A Tasty Sandwich of Threats and Liberal Lip Service

I thought this was pretty amusing from the Moscow Times today, “Hawkish Bread on A Liberal Sandwich.”

President Dmitry Medvedev’s first state-of-the-nation speech might be best described as a club sandwich. Rather than sending out a straightforward message, Medvedev offered some liberal reformist proposals — juicily sandwiched between layers of hawkish threats and announcements.

My only issue: how can we know that the hawkish threats were the bread instead of the other way around? It seemed to me that placing missiles in Kaliningrad was the real “meat” of the story, compared to vague comments on legal nihilism and the pressures from bureaucracy on the courts and media.