"History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme." - Mark Twain

David Satter, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and visiting scholar at SAIS, has done an amazing thing to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. He has taken a topic which normally takes about 1,000 words just to introduce, and distilled one of its principal lessons for today's geopolitical arena into just about 1,000 words.

In particular, and very significantly, he closes in on what continues to be one of the defining struggles of our time: the challenge of engaging with an ideology that leaves no room for alternative discourse. Twenty years ago, that ideology was Communism. Today it

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This is from a new interview with David Satter on the International Affairs Forum:The other thing that I heard, and that I think is credible, is that they need time to prepare a kind of pretext. It's not a simple direct invasion of Georgia without any pretext like the one that Saakashvili so generously provided them for the first invasion. That would be difficult because not only would it cast doubt on the legitimacy of the second invasion, it would raise questions about the first one. Now, to prepare a real pretext for invading Georgia, you need to put some work in. For the first invasion, the preparations began months before the actual crossing of the border. It might be the same in this case. I think for the moment they don't have the pretext that they need and I think that, more than anything else, is what is restraining ...

This is from my latest contribution to the Huffington Post:

No one can cast personal blame for a murder when the culprit is an entire system of grand corruption. For years now, self-enriching state officials have gorged themselves on public institutions while withering away democratic rights, reflected by a corruption ranking of 147. The government of Chechnya is perhaps one of the worst, as the decision by Putin to pass total control of the region to the 32-year-old Kadyrov is akin to placing the State of New York under control of the Gambino crime family (no disrespect to the Gambinos).

When such a high number of government officials are in on the take, by definition the justice system does not work. From here, there is a thread connecting

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Der Spiegel has supposedly obtained confidential documents written by the EU team led by Ambassador Heidi Tagliavini that is investigating the war last summer. There are quite a few interesting little nuggets in Der Spiegel's write-up. Here are a few:

The confidential investigative commission documents, which SPIEGEL has obtained, show that the task of assigning blame for the conflict has been as much of a challenge for the commission members as it has for the international community. However, a majority of members tend to arrive at the assessment that Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili started the war by attacking South Ossetia on August 7, 2008. The facts assembled on Tagliavini's desk refute Saakashvili's claim that his country became the innocent victim of "Russian aggression" on that day.

The experts found no evidence to support claims by the Georgian president, which he also mentioned

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Just when I thought I was all done posting video interviews from my last trip to Washington, I saw Bob's post today about the Gary Hart and Dmitri Simes article about realism, interests, and the prospects for cooperation between the Obama Administration and Russia.  In response, I have gathered together some of the last scraps of the interview I shot with David Satter from the cutting room floor, as his comments strangely seem to engage almost in a direct dialogue with the Hart and Simes piece, especially in terms of debating realism (though the interview occured a month before this article was published).  Some of my questions to Satter stemmed from an article he published in Forbes in November 2008 containing advice for Obama on Russia, including the point to "ignore the realists."  Taken together, the video ...

José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director of Human Rights Watch, has published an opinion article in today's Washington Post criticizing the human rights abuses of the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.  Although I am certainly influenced by the fact that I represent political prisoners in both Russia and Venezuela, I can't help but read Vivanco's piece and see some strong comparative parallels between the processes, trends, and methodologies used by both Vladimir Putin and his Latin American counterpart with respect to managing their human rights and democratic shortcomings. 

The growing convergence of the Russia-Venezuela relationship is one that should be obvious just from the newspaper headlines.  No sooner had Chávez made his relatively small nation of 26 million citizens the #1 buyer

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During my interview with David Satter, I asked about the Russian decision to push the United States out of the Manas air base in Kyrgyzstan, thereby hampering NATO's chances of success in Afghanistan - which is arguably one example of NATO working to contribute to Russian national security - among other topics (missiles, Ukraine, proliferation in Iran, etc.).  Surely Russia has some "legitimate" security concerns that the West should recognize and work together on, but often the diplomacy pushes out in other directions toward seemingly "invented" security concerns to play politics.  On the other hand, so far any overtures to cooperate on security are poorly received.  What gives?  Here is one opinion: ...

Below is a video compilation of some of the interviews I shot in Washington DC this month with various Russia and Caucasus experts, this time commenting on the current political crisis in Georgia, the August invasion by Russia, and the general trend of confrontation in the region.  Svante Cornell, of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute of Johns Hopkins University, Paul Goble, a former U.S. official and blogger at Window on Eurasia, and David Satter are featured in the video.

We recently conducted several separate interviews with several Russia experts, including David Satter, Anders Aslund, Svante Cornell, Ariel Cohen, and Paul Goble, to ask them about their impressions of President Dmitry Medvedev's independence and range of influence vis-à-vis the overshadowing power of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.  This topic has recently come up again following Medvedev's choice of Novaya Gazeta as an interview platform, and the reiteration of his liberal credentials.  The video below includes some of the excerpts of these interviews. 

We recently conducted several separate interviews with several Russia experts, including David Satter, Anders Aslund, Svante Cornell, Ariel Cohen, and Paul Goble, to ask them about their impressions of President Dmitry Medvedev's independence and range of influence vis-à-vis the overshadowing power of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.  This topic has recently come up again following Medvedev's choice of Novaya Gazeta as an interview platform, and the reiteration of his liberal credentials.  The video below includes some of the excerpts of these interviews.