Word: putin
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...tone for the year was set. Remember when crazy Communist Gennadi Zyuganov was way up in the polls in Russia? Everyone was worried about that. So Boris Yeltsin starts the year by stepping down and handing power to Vladimir Putin. In Yugoslavia, Milosevic's bloody reign ends with a bloodless election. In Austria, that scary Jorg Haider gives up leadership of the ironically named Freedom Party. We didn't even drop any bombs on Iraq this year...
...Vladimir Putin...
...Situation Report: Having presided over Russia's catastrophic economic and social decline, Boris Yeltsin has now been replaced by a president with ambitions to restore Moscow?s big-power status. And President Vladimir Putin is quite happy to step on Washington's toes to do that, increasingly staking out positions that run counter to U.S. interests on the world stage - rebuilding Soviet-era relationships from Baghdad to Havana, openly discussing a strategic alliance with China and India to curb U.S. power on the global stage and, perhaps most important to Washington, looking to secure new orders for his country...
...Horizon: Plenty of challenges to U.S. interests on the global stage, particularly over missile defense. Putin currently has most of the European NATO members in his camp on this one right now, and turning them around will take some skillful diplomacy. Moscow and Beijing recently vowed to expand their own missile capabilities if Washington proceeds with the missile shield plan, which may make most U.S. allies dig their heels in for fear of reviving the arms race. There are also looming crises for Western interests along Russia?s borders, with Moscow likely to turn up the economic and political heat...
...Putin has thrown down the gauntlet, but the Bush Administration is full of old Cold Warriors. The challenge will be to develop a foreign policy that makes good on treating Russia as a competitor rather than an ally, but avoid alienating Washington's European allies who're already nervous about Bush's missile defense plans...