Carnegie Moscow Center
After abandoning the Soviet Union, Russia prolonged and reproduced the same basic system, but without communism. In comparison, Ukraine is on the positive side of the process of taking shape as a state and a nation.
Snowden did not create the security-privacy dilemma, but he did illuminate a deeply rooted problem that Western leaders have long tried to obscure.
While the world waits for a Fourth Wave of Democracy, it is witnessing a diametrically different phenomenon: a surge of new authoritarianism.
The Russian and Chinese states are trying to use Snowden, as well as Assange, to discredit liberal democracies—above all, the United States. The Kremlin also sees the Snowden case as a way to crack down on democratic freedoms inside of Russia.
The causes and nature of the Russian and Turkish protests, as well as the respective regimes’ reactions to them, are strikingly similar.
Putin does not want a collision with the West, but at the same time he wants to contain the West both within and around Russia.
Introducing a normative dimension into the U.S. relationship with the Kremlin will complicate bilateral relations, but it will also help the United States regain the trust and respect of Russia’s pro-Western constituency.
Russia has embarked on its own “pivot” toward China, but it is far from certain that Moscow will find Beijing a comfortable partner.
Western society wants to bring back a normative dimension to foreign policy and stop the export of corruption from authoritarian and semi-authoritarian countries to the West.
For the first time, Moscow has said openly that it will limit the West and its influence not only in Russian territory but also in the post-Soviet countries.