American Perestroika, Part 2

I am interested and confused by this article in the Moscow Times by the Kremlin polittechnologist Yevgeny Bashanov.

Obama spoke to Russian leaders as equals in a manner befitting the leaders of sovereign states. The U.S. president could not behave otherwise; after all, Bush’s grandiose plan to build a Pax Americana, a global empire led by the United States, came crashing down with a bang. The United States, overburdened by its attempt to shoulder world hegemony, collapsed and fell into the clutches of a severe crisis affecting both domestic and foreign affairs.

The United States must undergo its own perestroika, and American voters put Obama in the White House because of his realization of the need for change and determination to carry it out. Of course, the United States is like a huge ocean liner, and its course cannot be changed quickly. But Obama is trying, and this includes efforts to improve U.S.-Russian relations.

We’ve see these assumptions come out before, as well as this call for an ‘American perestroika.”  What does this perestroika exactly entail?  Is freedom of the press and civil rights really a problem in the United States?  Also this idea that George W. Bush sought to create a pax americana just doesn’t quite add up.  He carried out two wars, one of them completely unnecessary, squandered relations with critical allies, and then completely ignored places like Russia, Africa, and Latin America.  The sad reality of the Bush Doctrine was not anything close to how it is depicted by the Kremlinologists.

This seems sort of incoherent, but I suppose at the end of the day, the most important thing is to make sure Washington has something to blame itself for (there’s a long list, but this misses the target).