Want to Really Know the Name of Russia's New President?? Posted by Adam Blickstein

Okay, Tim Russert, here's your chance to get more information about Russia's upcoming presidential election and what it means strategically for U.S./Russian relations. NSN held a conference call today with two Russia experts, Mark Brzezinski, Former Director for Russian/Eurasian affairs on the National Security Council, and Mike McFaul, Director, Center on Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law at Stanford University. Below are some choice quotes, and the full audio:

Mark Brzezinski

"We should tell the Russians that it would be good if your neighbors feared you less."

"It’s possible that Putinism may be the last gasp of the old regime, and it may well be the case that within the next decade, the Putin-Medvedev government might be replaced by a new generation of Russians, many of them who are trained in the west…who are not products of the KGB and more open to the west."

Mike McFaul

"In my opinion it’s the least competitive election in Russia’s post communist history…Several years ago we had a debate about whether Russia was on an autocratic path or not. I think that debate is over in the West. Some people want to use adjectives, say it’s a weak autocracy, soft auto, but the word autocracy is the noun now rather than democracy being qualified."

"The overriding strategic objective of Russian foreign policy today is to balance against  what they would call the American hegemon…It’s fundamentally different than it was you under Gorbachav and Yeltsin and the early years of Putin, which was integration with the West. I think its going to take a long time to change that."

Russian Experts Discuss Upcoming Election.mp3

Comments

[Peace]

What Brzenzinski and McFaul fail to realize is that the expansion of NATO and the American support of nationalists in the Ukraine and Georgia has made Russians from all political spectrums unite around Putins nationalism. The only way to combat this rising nationalism in Russia is implement the proposal to totally eliminate the nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia that was proposed by a bipartisan coalition that included the likes of Sam Nunn and Henry Kissinger and is now supported by Barak Obama. By eliminating these weapons maybe this will send a signal to Russian politicans that America does not want to acheive military domination over them and thereby easing the paranoira about the West that fuels Russian nationalism