Word: yeltsin
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...Although this summer's visitors included former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Issyk-Kul now draws a more mixed crowd. "The best kebabs in Central Asia, then the discos and, in the morning, the beach" is how my city-slicker friend Aidai described the lake's attractions as we set out. By late afternoon we were lolling on cushions in a garden caf?, munching on skewers of delicious grilled meat...
Some politicians can use weaponry to look cool--remember Yeltsin on a tank? But at a recent reception in a supporter's house in Atlanta, the strategy backfired on campaigning Republican Representative BOB BARR of Georgia. A National Rifle Association board member and gun-safety advocate, Barr was inspecting a 1908-model Colt .38-cal. pistol with his friend, lobbyist Bruce Widener, when the weapon discharged. Nobody was hurt, but Representative John Linder, Barr's opponent in the Republican primary for the state's Seventh District, found plenty of ammunition. At his next appearance with Barr, he joked...
...Sober but sick," said Bill Clinton on catching sight of Russian President Boris Yeltsin at the Cologne G-8 summit in 1999. Clinton was a shrewd judge of his counterpart's state. By the end of Clinton's presidency, writes Strobe Talbott in his excellent new book, The Russia Hand (Random House; 478 pages), the American had met Yeltsin almost as many times as Clinton's nine predecessors combined had met their Russian equals...
...contact worth it? At the time, many didn't think so. In the last years of Yeltsin's rule, he had become an always ailing, often drunk figure at the head of a corrupt state and chaotic economy. Why suck up to such a man? Talbott--a former editor at TIME who was a key policymaker on Russia throughout the Clinton years, ending up as Deputy Secretary of State--makes a convincing case for taking Yeltsin seriously. In his telling, Clinton's Russian policy was motivated above all by realism. Clinton and his team knew that Yeltsin wasn't perfect...
They were right, as the Administration of George W. Bush implicitly acknowledged in 2001, when Bush sought a strategic partnership with Vladimir Putin, Yeltsin's successor. Talbott's book is a useful reminder of a larger truth: Clinton had his successes. In the 1990s, American policy was bound to be messy, as the world escaped the shadow of the cold war. Often, the best option was to hope that things would turn out better one day and do what little one could to help them along. Clinton's team managed to do that with Russia. That's worth raising...