Putin

'œOld habits die hard, eh, comrade?' said Peter Brookes in the Boston Herald. Russian President Vladimir Putin last week delivered a speechfit for the coldest days of the Cold War. Speaking at an international conference in Munich, the former KGB officer blamed America's 'œunilateral and frequently illegitimate actions' for making a mess of the Middle East. The 'œunipolar world,' he went on, is experiencing 'œan almost unrestrained hyper use of force,' as the U.S. demonstrates a 'œgreater and greater disdain' for international law. 'œWhy did Putin choose to bang his shoe, at least figuratively, on the podium?' asked Max Boot the Los Angeles Times. He certainly didn't win any friends abroad with his 'œsinister and absurd' bluster. However, his real audience was not in the U.S. but at home. 'œMost Russians eat up such nationalist rhetoric, if only because it distracts them from their own decline.'

That doesn't make Putin any less dangerous, said Charles Krauthammer in The Washington Post. On the one hand, 'œthere is something amusing about criticism of the use of force by the man who turned Chechnya into a smoldering ruin.' But 'œless amusing is the greater meaning' of Putin's tirade: Flush with oil and gas revenues and his brutal consolidation of power at home, 'œPutin issued his boldest declaration yet that post-Soviet Russia is preparing to reassert itself in the world.' That doesn't mean a return of the Cold War, exactly; Putin is no socialist ideologue looking for an 'œexistential dispute' with the West. What moves him, pure and simple, is the accumulation of power—like some 'œmafia don' looking to protect and expand his turf. Putin's intentions are now clear: 'œChallenging the dominant power in order to boost his own.'

The West can partly blame itself for this ugly turn, said Thomas Friedman in The New York Times. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the U.S. and Europe had a historic opportunity to bring Russia into the democratic fold. But both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton instead chose to exploit Russia's weakness by expanding NATO to include the former Warsaw Pact nations, right on Russia's doorstep. At the time, Russia was moving in the direction of real reform, and this humiliating lesson in its new powerlessness stirred up Russian resentment and nationalist anxieties. That paved the way for the imperial Putin's rise to power. Today, he's 'œshoving Russia's resurgent pride right back in our face.' Now more than ever, we need Russia's help—in places like Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Instead, 'œwe're getting his revenge.'

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