Tuesday at the Heritage Foundation an all-day event was held which featured several prominent officials, activists and scholars, most notably Speaker Boehner and chess grandmaster/leader of the dissident group “Other Russia,” Gary Kasparov. Most speakers had been skeptical of the reset since its inception, seeing it as a negotiation from weakness and a consigning of … Continue reading
Author Archives: Glen Johnson
The Mess in Belarus
In the fairy tale world of Belarusian President Lukashenko, the answer to his falling popularity leading up to the December 2010 elections was simple: an across the board 50 percent salary increase for all public employees. Given the fact that a full eighty percent of the Belarusian economy is state owned, one can imagine the … Continue reading
Ukraine’s Uncertain Path
By: Glen Johnson Ukraine is facing real retrogression. The trial and conviction of Yulia Tymoshenko is symptomatic of the blatantly political turn Ukrainian state institutions have recently taken as well as the astounding incompetency of the Yanukovich administration. The politicizing of state institutions extends to all branches of government: the parliament was transformed into a … Continue reading
Prospects of a Eurasian Union
By: Glen Johnson In his first real adumbration of a policy trajectory for his upcoming third presidential term, PM Putin wrote in Tuesday’s Izvestiya of plans for a Eurasian Union. The proposed union goes beyond economics, entailing “a close integration based on new values and economic and political foundation…” The plan, combined with Putin’s past … Continue reading
Post-Imperium and the Future of Russia
By: Glen Johnson Yesterday at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, noted Russian scholar Dmitry Trenin gave a talk to promote his newest book Post-Imperium: A Eurasian Story, as well as offer his thoughts on the current news coming out of Moscow. He spoke of the “Putin model,” which he aptly characterizes as a state/society … Continue reading
Two Visions, Two Russias
By: Glen Johnson Interpreters of modern Russia find themselves essentially in one of two camps. The leading school of interpretation in the West is staffed by a sort of psychologist, who interprets Russian foreign policy as a result of lasting anguish from an expropriated imperial inheritance. The picture painted by this curious blend of psychoanalyst … Continue reading
A Day at the Atlantic Council: Perspectives on the Russian-American Reset
By: Glen Johnson On Friday I had the good fortune of attending a talk at the Atlantic Council entitled “Russia and the West: Moving the Reset Forward?” The experts in attendance, ranging from academics to state officials, were top notch and the various themes covered proved very topical, such as “The State of the Reset” … Continue reading
Exxon’s Russian Success
By: Glen Johnson The urban landscape of contemporary Moscow is a far cry from its Marxist-Leninist days. Indeed, one would now be hard-pressed to find a major American fast food company whose presence is not ubiquitous in Moscow; among more recent additions to the scene one will find Papa Johns, Wendy’s, and Burger King. The … Continue reading
Policy Interns 