South Ossetia as a “Strategic Minority”
Christopher Hitchens can think of at least six reasons why South Ossetia is not comparable to Kosovo.
Archive
Video: Sen. John McCain Invokes Cold War History on Russia-Georgia War
In this speech, Sen. John McCain makes some very aggressive statements about Russia and the war in Georgia, with no shortage of references to Cold War history. It appears that unwavering support for the former Soviet states is quickly becoming a c...
Pavel Felgenhauer on Russia’s Preemptive War Planning
Pavel Felgenhauer is a respected Russian military reporter and generally well known man-about-town among the opposition, and his latest piece in Novaya Gazeta about Russia’s early war planning for the invasion of Georgia is making quite a st...
Grigory Pasko: Russia’s Transnational Olympic Champions
A modest haul Grigory Pasko, journalist The Russian Olympic team, poor in gold medals, evokes a feeling of pity in me. The athletes are forced to be distracted by events that have nothing to do with the Olympics. For example, by the war of Russia ...
War in Georgia a Russian Move on the Middle East
In a sea of opinion and chatter on the war in the Caucasus, this think piece from Walter Laqueur focusing on the geopolitical consequences on the Middle East on Harvard’s MESH Blog is very, very interesting, and should be read in its entiret...
The Narrative of American Provocation
Today Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post hits on the classic maxim of modern geopolitics – when in doubt, blame the Americans. Rosa Brooks provides a prime example to prove Hiatt’s point, but then again, maxims wouldn’t exist if t...
The Underwater Lobbyist
Former Prime Minister of Finland Paavo Lipponen is now an official employee of the Russian government. In my previous post on Gerhard Schroeder and the war, I briefly mentioned Gazprom’s hiring of Finland’s former Prime Minister Paavo Lippon...
Rent-a-Chancellor Stumps the War for Russia
Given how much we’ve blogged about Russia’s most highly paid lobbyist, the rent-a-chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, it should come as no surprise that he has been one of the most vocal defenders of the Russian invasion of Georgia (though I...
Energy Blast – Aug 18, 2008
RusAl is urging City institutions to back it in its attempts to replace and increase Norilsk Nickel’s board. Russian shareholder group AAR is expected to press for a secondary listing of shares in TNK-BP, allowing TNK-BP to raise fresh capital and...
Today in Russian Business – Aug 18, 2008
The Kremlin will reportedly consider plans to privatize 239 state-owned companies. Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev says he wants to buy a small German bank to help support German exports into Russia. Lebedev said Russia’s conflict with Georg...