off by writing serious ‘core articles’ on Reading Russia Right and Towards a New Russian Century, to demolish some common bearish stereotypes and illustrate how its inherent strengths (natural resources, a well educated population, etc) stood it in good stead for a twenty-first century characterized by economic convergence, technological growth, climate change and resource depletion.

My initial aim to provide a daily or at least weekly Russia news analysis proved too ambitious. I am a cyclical worker, capable of great feats of production over short periods but prone to long periods of idleness and procrastination (one nineteenth-century Russian historian attributed this quality to Russians in general, due to their long winters and short growing seasons). Thus in the end I couldn’t keep up a constant stream of news analysis, unlike the likes of Robert Amsterdam or La Russophobe – it simply required far too much time and organization, stuff I’m not well endowed with, and which doesn’t suit my character besides.

Where I shined, I think, was challenging the conventional wisdom about Russia. Contrarian pieces like Top 10 Russophobe Myths, Lying Liars and their Lies and Faces of the Future (my deconstruction of Russian demographic details, which show that the situation is far from the dire catastrophe usually portrayed by the Western commentariat) remain some of my favorites. I also specifically criticized coverage of Russia’s economy (The Trouble with the Economist) and the Ossetian War (The Western Media, Craven Shills for their Neocon Masters).

Speaking of which, I agree that sometimes my rhetoric is too shrill and detracts from my points (although it does draw attention). This is especially the stake when there is some considerable emotional stake in the issue – I made something like 30% of all original Da Russophile posts during and immediately after the Ossetian War. On the topic of which, Putin summarized Western attitudes better than I can: I’m amazed by their skills at seeing black as white, of portraying aggressors as victims and of blaming the real victims for the consequences of the conflict.

Although there is a real issue of discrimination against Russians in the Baltic countries covered extensively by human rights organizations like Amnesty International (and with which I find easy to sympathize – I haven’t met a single ethnic Balt who wasn’t hostile to my original nationality in real life, and their Internet intelligentsia like Peteris Cedrins or Giustino drip with venom whenever they mention it, barely concealed with a thin veneer of Western civility), on balance my reference to one particular graveyard-desecrating Baltic nation as eSStonia probably didn’t help my argument. Probably one of my bigger mistakes early on was taking my conception of myself as a ‘polar opposite’ to La Russophobe a bit too literally.

Of course, that’s pretty much impossible for me to accomplish. As I recently said to a commentator here, the only reason I ‘defend’ the Kremlin and Russia with such enthusiasm is because of the sheer degree to which it is misaligned or smeared in the Western press – be it out of ignorance or malice. (Although given my experience with Al-Jazeera, I lean towards the latter explanation). Believe it or not, when in the company of Russians too besotted of Putin or Russia’s greatness or whatever, I am often compelled to contradict them by pointing out some of their failures and cynicism or even just for the sake of argument instead of agreement. In fact, to let you on a little secret I think the most acute Russia commentator is not myself, but the likes of Sean Guillory, the people over at Peter Lavelle’s Google discussion group on Russia and perhaps even the eXile guys (jesters are the best at speaking truth to power).

The main reason I am “Da Russophile” in the English language is because far too many Westerners perceive Russia to be some special class of benighted murderous wasteland, whereas in fact I see it as essentially a ‘normal country’ with some admittedly pretty big problems. And since I don’t think a petty thief should be blamed for a murder with no evidence, nor do I think one can be neutral on a moving train (to borrow from Zinn), so I defend misaligned Russia and Putin (and at times Chavez’ Venezuela, and other people Western elites really don’t like but which in reality aren’t that bad, or good). Especially since the presiding judges, juries and executioners – the West – are themselves a bunch of petty crooks. Not that this approach wins any favors from either side…

Speaking of which, I’ve had the pleasure of corresponding with many of my readers as well as other incisive and decent Russia-watching writers such as Andy at Siberian Light, Eric Kraus, Sean, etc. Yet there’s been a fair amount of negative, impolite and I’m afraid to say, on a few occasions hateful, mail directed towards me, so I can only sympathize with Andy’s post on What is it with stupid people and Russia?, where he laments the prevalent Russophobe/Russophile dichotomy in discussions about that country. It will be a great day when this dialog can proceed in a mutually respectful and intelligent manner, but this day is far off, not when the (admittedly very popular) La Russophobe blog explicitly states as its mission to ‘expose’ and professionally damage those who seek to ‘justify’ Kremlin evil, and when a three-way discussion between Timothy Post, Craig Pirrong (Streetwise Professor) and myself identified religious zeal, polarly differing worldviews, and Russia’s supposedly historically exceptional path, respectively, as barring any fundamental agreement. Just like in the retarded Internet debates on abortion between atheists and Bible nuts… Let’s hope my pessimistic view is disproved.

Not that I’m a gray humorless sod (I think). I hope I’ve put smiles on a few faces by some tongue-in-cheek posts like I am a Communist, Russia of the Dead and Zen and the Art of Vodka Drinking.

Writing this blog has been a positive experience – it helps clarify and organize my thoughts, and I hope informs or entertains its readers. I also think that it has some real intellectual content and insights, in particularly my work on demography and Russia’s economic crisis. This was the main reason I decided to associate this blog with my name, Anatoly Karlin, when I moved from blogger to self-hosted WordPress at Sublime Oblivion, about two months ago.

This new structure also made it much easier for me to write about other things of interest (i.e. more than Russia). This is not to say that there was nothing of that in the old days – for instance, I had a bout of interest in healthy eating. The problem was that the blog name was, after all, Da Russophile, and so I was under some mental stress to try to associate everything with it. For instance, the main geopolitical and futurist ideas of Towards a New Russian Century, the vital role of education in economical growth explored in Education as Elixir of Growth, and the discussion on ecology in Russia and Limits to Growth, were too much ‘forcibly associated’ with Russia-watching for them to be truly standalone articles on geopolitics or economics (I plan to rewrite and repost them). My partial solution was to make another blogger blog about six months ago called Sublime Speculations, in which I deposited my non-Russia articles like my prediction of Obama’s victory and the wacky, somewhat nonsensical Tyranny of the Veil, perhaps conjured up on a trip. Still, I didn’t like this arrangement. Separate blogs, unwieldy infrastructure, lots of glitches, no self-hosting…although WordPress has a steep learning curve relative to blogger, in the end it is a vastly superior publishing system.

So now I can spend less time thinking about maintenance, and more time writing. Here are some of my plans for the future:

1. Write a series of philosophical essays on the meaning of Sublime Oblivion, the first of which is already done (What Might Be Is). The next articles will examine the mechanism and purpose of History; the role and meaning of belief, fantasy and apocalypse; some things on ethics; and a look at the future taking into account prior inferences and conclusions. This should not take long; I’ve got rough drafts of all of them, since the ideas there have been floating round in my head for almost a year now. They need polishing and references, mostly.

2. Rewrite some articles, e.g. the one on future geopolitics (the trends of climate change, technological growth, economic convergence and resource depletion, and how they will affect different countries, regions and the global balance of power). I’ve also got one planned out on future military trends, and some others which I may or may not include (e.g. old academic ones).

3. Make the site better and niftier, especially updating the Articles section.

4. Doing some work on the forum to make it amenable to discussion.

5. Write a collaborative/multi-author book on Russia. I’ve got some fairly concrete ideas, but haven’t done anything yet.

6. Develop the philosophical and geopolitical ideas I’ve got, write a novel thing about them and try to make more money than the lousy useless amounts I’ve made from the time I used to run Google Ads here!

But for now, I am on ‘hiatus’ for the next week. This is what I’ll be doing.

I am looking forwards to raping the slopes dry in Colorado.

Looks like the people agree, and indeed from a straightforward perspective Obama would be better for foreign relations. At least he has been nowhere near as vehemently anti-Russian as McCain, preferring to steer clear of a subject on which he doesn’t appear to have any strong views.

Clinton, of course, is now irrelevant (having been knocked out). Actually, funnily enough so is McCain, because Obama will almost certainly win, as I point out in my new blog Sublime Speculations.

Now for Poll #3 – Which entity would fare best in a zombie uprising – Brazil, China, EU, India, Japan, Russia or the US?

The zombies are runners, spread the infection via contact with bodily fluids and must be shot in the head, like the ones in Dawn of the Dead 04.

This poll will be up until I post a tongue-in-cheek article I’m planning, Russia of the Dead, in which I try to figure out which country is best for undead survival.

But first, the sources of reality-based, high quality information about Russia. Sublime Oblivion, by yours truly. And now, in no particular order… Eugene Ivanov runs a deeply informed, incisive and humorous political blog on Russia and the US at The Ivanov Report. Another excellent blog is Sean’s Russia Blog written by Sean Guillory – humorous, wide selection and eminently readable. He is an academic currently researching Soviet era youth groups.

Konstantin at Russian Blog and Fedia Krikov at Russia in the Media ran entertaining blogs dedicated to debunking Russophobic drivel, but unfortunately both seem to have died out due to ennui. Investor and published on the Truth and Beauty (…and Russian Finance) newsletter, Eric Kraus, is THE guy at economic and financial ground zero. Timothy Post is an American entrepreneur in Krasnodar, the Russian Riviera.

Nicolai Petro is a very insightful academic who sees evidence that Russia is forging its own democratic culture. Robert Hanh and the other folks who run Russia: Other Points of View make heroic efforts to, well, make other points of view available on Russia in the Western media’s culture of manufactured consent. Peter Lavelle is a highly original and eloquent journalist (not to mention a high paid propaganda master) working for Russia Today. The President of the Russian Federation, or False Dmitri as I like to call him, has a really cool motorcycle on his blog’s header. Michael Averko is a New York based independent foreign policy analyst and media critic who is published on numerous blogs.

The eXiled Online is extremely funny and irreverent in a wet fish around the face fashion, but aren’t focused on Russia like the old eXile. In La Russophobe Exposed, Steve J. Nelson explores the murky connections and financing deep within that hate blog’s reptilian layers. Stanislav Mishin’s blog Mat Rodina is a bit too hardcore Orthodox for me, but there is no doubt he is a great Russian-American patriot. Winthrop360 is a fine blog.

That’s it for the blogs. Now for the articles…

Please take a look at the Best of Sublime Oblivion section in the sidebar for the (IMO) best material on this site. That said, I won’t be talking about my own stuff here.

10 Western Media Stereotypes About Russia: How Truthful Are They? – not very, according to the Real Russia Project. Also check out this other Top 10 list about Russian myths.

A Normal Country (Andrei Shleifer & Daniel Treisman, Foreign Affairs, Mar/Apr 2004) – old but no less relevant for that.

Summary: Conventional wisdom in the West says that post-Cold War Russia has been a disastrous failure. The facts say otherwise. Aspects of Russia’s performance over the last decade may have been disappointing, but the notion that the country has gone through an economic cataclysm and political relapse is wrong–more a comment on overblown expectations than on Russia’s actual experience. Compared to other countries at a similar level of economic and political development, Russia looks more the norm than the exception.

Russia through the looking-glass (Nicolai N. Petro, openDemocracy, Feb 2006) – a refutation of the Western party line on Russia’s media environment, Chechnya and alleged deterioration in the rule of law.

A true understanding of developments in Russia challenges the distorted perceptions of western governments, media, and human-rights organisations.

Petro is a perceptive and prolific Russia analyst, and it would certainly be worth your while checking out the articles on his website – a sample could include The Medvedev Moment (challenges the notion Medvedev is a Putin puppet), Needed: Better Western Coverage of Russia (detailing the Western media’s worrying ‘erosion of the crucial distinction between objective reporting and advocacy when it comes to Putin’s Russia’), Russia at the Crossroads (accounts of his participation in the Valdai Discussion Club), Russia’s New Cyberwarriors (warning of Russians’ creeping disillusionment with the West) and Russian rights and Estonian wrongs (Western double standards on human rights in Russia and Estonia).

Talking about Estonia/Baltics, the linguistic oppression against Russophones that goes on there is well documented. Check out Linguistic minorities in Estonia: Discrimination must end (Amnesty International, Dec 2006), Discrimination against the Russophone Minority in Estonia and Latvia (London School of Economics, Feb 2005) and Russian-Speaking Minorities in Estonia and Latvia: Problems of Integration at the Threshold of the European Union (European Centre for Minority Issues, 2004).

Russia’s booming economy – this article illustrates the bankruptcy of several conceptions about Russia’s economy, including a) its hydrocarbons dependence and b) supposed stagnation in investment and manufacturing. (It also proves that the Economist ignores its own Intelligence unit, as I demonstrate here). In a similar vein, see Russia’s Surging Economy and my comments on it. For more information, take a look at Rosstat (Russia’s statistical agency, available in English), the World Bank’s Russia Economic Reports and the Nikitsky Fund’s Truth and Beauty monthly installments about Russian finance and more. For more technical matters, such as the question of whether Russia suffers from Dutch disease and how it could take advantage of its resource endowments, consult Diagnosing Dutch Disease: Does Russia Have the Symptoms? (Nienke Oomes & Katerina Kalcheva, IMF, 2007) and How to sustain growth in a resource based economy? (Rudiger Ahrend, OECD, 2006).

Fedia Kriukov’s Russia in the Media blog is well worth reading, being densely argued and rigorously sourced. In particular see A Charmed Profession (about a BBC poll that kills two birds with one stone by demolishing the myth that a) Russians are oppressed and b) the Western media is balanced), An Audit of the Committee to Protect Journalists (or should it be the Committee to Propagandize Journalists?), A Brave Kremlinologist. Too bad for him (exposing the lies and red herrings of quackademic Michael McFaul), A Kremlinologist in Dire Need of Econ 101 Textbook (exposing Stephen Sestanovich’s economic ignorance) and On the Follies of Extrapolation from a Small Sample (Luke Harding’s pathetic efforts to prove life in Russia is getting worse by interviewing an alcoholic in some Godforsaken village). (Speaking of Luke Harding, his plagiarizing exploits have been covered by the eXile here, here and here).

Dreaming with BRICs is the seminal paper in which Goldman Sachs predicted that Brazil, Russia, India and China will come to dominate the world’s economy as their average incomes converge to Western levels, as was the case in pre-industrial times. Note, though, that Russia is the only member who’s GDP per capita is expected to catch up to the leading countries’ in the foreseeable future. How Solid are the BRICs? expounds on this, evaluating each country’s ability to sustain growth by constructing a Growth Environment Index.

Now Comes the Tough Part in Russia, Putin’s legacy is a Russia that doesn’t have to curry favour with the west, Don’t rush to judgment, The west’s new Russophobia is hypocritical – and wrong, Putin’s Reaganesque Victory, No Wonder they Like Putin and Unconventional wisdom about Russia are all very perceptive articles (by the standards of Western coverage of Russia), albeit they’re all based on the assumption Russia is semi-authoritarian at best. I am impressed with Andrew Wilson’s arguments in “Virtual politics” in the ex-Soviet bloc (the methods of political manipulation that elites throughtout the post-Soviet use to remain in power) – however, as an eXile review of his book argues, the West hardly has moral superiority in this department.

Why the Council on Foreign Relations Hates Putin (Mike Whitney, Counterpunch, Dec 2007) – despite its anti-globalist and NWOish tinges, it manages to get to the heart of the matter, namely, how influential neocons have subverted Washington’s foreign policy, united against the idea of close West-East co-operation and launched a comprehensive, double-standards laced propaganda campaign against Putin.

Everything you ever wanted to know about the Economist‘s Russia coverage here, here and here. Their star Russia reporter, Lucas, deserves special mention – check out his nuanced and balanced coverage here and here (with friends like these, Russophobia needs no foes – talking of which, Fedia has a theory that he’s actually a Kremlin propagandist). His magnum opus is reviewed here, here and here.

The Misconception of Russian Authoritarianism – PhD thesis by an American graduate student at the University of St.-Petersburg makes a forceful argument that Russia has decisively shed its authoritarian past and is engaged in building up stable long-term democratic institutions.

UPDATE APRIL 2009: Obviously Russia and the world has changed quite a lot since then. Please take a look at the Best of Sublime Oblivion section in the sidebar for the (IMO) best material on this site.

In More Questions than Can Be Answered, Patrick Armstrong points out the wisdom of the old saying that “one fool can ask more questions than ten wise men could answer”, and the lessons Russophobes drew from it.

On the South Ossetian War of 2008, see the Spiegel article Saakashvili under Pressure from EU Probe and the sources in my piece The Corpse Stumbles On for the belated Western recognition of the facts of Georgian aggression against South Ossetia and Russia (I criticized their initial propaganda here), as well as Patrick Armstrong’s writings on the chronology and Mark Ames on how the news media set about mendaciously covering their tracks after lying to us again in How to Screw Up a War Story. Watch the films War 080808: Art of Betrayal and What really happened in South Ossetia? for heart-wrenching evidence of Georgian war crimes.

Stratfor has an interesting take on Russian geopolitics, claiming it is one of Permanent Struggle to avoid collapse and consolidate its position in Eurasia. Other good articles are the Russo-Georgian War and the Balance of Power, Russia and Rotating the US Focus, The Medvedev Doctrine and American Strategy and the Six Pillars of Russian Strength.

For the war nerds here, check out Surviving the Modern IADS System, Assessing Russian Fighter Technology and stuff about the Sukhoi Flanker fighter from Air Power Australia (or visit Defpro.com for less technical summaries). Their conclusions are that Russian military technology improved rapidly in the 1990′s and 2000′s as it gained access to Western information and electronic technologies (even despite the funding collapse), and that new systems now being developed threaten the primacy of the carrier battle group and US aeronaval dominance. If you read Russian, check out the Rian Novosti “Arsenal” series of articles on Russian weapon systems.

UPDATE 2009: Those Russian Bastards – an indictment of the Western media’s double standards regarding Russian and Western neo-imperialism by Jon Weiler; The Great Transformation: How the Putin Plan Altered Russian Society – an appraisal of Putin’s consolidation of Russia, the first of two steps in the Putin Plan to make Russia into an affluent, liberal nation.

I am pleased to see that the number of people thinking it’s brilliant decisively outnumber those who think it should be deleted. (So I’ll remain on the blogosphere.) Otherwise, don’t bother with digressions, aesthetics or more featues, but concentrate more on regular news and editorials. Well, I’ll try. I’m not really the kind of person who loves pumping out stuff at constant intervals, but I’ll have a go at making updates more frequent (and posts smaller). As for Core Articles – well, we have a juicy one coming up tomorrow – Top 10 Russophobe Myths, as well as a finished News 19 March.

The next poll asks the question Which President would be best for US-Russia relations? (Feel free to interpret best as least worst).

Osama Hussein sounds reasonable.

Sen. Obama (D-IL) has said Russia is “neither our enemy nor close ally,” and said the United States “shouldn’t shy away from pushing for more democracy, transparency, and accountability” there. He has focused much of his discussion of Russia on diminishing the possibility of nuclear weapons use. In a July 2007 Foreign Affairs article, Obama said the United States and Russia should collaborate to “update and scale back our dangerously outdated Cold War nuclear postures and de-emphasize the role of nuclear weapons.” In an October 2007 speech in Chicago, Obama said if elected he would work to “take U.S. and Russian ballistic missiles off hair-trigger alert, and to dramatically reduce the stockpiles of our nuclear weapons and material.” He said he would seek a “global ban on the production of fissile material for weapons” and an expansion of “the U.S.-Russian ban on intermediate-range missiles.”

In 2005, Obama traveled with Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) to nuclear and biological weapons destruction sites in Russia, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan. Obama and Lugar then introduced legislation to eliminate nuclear stockpiles throughout the former Soviet Union. That law was enacted in 2007.

Reasonable, dry and technical. A few meaningless platitudes about transparency and stuff. Excellent you say, crossing your fingers and smiling like an old billionaire creep? Not so fast…the eXile fears his Cabinet.

So, who are Obama’s advisors? This is where it gets a little scary. Obama has surrounded himself with a combination of the cream of Bill Clinton’s foreign policy team, a few gold-medal liberal hawk fanatics, and, worst of all, the obsessively Russophobic Zbigniew Brzezinski plus Zbig’s power-lawyer son, Mark.

Brzezniski pere is a Polish refugee who like so many East European immigrants brought his Old World bigotries to the New World as a guiding principle. That bigotry is a hatred of Russia and a desire to see it destroyed, no matter what the consequences. Indeed Brzezinski recently revealed his Dr. Evil plot from the late 1970s: as Carter’s National Security Advisor, he had personally overseen an operation to incite the Soviet-Afghanistan war, to draw Russia into invading in order to bleed his nemesis dry. Considering that the policy eventually led to the Taliban and 9/11, it’s a rather odd bragging right to claim. Unless you don’t give a shit about biting your host America’s nose off to spite your old enemy Russia’s face….in the 1990s, he led the charge for rapid NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, stood for pulling Ukraine into NATO as a way of weakening Russia, and pushed for control of Azerbaijan’s Caspian Sea oil even at the cost of ignoring Azerbaijan’s anti-democratic regime. (Meanwhile Brzezinski worked for a consortium that allowed him to personally profited from Azeri oil). Most sinister of all, Brzezinski is a charter member of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, a creepy NGO featuring an A-List of Islam-bashing neocons like Richard Perle, Frank Gaffney and James Woolsey, who found a ray of Islamic pity in their Clash of Civilization hearts for just one Muslim people–the Chechens, who just happened, by coincidence, to conveniently be at war with Russia.

This leads to Brzezinski’s greatest livelong obsession: the idea (and the policy) of breaking up the Soviet Union along ethnic lines, an obsession going back to his college Master’s Thesis. It was an idea first trumpeted by Poland’s fascist intra-war dictator Jozef Pilsudski, and it fulfills every Polish nationalist’s dream of seeing Russia’s permanently confined to a wheelchair.

Brzezinski’s agenda should jibe perfectly with another all-star on Obama’s foreign policy team, Samantha Power, who is cut from the same liberal hawk cloth as all the Michael Ignatieffs, David Rieffs and Thomas Friedmans, not to mention the Anthony Lakes and other Clinton A-listers on Obama’s staff.

Furthermore, when he has taken on Michael “Myth of the Academic Model” McFaul as his Russia advisor; when Kim Zigfeld, the eponymous La Russophobe, thinks he has seen the Light; when Khodorkovsky henchman Robert Amsterdam claims:

It is interesting however to imagine how it could be possible to reconcile support of Barack Obama and support for Vladimir Putin. Such an inherent contradiction must rob one of sleep.

One does get a new appreciation for Bush’s diplomatic finesse when dealing with Russia. Are those years really going to become the Golden Age of US-Russian relations? With Obama, all bets are off.

So what about the Hildebeast, then?

Sen. Clinton (D-NY), like most of her fellow Democrats, favors diplomacy toward Russia with the goal of promoting democracy there and reducing nuclear stockpiles. In a November 2007 Foreign Affairs article, Clinton pledged to “negotiate an accord that substantially and verifiably reduces the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals.”

She also called for engagement with Russia on “issues of high national importance,” including Iran, loose nuclear weapons, and the status of the Serbian province of Kosovo. She said Washington’s “ability to view Russia as a genuine partner depends on whether Russia chooses to strengthen democracy or return to authoritarianism and regional interference.”

Still, she told the Boston Globe in October 2007, “I’m interested in what Russia does outside its borders first. I don’t think I can, as the president of the United States, wave my hand and tell the Russian people they should have a different government.”

Awfully kind of her, deigning to allow Russians to choose their own government. But doesn’t sound too bad overall.

But then again, she is someone who can go on and on in detail about the failures of Russian democracy, yet manages to garble the name of one of the most important leader’s she’ll be working with for the next four years (if she gets elected), essentially calling him a woman. Most analysts are far from worked up by the prospect of President Hillary and Russia. And that’s on top of lame rip-offs from the McCainiac.

Well, at least Putin put her in her place. And talking of places, is the Presidency the right place for her? Unfortunately, yes. At least the other two have already made their Russophobia explicitly clear. There’s hope yet that she’ll be more reasonable once the pandering to the Russophobes (who make up 46% of the US population) bit is done.

Could it even be McCain? Granted,

Sen. McCain (R-AZ) has strongly criticized Putin, whom he has called “a dangerous person.” In an October 2007 Republican debate, McCain expressed support for President Bush’s plan to build a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe. “I don’t care what [Putin’s] objections are to it,” he said.

In a November 2007 Foreign Affairs article, McCain called for a new approach to what he called a “revanchist” Russia. In that piece, he advocated Russian exclusion from the G-8, and said the West should send a message to Russia that NATO “is indivisible and that the organization’s doors remain open to all democracies committed to the defense of freedom.” He also said the United States should promote democracy in Russia.

However, the folks over at the eXile have another perspective on The McCainiac.

But presidents don’t make policy alone, and to the extent that we know who’s advising McCain on foreign affairs, the picture is less clear. McCain takes advice from his neocon friend William Kristol, but also his close friend Henry Kissinger, the corpulent doyen of realpolitik, who is the honorary co-chairman for McCain’s presidential campaign in New York.

A recent New York Times profile of McCain mentioned other “realist” advisors unlikely to push him into confrontation with Moscow unless serious red lines are crossed, such as Richard Armitage, Colin Powell, Lawrence Eagleburger, and Brent Scrowcroft. Other names that have popped up in recent months include ex-drug war czar Barry McCaffrey and Harvard historian Niall Ferguson. Ferguson, who has no problem with empires so long as they are Anglo-American, has predicted that Russia will attempt to reconstitute a capitalist, Christian version of the “evil empire.”

Another issue muddying up McCain’s Russophobic credibility was revealed in a recent Washington Post article exposing McCain’s friendly links to (and vacation getaways with) Kremlin oligarch Oleg Deripaska. More importantly, the piece revealed cozy ties between McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis and the Russian power elite more generally, from Deripaska to pro-Russian Ukrainian politician Viktor Yanukovich, who battled against the pro-Western Orange Revolution in 2004.

But then again, this is a guy who sees the letters “K-G-B” in Putin’s eyes. Considering that that only happens to me when I’m real drunk, I’d be real careful about electing him to office.

In conclusion, these are the best US Presidents for US-Russian relations.

1. Clinton
2. McCain
3. Obama

This poll will run until the Democrats and Republicans confirm their party nominations.

(of whom there are 160 now) Unfortunately, we have some pressing commitments at the moment, which will last up to January 27th.

This means that there will be few, if any, posts until then.

Nonetheless, we certainly don’t plan to stop blogging, and here’s a look at some of the topics that are going to come up once we free up some time:

Annals of Trick-Tankery: a critique of 2008 Freedom House ratings, how the scores are biased depending on the foreign policies of the state in question and of the functioning of the organization itself; how the Economist Democracy Index is a lot better, albeit still flawed, and our own calculation of Russia’s, the US’s, and Georgia’s state of democracy according to its methodology. (about 1/2 complete)

A look at Heritage Foundation’s newly released 2008 Index of Economic Freedom.

A critique of The Myth of the Authoritarian Model.

A look at history: namely, the history of the death penalty in Russia, focusing on the law codes of Kievan Rus which were unique for their (medieval) time in their abhorrence towards cruel and unusual punishments. (planned)

A Digression: Education as the Elixir of Economic Growth. We consider that the single most important thing towards enabling economic growth isn’t the amount of freedom in an economy (as long as it isn’t planned), the resources or whether the country is democratic or authoritarian. It’s human capital, which is best proxied by education, which can be measured by such things as literacy rates, tertiary graduation rates, PISA maths/science scores, TIMMS math/science scores and average years of schooling.

Plotting a graph of the education index against GDP / capita reveals a very strong correlation, which becomes very apparent when the effects of oil wealth (which artificially inflates GDP) or planned-economy legacy (which artificially lowers GDP) is factored in. The conclusion is, as long as a country pursues basically sound macroeconomic policies AND has a well-educated population, catch-up to developed levels is ineviatable. This is also the reason why Eastern Europe and China will develop much more rapidly than Brazil, Mexico or India.

A look at the bizarre Final Phase conspiracy theorists, who assert that the Soviet Union never collapsed, commies still run Russia (and China and Poland) and are planning to invade the West with tens of thousands of tanks hidden underneath Mount Yamantau…or something like that.

Moscow’s skyscrapers

Flotsam and Jetsam: lots of movies, books, etc, explore what happens during a zombie uprising somewhere in middle America. We’ll try to do the same for Russia. How will it fare relative to the rest of the world? We try to construct a ZPI (Zombie Preparedness Index), taking into account factors like population density, geographical barriers, environmental sustainability, firearms ownership, military strength, social cohesion, the transport system, connectivity and socio-economic development

From Da Russophile with Love