Bush the weakling
Something terrible is happening in Russia. They're becoming an ultra-belligerant autocratic state. From TNR:
There are two reasons the next Russian government will be a fascist one. First, Putin has annihilated all opposition except for the Kremlin's pocket opposition, an extreme nationalist party called Motherland. The Kremlin's creation of Motherland was part of a time-honored government strategy of advancing false dichotomies to demonstrate that the sole alternative is far worse than the incumbents. But, almost as soon as it was created a year ago, Motherland took on a life of its own and has become a relatively popular political force.
The second reason is that fascism is what Russians want. They tell pollsters they are willing to sacrifice their freedoms. They say they want all Chechens to be evicted from Moscow and other large cities. They crave an extreme crackdown. "A totalitarian state cannot be blackmailed by the threat of death of civilians," said Mikhail Leontyev, one of Russia's most prominent pundits, in his nightly commentary on federal Channel One, the most-watched network. "Terrorism happens only in democracies." Leontyev's words express both the Kremlin's and the public's agenda: Polls show that a majority of Russians will readily cede their civil liberties to security services. The security services, in turn, are behaving accordingly. Last week, Moscow police beat up a Chechen man, famed cosmonaut Magomed Tolboyev. Human rights advocates say beatings of ordinary Chechens and other Muslims are now commonplace occurrences in Russia.
In fact, the population has become so extreme that Moscow is actually trying to tamp down its wilder impulses. In an effort to control extremism, the Kremlin has directed anger at outside forces. It has led rallies to suggest that the United States and Great Britain are heading a worldwide conspiracy against Russia, using the Chechens as pawns--but pawns to be annihilated--to weaken Russia. This view, too, has been voiced by the extremely popular Leontyev, who said, "You have to understand that the cold war did not begin with Churchill and did not end with perestroika and the new thinking. And we are not the ones who started this war." He then argued that Americans are funding Russia's enemies, including the Chechens and Georgians.
Yet, while Russia is verging toward fascism, Putin might not benefit from the tide. His once-unshakable electoral rating has been falling steadily for months, and in August, it hit an all-time low. In a Levada Center poll, only 38 percent of respondents said Putin had fulfilled the hopes they had when he became president. And that was before the wave of terrorism. After the Beslan tragedy, a third of respondents said they disapproved of Putin's actions during the crisis--an extremely high figure for Russia, where only 10 percent were critical of the president two years ago, after a botched operation to save hostages in a Moscow theater. By cracking down now, Putin is trying both to do what Russians want and to strengthen his own position at the helm. But, if his measures do not prove sufficient to protect his people, Putin will likely lose power. And, in a country with no democratic mechanisms for changing leaders, that change of regime could well be violent, a combination of popular riots and a rebellion of the security forces. As the anger overflows, Russians will demand a leader willing to take even more extreme measures.
Who would emerge from the violence? Right now it's hard to predict. One candidate is Dmitry Rogozin, leader of Motherland and former leader of a fascist political organization called the Congress of Russian Communities. Another possible candidate is Eduard Limonov, a writer whose Nationalist Bolshevik Party is the only viable grass-roots political movement in Russia today. The Kremlin is scared of the ultranationalist Limonov, who was jailed for his political activities and released just over a year ago. But Limonov, though he inspires many young Russians to tackle politics, may ultimately prove too Western for Russia, because his platform makes no reference to the Russian Orthodox Church.
Or it may be someone else. In the near-total vacuum that is Russian political life today, a new name can surface very fast. But the fact that Rogozin and Limonov are the two names most often bandied about points to the part of the political spectrum from which the new leader will emerge: He will be an extreme nationalist dictator. There is indeed something to be more terrified of than terrorism.
I think the author (Masha Geshen) exagerates a bit. But one thing's for sure:
Bush has sat on his hands and allowed Russia to become a dictatorship. He hasn't even made a single negative public statement towards the Kremlin.
Bush's "hands off" policy, reserved for every state except for Iraq, has also worked wonderfully in Iran, North Korea, and Sudan.
