Obama’s ‘Reset’ Legacy: A Return of the USSR
In April 2006, two years into the second term of “President” Vladimir Putin of Russia, I formed a Russia blog called La Russophobe for one purpose: to warn the world that Putin, a proud KGB spy, would not surrender power as the Russian constitution required him to do in 2008 after two terms as “president.” Instead, we at LR warned, Putin would hold power forever — just like Brezhnev and Stalin, his heroes.
When Putin announced he would become prime minister in 2008, the writing was on the wall. LR begged the world continuously thereafter to see that Putin was rapidly turning Russia into what Jeffrey Taylor presciently called “Zaire, with permafrost” in 2001, shortly after Putin took power.
The Russophiles disagreed. They told us Russia could “never go back” to the dark days of unlimited central power, that Putin was only mentoring his “replacement” Dmitry Medvedev, that he would fade into the background and allow Russia to become a democratic, civilized country, if only we would let down our guard and give him a chance.
Last Saturday, at the convention of the sham “political party” called United Russia that Putin formed by personal fiat and then caused to totally dominate the Russian parliament, Putin announced he would cast out Russia’s one-term “president” Medvedev, who was never, just as we always said, anything more than Putin’s puppet, and return to the presidency having changed the constitution to allow six-year terms.
Putin openly admitted he had made this decision years ago, yet he told nobody about it, not even the Kremlin press secretary. When the Russian currency markets heard the news, the value of the ruble promptly plunged to its lowest level in two years, and the country’s highly respected finance minster resigned. Capital flight from Russia in the first half of 2011 has already nearly matched what occurred in the whole of 2010. One senior western banker told the Financial Times: “The country is going down the toilet.”
Putin had just announced a massive new military spending program one analysts predicted could bankrupt Russia the same way a similar program destroyed the USSR. He has consistently and continuously ratcheted up his crackdown on democracy and his aggressive moves towards Russia’s neighbors.
But none of it mattered to Washington. In a shocking display of cowardice worthy of Neville Chamberlain, Barack Obama almost immediately announced he’d carry on business as usual with Russia. Given the choice between: admitting his policy has failed and trying to correct it, preserving American values and moral leadership; or maintaining the fraud that Russia is a reliable partner regardless of the cost, Obama has immediately chosen the latter course. His Russia policy has led the United States to absolute disaster and debacle.
Dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky issued a stinging denunciation of America’s abandonment of moral leadership from behind the bars of his Siberian jail cell. But Obama ignored it, just as he has ignored all the other cries of Russia’s liberals, those willing to fight for American values inside Russia. He has been willing, even happy, to sell them down the river in order to put forth the pretense of a “reset” policy with Russia that was based on a relationship with Medvedev, now clearly shown to be a helpless stooge.
Putin retakes power even as sensational evidence has just been released of his extensive personal corruption while working in the local government ranks in the city of St. Petersburg. It was revealed long ago that just a short time after being plucked from his obscure post and deposited in the Kremlin, Putin received a Ph.D. degree from a local university based on a shamelessly plagiarized thesis. The world was warned from the beginning that Putin was a dishonest, dangerous man, but it paid no need.
Putin is now free to rule Russia as the nominal president for a grand total of twenty years. In actuality, because of the sham presidency of Medvedev, he will have held absolute power for a stunning twenty-four years by the time 2024 rolls around, at which point Putin will be 72 years old. Brezhnev had power for only 18 years. Stalin made it to 31, at age 75, so Putin can still call himself a moderate. But rest assured: 31 is in Putin’s sights. It only requires him to live to the age of 79.
Tsar Nikolai II, whose dictatorial rule ended in revolution, held power in Russia for only 23 years. By 2024 Putin will have ruled longer than Russia’s last king.
There is one thing, and one thing only, that will stop Putin from ruling Russia in 2025: death.
As long as Putin lives, he will rule Russia. He will bring back more and more of the attributes of his beloved USSR. More and more Russians will want to leave, and more and more obstacles will be placed in their path. More and more pressure will be placed on the internet, fewer and fewer career options will exist for young Russians who do not hew to the Putin ideology, which departs from the USSR in embracing religion.
The worst thing about all this from the Russian perspective is what it says about Russia’s talent pool. Apparently, there is only one man capable of running the country properly, and that man is Putin — who won’t live forever. This means there can be only one state when he passes: panic and collapse.
Unfortunately, it seems that neither the president of the United States nor his Russia advisor Michael McFaul reads our blog. If they had done so, they would not have helped Putin complete this malignant seizure of power by cooperating with his effort to hold Medvedev up as a legitimate president rather than a puppet. In doing so, Putin wanted to blunt and confuse any opposition efforts to block his return to power. Obama and McFaul were very important contributors to the Soviet restoration in Putin’s Russia.
It could have been different. America could have had real leadership, like that of Ronald Reagan. It could have stood up to Putin as soon as he orchestrated the sham proceeding of taking up the position of “prime minister” in 2008. It could have galvanized world opinion to demand that Putin not return to the presidency. It could have supported Russian democrats like Boris Nemtsov and Mikhail Kasyanov and Vladimir Ryzhkov as they bravely stood up to Putin. It could have demanded that at least one of them be allowed on the ballot in 2012.
Instead, Obama munched cheeseburgers with Medvedev and named McFaul as his ambassador to Russia, clearly signaling to Putin that the U.S. would not stand in his way. He listened to those who, on Putin’s behalf, asked us to drop our guard on Russia, to give Putin a chance to make a transition. We could have been working hard to warn the people of Russia about the danger of Putin returning to power, warning them about the dire consequences they would face. Instead, we did nothing. Now, we face a neo-Soviet state ruled for life by a proud KGB spy who has spent his entire life learning how to hate and destroy us, and more importantly someone who is totally unqualified to make Russia competitive in the global marketplace.
There is one last chance: before Putin’s name actually goes on the ballot, before he is actually reinstalled as “president” of Russia, the world can act. Russians can rise up and demand, just as they did when a Soviet putsch tried to unseat Mikhail Gorbachev, that their country not go backwards. The leaders of the Western democracies can announce that they will isolate and ostracize Putin’s Russia if it formally becomes a neo-Soviet state, and will do all they can to support his democratic opposition.
If this happens, Putin can be stopped just as the putsch was stopped. If it doesn’t, then Russia will, heedless of Santayana’s warning, slide back into the neo-Soviet mire that leads only to failure and national collapse. But meanwhile, just as the USSR always did, Russia will bedevil America, giving aid and comfort to its worst enemies, roiling the Middle East, pushing up the price of oil, and undermining American interests wherever it can.
This is the legacy of Barack Obama, this is the fate of Russia.
Russians have been shown to be a bunch of people who just want their iron potato bowl, and to hell with democratic institutions. They are too stupid and lazy to make democracy work. They are getting what they want and deserve. When they re-open the gulags, I will be laughing my guts out.
Oh yes – they are Jew-hating scumbags, too.
Unfortunately there are still many decent people who live there. And like their predecessors they will be murdered of escape. Had one in my house several weeks ago who came here twenty years ago with his wife and child. Left everything behind, very high educated man, who is now a Sears repairman. Wound up sitting down at my kitchen table and conversing for over an hour. Brilliant brilliant man who understands the hopelessness of the country and became very agitated over the fact that America is being hoodwinked into thinking everything is fine. He couldn’t say enough how much he loves America and gives thanks every day that he escaped. You can “laugh your guts out”? You sound no better than the monsters you decry. Should good decent people be rounded up and disposed of as no more than human irritants many will still weep for them. Myself included.
“Unfortunately there are still many decent people who live there.”
Any one who might have had the guts to challenge this either died in the Kolyma or moved, either to Israel or Sheepshead Bay.
They may be decent, but they are gutless and decent. Seriously, what happened even in just 20 years? In 1991, these people put themselves in front of tanks. Now, they are back to being the beaten, passive, demoralized serfs that they have been since Ivan the Terrible. The ones who never resisted when the NKVD took them away to die.
Does it really matter? The Slavic Russians are non-breeding themselves out of existence, and the recent uptick in birthrate is due to the growing Muslim population.
These people will be under Sharia Law even before France or Sweden. Putin may make that takeover bloodier, but the demographics make it inevitable.
Glad to see you know everyone who remains behind. You polled and interviewed them all, did you? You must have. You speak with so much authority. Please furnish your statistics when you have the chance, will you? Thanking you in advance.
“Gutless and decent ” …well the same can be said of the American people now that they have a man sitting in the White House who is out to bankrupt, socialize and destroy the country..yet they do nothing but complain on blogs. The man and his minions are socializing the best healthcare system in the world to the detriment of the American who will suffer under it-and they do nothing-but complain, yet you expect Russians to rise up and take to the streets in Russia….are Americans going to “take to the streets” as well, or sit back and take it, being gutless and decent.
Any person at all aware of vacuity has known about this for years. We knew that a game was going on. Putin and Medvedev were switching offices to perpetuate their duumvirate for life. This is why I refer to Putin as ‘The Little Father’, a reference to the Tsar. ‘the more things change, the more they remain the same.’
Why would anyone think any more of Obama. He’s a avowed marxist/socialist, so does it surprise anyone that he would support an maxist/communist? Obama is actually jealous of Putin. VP has done what the Constitution forbids the “one” from doing.
And you only have to take one look at Putin to know that he is a Criminal at heart. He has also been cultivating his own personality cult for years. Think of all the pictures of him taken on his vacations with his shirt off, riding horses over the russian steppes. Tsar Vladimir the First.
Russia may be lost for generations if something does not happen. Putin is a meglomaniac who is convinced of his superiority and has enough accolytes to pull it off. The Russian People who had lost most of thier confidence after being reduced to a minor player on the world stage were willing accomplices because he was returning Russia to its’ rightfull place on the world stage and this was also occuring at the same time that an economic boom was occurring so Russian citizens could not easily see the dangers,
President Bush was largely distracted by the War on Terror but at the end of his Presidency he realized his mistake but it was too late. President Obama promised Smart Diplomacy and has given us childish diplomacy instead. Difficult times require strong leaders and ironically Russia has a strong leader while the U.S. has a weak one. Being a strong leader does not mean you are a good leader but a weak leader is never a good one.
They’ve been slaves for a thousand years. They have no more idea of what democracy is than does the arab world. They are crude, materialistic bullies.
They are dying, slowly, via low birth rates. Their death throes may be dangerous.
At one point, I thought they deserved and could use another thousand years of lining up for moldy onions and potatoes, to keep them basically fed and controlled by a leadership more rational than the brutal, Jew hating man in the street.
They’ll get a few decades of dictatorship, now, instead, as democracy never took root. Just as good.
What Putin doesn’t understand is that if he holds on to power until his death, there will be a huge struggle for power once he dies. Any hint of democracy in Russia will be gone when you have his toadies trying to literally kill each other so that they can replace him. In short, Russia will fall right back into the Stalin era, only with western cars, western appliances, western computers, and western blue jeans. I wonder how long it will be before Putin actually tries to have communism make a comeback? If the past is any indication, not long at all, especially if he can prove that life for the average Russian under capitalism isn’t that great.
By the time Putin is dead, the country will either be Islamic majority or close to it.
This country had a self-destructing low birthrate longer than Western Europe has. And it is compounded by emigration of young people — some of which you and I have both run into in NJ.
The USA’s natural birth rate is below replacement rate, and has been for more than 35 years except for a brief blip in 2006/2007. The only things that keep you in the lead for population growth among industrialized countries are immigration and the anomalously high birth rate among Hispanics.
Don’t take my word for it. Check it out for yourself.
http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=9843
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive/ldn/2010/apr/10040802
What is it about that country that attracts psychopaths for leaders? His strange looking mug has been featured in a lot of news stories lately and he looks even odder now. He looks plasticized. As if someone created a rubber mask of his face and placed it carefully on the original. I don’t know how anyone can look at him and not get what he is. Which makes the remarks from George Bush about looking deep into his eyes and seeing a nice guy all the more asinine. He is a dangerous psycho and in that he carries on the tradition.
This is just more evidence that Obama and his cronies are just incapable of formulating an original thought.
Throughout the Cold War, academic liberals blamed poor US-USSR relations on the US. Soviet apologists told us:
Communism wasn’t bad.
The economic security of the citizens was worth the loss of personal freedom.
Stalin was an aberration.
The USSR lost so many men and women in WWII that they would never want to fight another war.
Russia conquered nearby countries as a pre-emptive defensive manuever.
The citizens of Soviet captive nations loved communism, they just weren’t thrilled with Soviet domination.
To liberals, the Soviet Union was never a threat; they were merely reacting with justifiable concern to our own aggressive posturing. Obama absorbed all this and clearly believed it. The Reset button was an idiotic, pandering stunt designed to let Putin know that Obama totally believed that the US was the problem all along. The Reset button was not, however, a surprise. It was exactly the gesture that the American left had always wanted to make towards the Soviet Union.
Russia today is not the Soviet Union, but Obama hasn’t figured that out.
Then perhaps you should have named your blog: La Putinphobe.
We are all witnessing this on the UNSC. Why is Russia blocking sanctions against Basher al-Assad? Money, pure and simple, investments; Russia, China, and Iran have invested heavily in Assad and they have a vested interest in the West not getting on the ground and seeing what has been, and continues to be, done.
http://msmignoresit.blogspot.com/2011/09/syria-iran-and-russia.html
This is a must see! Bezmenov on demoralization in America
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlpODYhnPEo
Hey, maybe Putin and Obama are on the same side!
Maybe??
I’d say it is a slam-dunk certainty!
Obama’s ‘Reset’ Legacy: A Return of the USSR
I think you mean the Indonesian Imbecile’s “Overcharged” (as in a battery about to blow) as that is the actual word that was used in the most pathetic joke in the history of international diplomacy (another precedent for The Precedent). The “Overcharged” fiasco, at least, was dumb enough and ridiculous enough to almost wipe away memories of the insane boxed set of (wrong format) DVDs given to Prime Minister Brown as a … gift … and the iPod full of Barky’s meaningless stutter-fests that the queen was honored with.
However, giving credit where it’s due, the relationship between America and the neo-Soviets has certainly been overcharged since the Indonesian Imbecile has occupied the White House.
Bravo Mr Zigfeld. No-one should ever have thought any better of Putin, who has never hidden his desire to restore, opportunistically and as the occasion permits, the old Soviet sphere of influence. His other hero, God help us, is Yuri Andropov, a murderer and sociopath with (as Mitrokhin discolsed) all manner of absurd paranoid fantasies about the west. Putin has stated openly that he regards Andropov as a model of the selfless, uncorrupt public servant.
And the reset button. This was a piece of mawkish sentimentality that only the infantilized fools of the US State Department could have conceived of, a gesture by facebook out of close encounters of the third kind. The harder, seasoned men of the Kremlin and the FSB would have viewed it with bemusement and contempt, and with satisfaction at the realization that their hard-nosed american opponents had become foolish, ignorant and sentimental.
Depressing stuff, for the whole civilized world.
“Mr.” Zigfeld. Ha, ha!! What gave it away? The meaty thighs, or the deep voice?
I formed a Russia blog called La Russophobe for one purpose: to warn the world that Putin, a proud KGB spy, would not surrender power as the Russian constitution required him to do
Unfortunately your Russophobia (ie bigotry) goes well beyond that. I see you’ve even been making negative remarks about Russian players at the NY Times tennis blog. Pathetic.
This analysis is astounding in that it does an excellent job of monitoring Russia and Putin, and fails so miserably in seeing the “writing on the wall” about america and OBAMA. This latter joker is about ten times more dangerous than Putin, has all but destroyed america, and hence the world, paving road for a global socialist thug government. He didn’t goof up with Russia/Putin. He WANTS that to happen. He didn’t goof up with Islamic Spring in the middle-east: He has designed it. The thing is, Socialists/Communists are a GLOBAL crime family. Always have been. Why would the capo in charge of America create hurdles if an old territory held by The Family is being reclaimed for The Family by a fellow capo?
When Putin arrested the main man who founded Russia`s giant oil developement, i knew he was of the old school, in fact the first time i ever saw his weasel looking face i knew he was a real conman, when Bush looked into his eyes, and down into his soul…GWB was deceived, by the master of deception
Never in the history of this earth have there ever been such a
release of total anarchy, and such evil….Satan truly has been released to dominate this earth….2 cor. 4,4 states that Satan is the god of this world, or earth….he was only allowed to do his evil as long as Jehovah allowed him to do….now he has been given free rein to strew his evil upon humanity….all but the ELECT of G0d…..This part is more or less off limits….Are you one of these Elects…I am, and anyone that has called upon Jesus the Savior, for his Great salvation, and deliverance from sin….I am not afraid of them that can destroy this old body, I do fear HIM THAT HAS THE POWER TO DESTROY BOTH BODY AND SOUL…Call upon the Savior of the world, and be saved from your Captor,”Satan” and live in the safe comfort of the L0rd Jesus Christ…AMEN
“Every time I look into Putin’s eyes I see three letters – KGB”
its not suprising. obama ans his ilk are ideolouges that will never bend to facts. they have to be right even when wrong. it does not matter how many suffer and die because of marxist progressive policies as long as they are in power. people who support them are either fools of the highest caliber or wannaabe dictators themselves. either case these are people that should not have time and effort wasted on reasing with them, but crushed and silenced like the child like cockroaches they are
Russians are sick-in-the-head bunnies, they love Putin, because the food is now decent and plentiful, something new for Russians they have not seen since the 19th century. Remember, they are mostly mentally ill, especially the 30+ year-old ones.
Stay away from them….
This should hardly come as a surprise. It took a lot longer than I expected, but the probable outcome was clear when the USSR fell – namely, that another Fascist government would take over. Russian culture appears to be incapable of supporting Democracy, both from lack of experience and the destruction of any vestige of civilization by the Soviet regime.
Explain to me why you think Obama could have done anything ?
America is a paper tiger, everybody knows it. Instead of annoying Putin he is playing nice. So what? It’s not like he can do anything about it. He can’t do anything about anything. At least in this case he doesn’t pretend…
What a load of hysterical twaddle. Good thing you did this on paper (figuratively speaking) instead of in your pants.
You go on and on like an Yngwie Malmsteen guitar solo about “Putin the proud KGB spy” as if he ran the organization, but he was a minor agent in East Germany. Yet your eyes go out of focus and your knees tremble every time Novaya Gazeta publishes another anti-government rant – not to mention your rushing to quote it as if it were holy writ – and the owner of Novaya Gazeta is Alexander Lebedev, former proud KGB spy.
Nobody ever told you Putin was “only mentoring” Medvedev, and that he would go quietly once Medvedev was established: quite a few Russia analysts said Medvedev was only a placeholder, and that Putin intended to pick up the reins again. If, as you imply, he also ruled Russia for the 4 years he was Prime Minister, I’m glad to hear it. That would mean all the liberal reforms proposed by Medvedev – for which he received grudging acknowledgement in the west – were actually Putin’s ideas! Imagine that.
You suggest Russia will collapse and die when Putin is gone, since he’s the only man who can run the country, but you have been predicting Russia’s collapse on your whackjob blog since you started it and, true to form, there’s another new article up in your latest entry that announces Russia is collapsing yet again. You missed your calling – you should have been a meteorologist, or maybe an economist. Nobody pays much attention to them when they’re wrong, either, and they still get to go on with their cackling dancing-around-the-cauldron predictions.
Fortunately, you’re just another harmless nutjob whose biggest value lies in amusement.
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