For years I have enjoyed Mark Helprin's novels - "Winter's Tale" is specifically quite good.  What many may not have known is that Helprin is a pretty prolific and uncompromising political opinion writer - and I believe that for many of my readers he may come off as strident and absolutist.  In other words, his writing not the typical dreamy political ramblings of an arts-oriented observer.  This is from his latest in the Wall Street Journal, which is sure to raise some objections among some of you, myself included:

What we have here is an inadvertent homage to Lewis Carroll: We are going to cancel a defense that takes five years to mount, because the threat will not materialize for five years. And we will not deploy land-based interceptors in Europe, because our new plan is to deploy land-based interceptors in Europe.

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Andrew Wilson of the European Council on Foreign Relations has a piece on Transitions Online which takes a look at some opinions of Gleb Pavlovsky and Yevgeny Gontmahker to debate what the Pikalyovo incident did and did not teach us about politics in Russia.Pikalyovo was also an attempt to address the inefficiencies in Putin's authoritarian project by creating what Russians call obratnaya sviaz ("reverse connection"). The system works, but only just. Russia still needs a modernization project, albeit not the "prosperity project," backed by good finances and sound macroeconomics, which the Putin-Medvedev tandem was originally supposed to implement. Not only will Russia have to proceed with fewer resources, it will have to tackle the flip side of a stronger state, what even Pavlovsky calls "severe monopolism in all social spheres," not just in government and the economy, but in the mass media and in society at ...

TODAY: Obama taxes Putin with living in the past; Pepsi's role in Cold War thaw; reserve currency may be discussed at Putin-Obama meeting; is Medvedev really the host?; Chechens suspected in Klebnikov murder on wanted listBarack Obama has verbally chastised Putin for keeping 'one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new'.  Medvedev hopes for 'intensive and full-fledged talks' with the US President.  Whilst Medvedev may be the official host, an op-ed piece in the Moscow Times argues that Obama needs to engage with Putin to tackle the thorniest issues.  During Obama's visit, a breakfast meeting with the Prime Minister may involve discussions of the reserve currency.  According ...