Americas

May 4, 2009

Video: David Satter vs. Hart and Simes

Just when I thought I was all done posting video interviews from my last trip to Washington, I saw Bob’s post today about the Gary Hart and Dmitri Simes article about realism, interests, and the prospects for cooperation between the Obama Ad...
May 4, 2009

Defining Russia’s Rational Interests

There’s a new think piece in the National Interest by former Senator Gary Hart and Dmitri K. Simes of Nixon Center about the new efforts to improve the U.S.-Russia relationship.  As may be expected, Hart and Simes put forward a realist ...
May 2, 2009

The Russo-Venezuelan Human Rights Playbook

José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director of Human Rights Watch, has published an opinion article in today’s Washington Post criticizing the human rights abuses of the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.  Although I am certainly influenc...
April 30, 2009

Bribing Kyrgyzstan

A couple billion dollars can go a really long way in some Central Asian countries, and its a pity that the United States and other NATO members didn’t realize that President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was more or less “up for sale.” ...
April 29, 2009

Video: Russia’s Real and Imagined Security Concerns

During my interview with David Satter, I asked about the Russian decision to push the United States out of the Manas air base in Kyrgyzstan, thereby hampering NATO’s chances of success in Afghanistan – which is arguably one example of ...
April 27, 2009

Thought Experiments for Aging Autocrats

For the time being, things like repeated referendums and organized mayoral elections may work for the likes of Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin, but what will these and other authoritarian-leaning leaders of the world come up with in ten years time ...
April 19, 2009

The Human Potemkin Village

George Will seems to be testing some new comedic material in one of his latest columns, bruising the Obama administration over making a priority of getting a nukes treaty with Russia.  He calls Dmitry Medvedev a “human potemkin village&...
April 17, 2009

Grigory Pasko: Billions in Russia-Venezuela Arms Deals

Russia’s main business – arms Grigory Pasko, journalist Not too long ago the magazine Kommersant-Vlast published a detailed article about the volumes or Russian arms export in the years 2004-2008.  According to the data of the pub...
April 16, 2009

Hugo Chavez and the Taming of the Coup

Robert Amsterdam has a new article published in Foreign Policy about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s recent aggressive crackdown on the opposition and the debated events of April 2002. On April 11, 2002, a loose group of labor and busines...