Obama and the KGB
10 November 2008
By Richard Lourie

I was arrested by the KGB in Stalin's hometown of Gori in March 1988. Six men interrogated me about my Russian-language skills, my lack of papers and my high-speed camera, but after several hours my explanation was accepted. Planning to write about Stalin, I wanted to see his childhood home, his school and his town. My passport was at the hotel in Tbilisi as Soviet law required, but I admitted to breaking another Soviet law -- not to leave the city where you were registered.

At the end, the leader said he wanted to ask one question about the U.S. primaries then under way and which included among other hopefuls, Jesse Jackson. He asked: "Is that negr going to be president?"

He had used the proper Russian word for a black person but had said it with worry and disdain. He could imagine nothing worse -- the United States revealed as a democracy not a hypocrisy.

Then I had the odd duty of delivering a brief talk on U.S. civics to a half a dozen KGB men. No, I said to their immense relief, the United States wasn't ready to elect a black president yet, it was still a little too soon for that.

But only 20 years too soon as it's now turned out.

On the day after Obama was elected president, Dmitry Medvedev gave his first state-of-the-nation speech and blamed the United States for most of Russia's problems -- from arming Georgia to causing the global financial crisis.

There are several things wrong with this approach. By blaming Washington for all his country's problems, Medvedev casts Russia as a passive victim that can at best react. It grants to the United States precisely what Russia fears it seeks: omnipotence.

The same rebuke Senator John McCain made to Obama can also be made to Medvedev. You're not running against George W. Bush. It was Bush's idea to place elements of a missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, and it was Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney who armed and encouraged Georgia.

It's not clear yet what sort of Russia policy Obama will conduct. He won't say much before the inauguration. And so it would have been a perfect time for Medvedev to seize the initiative and make a bold, innovative move to show that Russia was the master of its own fate and capable of "new thinking." But instead, he resorted to the language of threat, the old game of move and countermove.

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Gus: the old countermove hidding a bold chess move, I'd say... see toon at top

meanwhile:

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U.S. Not a Threat After All
18 November 2008
By Alexander Golts

Every year, the Defense Ministry holds one of its most important conferences. At this annual event, in which all the generals are present and the president gives the key address, we usually learn details about new military reforms and weapons programs.

This year's meeting, which took place on Nov. 11, was unlike any of the previous ones. First, President Dmitry Medvedev did not attend. Second, there was conspicuously little information released from the meeting. The only thing we know from a short, terse document that the Defense Ministry released after the meeting is that the number of officers will be reduced from 355,000 to 150,000 and the number of military educational institutions will be cut by 80 percent. In addition, the ministry announced that the elite Tamanskaya and Kantemirovskaya divisions as well as the 98th and 106th Airborne Divisions are scheduled to be disbanded in 2009.