A not-so-random thought about the distribution of power

"[Putin] trusts very few people. Aides say he makes policy on key issues – Georgia, Ukraine, NATO – himself, along with a small circle, and tends to improvise."

Now, who does this remind you of? The name "George W. Bush" leapt to my mind. Maybe when Bush looked into Putin's eyes, he really did recognize a soulmate.

Dude, you're a college professor and now senior editor at a major magazine...and you're citing Wikipedia as a source?!! Would you accept this from your students or submitters to NI? It's official, DD.com has jumped the shark.

Dude, you're an anonymous commenter on a blog... and you provided no actual argument about why the salient information on the Wikipedia page is in error.

[...] For an argument in the negative, see Daniel Drezner, National Interest Senior Editor, in A Not-So-Random Thought About the Distribution of Power. [...]

I agree with Dan, this is a blog post and thus subject to more casual sourcing standards. I wish I was his student though, I'd use a wiki source just for fun.

Good article too, it's nice to know that Putin isn't the evil super genius that Spengler over at ATimes has him pegged as.

If the name George W. Bush leaps to mind every time any subject is dicussed, you might just be a redneck suffer from BDS.

Is that what you tell your students when they cite Wikipedia in their term papers? Or how about the journal articles you review for publication? You'd reject either if they cited Wikipedia. Keep your standards high Dan! That's what earned you the respect you well deserve, don't lower them now or you'll lose it.

[...] DANIEL DREZNER on Russia, Georgia and the balance of power. [...]

I agree that Putin has made a huge mistake. The infrastructure of Russia is not up to the ambitious assignment he has given it. Russia cannot keep up with western technology--which is virtually exploding in sophistication weekly. The price of oil and gas is not a stable enough platform for Russia to buy everything it will need, destabilising the economic engine of Putin's ambitions.

The demographics of ethnic Russians is dismal, with the world population of Russians falling by almost half every 50 years. Russia is too large for Russians to defend and hold--much less the greater Russia that Putin is trying to build.

He is a KGB holdover with delusions of grandeur. Putin has continued the Soviet tactic of covert support of black american discord among particular factions. Putin has centralised decision-making in Russia to the point of endangering the viability of the non-energy economy. Putin's covert support of insurgency operations in Iraq have not gone unnoticed. What goes around comes around.

Historically, Russia has stood rather remote from the world economy. This has created an intuition in Russian leaders of all ideologies that Russia's foreign policy has little effect on its economy.

I don't think Putin yet realizes that times have changed. If he pays little attention to the economic consequences of his actions, he is doomed.

The question DD put to Wikipedia was of a direct and factual nature, to wit: which countries have recognized S. Ossetia and Abkhazia, and when did they do it? Wikipedia was cited and footnoted with a caveat to readers. I don't have a problem with that. Wikipedia is usually very good with straightforward questions of fact. Students today are told not to use Wikipedia for research; I tell my sons to start their research with Wikipedia, and then to follow up with the sources cited in the entry.

We've seen Russia face global disapproval before and they still pulled out of it. During the cold war, they had only fair weather friends that left them in the dust when things got bad. But they still had the material and man power to launch a full scale invasion into Afghanistan, crack down on violent protests and uprising's all over the Slavic nations, and still had enough money in the end to give party members and ex-KGB agents several million pretty Rubels. Even though Russia has made a bold and maybe fatal move, don't they have to potential, as they did in the past, of still staying above it and coming out as a super power?

Really, who gives a s--t if Drezner cites Wikipedia? This is a blog post, not a journal article. Students are required to use proper citations of authenticated sources in papers because they are learning how to construct arguments to academic standards. Even then, I'm sure no one teaching in a university requires their students to use APA style on their personal blogs.

Let's start a pool.

I say Poland detonates its first nuclear device within 5 years. (Romania could do it in 12 months.)

I doubt that the US can make a complete security commitment to Poland, Estonia, Romania, etc and I doubt that the Poles will sleep tight thinking that Germans are willing to die for Polish independence.

Kicking Georgia will have done a lot for Russian security, oh yea.

[...] interesting deconstruction of US foreign policy as basically propaganda for a foreign oil cartel operating for financial gain in various spheres of military conflict using [...]

Under Putin, Russia will never be a superpower. Why? Because Putin's Russia is a one-trick pony: fossil fuels. A nation that gets most of its income from one natural resource is a doomed nation.

Putin's mindset fossilized in the age of the USSR. He still believes Russia has the clout of the Soviet Union at its most monstrous.

Russians have been cowed by many centuries of authoritarian government. Sadly they do not know how to think or do for themselves. They are dying out demographically because they have nothing to work for. Just former KGB cronies at the top, siphoning off Russia's wealth to their own Swiss numbered accounts.

[...] wanted to write a post comparing Kosovo and South Ossetia, but Dan Drezner has already written it. It’s a week old now, but still good: It’s been more than a week since Russia recognized [...]

I think there is more logic in the Russian actions than you want to admit:
First of all they wanted to make the point that Kosovo is not unique. South Ossetia had a larger percentage of ts population killed and had its peacekeepers attacked by Georgians. Around the internet you see now people trying to defend the recognition of Kosovo with the only argument left: that all diplomatic options had been exhausted on Kosovo. But there never were serious negotiations about Kosovo. The first few years after the war the West refused to negotiate because they claimed that order had to be restored in Kosovo first. When negotiations finally started Ahtisaari arrived in Belgrade with the message that the only thing they could negotiate about were minority rights for Kosovo's Serbs.

In Georgia Russia gave extensive warnings to the Georgians not to attack. After the last Russian military exercise the general explicitly told that this was an exercise to be fast in South-Ossetia if needed. But somehow the Georgians were unable to understand that the Russians were serious about deterrence and saw only a chance for propaganda. Following their deterrence strategy the Russians needed some kind of punishment for Georgia. This might have been a Western condemnation of the Georgian attack but lacking that they went into Georgia proper.

So the Russian doctrine of defending fellow Russians is far less aggressive than you claim. They did not attack first. And they only recognized independence after Georgia had created a situation that they could compare to Kosovo.

I am squarely with Wim on this one. And the policy of the "frozen conflict" states have long been that while they don't oppose Kosovo independence 'per se', they do believe that they have more legal and historical grounds for independence than Kosovo.

[...] wanted to write a post comparing Kosovo and South Ossetia, but Dan Drezner has already written it. It’s a week old now, but still [...]