STOLYPIN FAILED (via Pepys):

Putin versus Cheney (Anatol Lieven, 5/12/06, International Herald Tribune)

In many ways, Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney are rather similar characters. Both are highly intelligent, but both see the world above all through the restrictive prisms of security and national power.

Both are patriots, but - like so many leaders - with a tendency to see national power and their own power as one and the same thing.

One of the hallmarks of the Realists is the inability to distinguish the nationalism of someone like Putin, who only cares about Russia and Russians, from the patriotism of a Dick Cheney, who believes in a set of universalist American ideals. It's an especially peculiar blindness since the difference is rather easily expressed: Russia's only hope for the future is further Americanization, while the notion of a Russian America is a non sequitur.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 12, 2006 10:54 AM