July 23, 2009 By James Kimer

Obama and Surkov

We didn’t bother making a big deal out of Liz Cheney’s Wall Street Journal article from a few weeks back, which excoriated President Barack Obama for his speech in Moscow, arguing that he seemed a little too nice to the Russians and presented distortion of the Reaganite Cold War history.  (For example, I don’t recall W. bothering to meet with Nemtsov and Kasparov while swooning in Putin’s gaze.)  Cheney’s article was a hit among some members of Russia’s opposition, who are eager to discard the reset diplomacy approach as a sign that Obama is politically identical to Putin and Medvedev.  Riiiight.  Anyways, this piece from Alexei Victorovich Chadayev in Nezavisimaya Gazeta last week makes an interesting comparison on the non-intervention statements made by Obama being similar to Vladislav Surkov’s sovereign democracy doctrine.