Word: putin
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...risk. Russia seems committed to the notion that there should be some sort of supranational entity, governed from the Kremlin, that would oversee much of the former Soviet territories. This attitude reflects in part the intense nationalistic mood that now permeates Russia's political élite. Vladimir Putin, former President and now Prime Minister, is riding this nationalist wave, exploiting it politically and propagating it with the Russian public. Some now even talk of a renewed Russian military presence in Cuba as a form of retaliation against the U.S. for its support of the independence of the post-Soviet states...
...Georgian crisis is a critical test for Russia. If Putin sticks to his guns and subordinates Georgia and removes its freely elected President - something Putin's Foreign Minister has explicitly called for - it is only a question of time before Moscow turns up the heat on Ukraine and the other independent but vulnerable post-Soviet states. The West has to respond carefully but with a moral and strategic focus. Its objective has to be a democratic Russia that is a constructive participant in a global system based on respect for sovereignty, law and democracy. But that objective can be achieved...
When Russia sent shells raining down on Georgia, it seemed initially as if Vladimir Putin was savagely pursuing what he saw as Russian national interests. Moscow claimed Georgian aggression against Russian loyalists in South Ossetia and has objected to both Georgia's bid to join NATO and the Pentagon's arming and training of the Georgian military. But a closer examination of the run-up to Putin's inexcusable invasion suggests that Russia's action had as much to do with its wounded pride as with its alleged impaired security...
...Thucydides long ago concluded that people go to war out of "honor, fear and interest." Putin seems to have chosen conflict largely out of honor, or, put another way, out of perceived humiliation - one of the most prevalent, least explored factors behind global violence...
...When Western countries recognized Kosovo earlier this year, Russia's NATO ambassador, Dmitri Rogozin, telegraphed Moscow's plans by threatening to "proceed from the assumption that to be respected, we have to use brute military force." Putin said the "stick" that Western countries had employed "will come back to knock them on the head...