Russia Hacks the World

Posted by on Aug 10, 2016 in Articles, Featured, Russia and Eastern Europe | 0 comments The email trove that WikiLeaks released on the eve of the Democratic National Convention has all the hallmarks of a dirty tricks campaign. The messages reveal, among other things, that the Democratic National Committee tried its best to tilt the electoral playing field in favor of Hillary Clinton. For anyone who has had even the slightest interaction with the Democratic Party — or mainstream...
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Ukraine and Europe: Much Depends on the Dutch

Posted by on Apr 10, 2016 in Articles, Europe, Featured, Russia and Eastern Europe | 0 comments The future of Europe is being decided this week in the Netherlands. Perhaps you thought that the European Union’s fate would be voted up or down in June, when the United Kingdom holds its referendum on continued membership. The “leave now” constituency in the UK currently holds a four-point lead, though much depends on whether younger British voters who are more EU-friendly will actually...
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Poland’s Tea Party Movement

Posted by on Feb 24, 2016 in Articles, Eastern Europe, Europe, Featured, Russia and Eastern Europe | 0 comments On a rainy day in April 1990, I journeyed to the outskirts of Warsaw to one of those functional Communist-era apartment building complexes to meet with Antoni Macierewicz. The opposition leader’s apartment contrasted sharply with its grim institutional surroundings. It was an aristocratic enclave full of books, antiques, and prints on the wall. Macierewicz himself exuded an Old World kind of...
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Is Putin Really as Foolish as We Are?

Posted by on Oct 15, 2015 in Articles, Featured, Russia and Eastern Europe, US Foreign Policy | 1 comment Nixon lied. Surely this is not a shocker. But what’s interesting about the latest revelation about the Nixon administration and the Vietnam War is that the most duplicitous president in U.S. history actually knew that the U.S. air war in Southeast Asia was a dismal failure. Even as Nixon was telling the media that the saturation bombings of Vietnam and Laos were “very effective,” he was...
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Authoritarian Symps

Posted by on May 28, 2015 in Articles, Featured, Human Rights, Russia and Eastern Europe | 0 comments In the bad old days of the Cold War, the left and the right used to play a nasty game called “Who’s Your Favorite Dictator?” Right-wing ideologues supported authoritarian leaders like Augusto Pinochet of Chile while left-wing ideologues rhapsodized over Communist leaders like Fidel Castro of Cuba. One side embraced the shah of Iran and Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines as “our...
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The Kremlin’s Kool-Aid

Posted by on Mar 12, 2015 in Featured, Russia and Eastern Europe | 0 comments We were nearing the end of dinner when the eminent personage leaned in my direction and began yelling at me. Up to that point, the argument among the five of us at the end of the long table at the restaurant had been heated but at a conversational volume. The fact that we were arguing at all was at least partly my fault. After all, I’d brought up the subject of Russia. Just before the entrees...
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