Russia: Other Points of View

New RMW Analysis posted

The New York Times article reviewed below sparked considerable reaction, including responses to a Russian translation posted on a Russian blog, from which The New York Times published selected comments. It contains numerous inaccuracies and reflects some one-sidedness in its assessment of religious pluralism and freedom in Russia, though it less propagandistic in nature than many previous articles on Russia appearing in the paper. Although the author attempts at times to strike a balance in the piece, an overall prejudiced context, a number of inaccuracies and one-sided perspectives that all point in one direction create an inescapable imbalance based on more than just the ‘only good news is bad news’ approach. Such negative reporting is especially in vogue in Western reportage on Russia, which tends to eschew a view appreciating Russia’s complexity and exaggerates the oppressiveness of its still soft authoritarian form of rule.

To access the content, please click here Download NYT_Levy_24_Apr_08.doc

New RMW Analysis posted

RMW Analysis of Megan Stack's article published in Los Angeles Times on April 17, 2008 is now available
Download LA_Times_Stack_17_Apr_08.doc

New RMW Analysis posted

RMW Analysis of Peter Finn's article published in Washington Post on April 8, 2008 is now available

Download WP_Finn_8_Apr_08.pdf (194.1K)

The Darkening of Colored Revolutions

Gordon M. Hahn

Photo from holamun2

On the eve of spring, the capital of Yerevan saw peaceful political protest dissolve into violence, 8 deaths, tens injured and arrested. The Armenian opposition, led by former Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan, was demanding new elections, charging that the authorities with falsifying the vote count of the 19 February presidential election. According to the official tally, 52 percent of the voters gave Serge Sarkisian, Petrosyan’s opponent and present Armenian President Robert Kocharian’s ally, prime minister Serge Sarkisian, was elected with 52 percent of the vote.

The bulk of the political opposition in Armenia, dissatisfied with and suspicious of the final results, rejected the official count and immediately called thousands of its supporters to Liberty Square for a permanent demonstration reminiscent of and indeed mimicking the Yugoslav, Georgian, Ukrainian, Kyrgyz, and even Lebanese ‘colored revolutions.’ The colored revolutions’ demonstration effect produced an explosive side effect in Yerevan. After ten days of largely peaceful demonstrations, violence broke out on 1 March between the government’s police forces and the opposition demonstrators. In addition to the loss of life, the Armenian government has declared emergency rule and suspended the rights of assembly and free media and relations between the Armenian government and opposition are now further polarized.

These sad results should be a lesson to U.S. and Western policymakers about the dangers of fomenting colored revolutions, no matter how peaceful and seemingly justified they might seem. Democratization at the fastest pace possible, in particular democratic revolution, is not the best solution to all problems everywhere and all the time.

New RMW Analysis posted

RMW Analysis of Donald Rumsfield's article published in WSJ on March 6, 2008 is now available

Download WSJ_Rumsfeld_28_Mar_08.pdf (197.9K)

Is a Russian Thaw Coming?

By Gordon M. Hahn - Senior Researcher, Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program and Adjunct Professor, Graduate School of International Policy Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, California and Senior Researcher, Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group. Dr Hahn is author of Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007) and Russia’s Revolution From Above (Transaction, 2002).

With the demise of winter and the arrival of a new leader, president-elect Dmitrii Medvedev, to the Kremlin in less than democratic circumstances, a Russian’s fancy naturally turns to the question of a political ‘thaw.’ Russian history has been a series of zigs and zags, periods of reform and counter-reform, punctuated by explosions of instability, violence, palace-coups, even revolutions. Emperor Paul’s reaction against Catherine the Great’s more enlightened rule was followed by aborted reforms under Alexander I. His son, Nikolai I, firmly established a bureaucratized police state under a reactionary ideology of ‘autocracy, Orthodoxy, and Russian nationality.’ Nikolai’s son, Alexander II, ushered in the “Great Reforms’ freeing the serfs and prepared a constitution. His assassination at the hands of anarchists prompted Alexander III to cancel his father’s political reforms and clamp down on press and society. After resisting and procrastinating, the 1905 revolution forced Alexander III’s son, Nikolai II, to introduce an elected parliament, which he later castrated. The failure to reform and World War I led to a potentially democratic revolution in February 1917 soon hijacked by the Bolsheviks in October. A brief retrenchment in Lenin’s revolutionary maximalism under the quasi-capitalist New Economic Policy in the early to mid-1920s was followed by Stalin’s rise to power. The Khrushchevan thaw followed the Stalin era of Great Terror, war, and more purges. Gorbachev’s perestroika came in the wake of the Brezhnev era of socialist stagnation and led to Yeltsin’s revolution from above, the collapse of the Soviet state, and the chaos of his rather anarchic democratization in the 1990s.

Response to Robert Kagan's “Old Europe, New Europe”, Washington Post, Feb 6, 2008 by Gordon Hahn

Gordon M. Hahn is a Senior Researcher, Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program and Adjunct Professor, Graduate School of International Policy Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, California and Senior Researcher, Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group. Dr Hahn is author of Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007) and Russia’s Revolution From Above (Transaction, 2002).

The Washington Post (WP) continues to provide print space only to journalists and pundits who level one-sided criticism of Russia’s domestic and foreign policy. In each dispute involving Russia: continued encroachment of Western military infrastructure around Russian borders (NATO, the ABM system to be deployed in Poland and the Czech Republic); Europe over gas supplies; and the West’s position on Kosovo; WP editorials and news reports, in violation of all journalistic standards of objectivity, support the side opposed to Russia.

Russia Media Watch will report inaccuracies, biases and violations of journalistic standards in major print media outlets ( New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, etc.), whether articles reflect positively or negatively on Russia. Unfortunately today, articles that lend credence to Russia’s position on any political issue are rarely published in American print media outlets.

Russia's Muslim/Arab Gambit by Gordon Hahn

The authority of the United States is in decline throughout the world, and power abhors a vacuum. Nowhere are these factors truer or more salient than in the Muslim world, especially the increasingly contentious Arab world and the geopolitically pivotal Persian Gulf region. This new reality has not been lost on Russian President Vladimir Putin and his revitalized Russia. Washington’s alienation of Russia since the 1990s and its underestimation of Russian ingenuity and power in the 2000s have transformed Russia from a potential ally into a fierce competitor. Strong elements within the Kremlin favor Moscow’s further shift toward closer relations and even alliances with countries opposed to the United States and its allies.

Nowhere are new partners and deals riper for the picking than in the Muslim, particularly the Arab world. Moscow now sees the Muslim and Arab worlds as key building blocks in its “multi-vectored” foreign policy designed to counter America’s hegemony within the international system and maximize Russia’s influence by multiplying its opportunities for political and more importantly business deals through a highly inclusive web of partnerships.