[Ohio UZO News] WP (2); EDM

[Deychak, Orest]

The Washington Post
Editorial
Silence of America; Cutting the VOA's presence in Mr. Putin's neighborhood 
16 February 2007
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FOR DECADES, the Voice of America and its sister broadcasting organizations
offered a remarkably balanced alternative to state-controlled media all over
the world, buoying dissident movements and undermining anti-American
dictatorships for a relatively small investment. Soviet citizens even
learned how to reconfigure their radios to break through the jamming signals
their government used to interrupt VOA and British Broadcasting Corp.
programming. 

Now, with Russian President Vladimir Putin bullying his neighbors,
manipulating the Russian media and throwing increasingly audacious
anti-American tantrums, one would think U.S. policymakers would have the
sense at least to maintain relatively modest VOA operations in and around
the Russian Federation. Yet President Bush's recently released 2008 budget
proposal does just the opposite, cutting VOA programming for a range of
post-Soviet states to finance programming expansion in other areas of the
world. 

The White House's proposed reprioritization of VOA broadcasting moves money
out of operations aimed at the large and largely Muslim country of
Uzbekistan. Broadcasting into neighboring Kazakhstan is also being cut. The
citizens of both countries live under illiberal regimes, and Uzbekistan's
brutal dictatorship is of the sort that incubates religious fundamentalism
and anti-Americanism. Voice of America's half-hour of radio and half-hour of
television programming in Uzbek, says a VOA staff member, provide about the
only direct contact Uzbeks have with the United States and the only
unvarnished news in the region. Meanwhile, the highly controlled Russian
media beam their often misleading programming in with ease. 

Mr. Bush's budget also proposes reductions in Ukrainian-language VOA
programming to serve a country struggling to Westernize in the shadow of Mr.
Putin's increasingly lawless regime. Mr. Bush should be eager to encourage
democratic forces in Ukraine, as well as in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, not
further limit their sources of information about the United States. The
price of such programs is so low that federal financial constraints are
hardly an excuse to kill them; a relatively tiny increase in the VOA's
budget would make a world of difference. 

 <http://www.washingtonpost.com> http://www.washingtonpost.com

The Washington Post
Editorial
The Putin Doctrine 
Charles Krauthammer 
801 words
16 February 2007
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Vladimir Putin -- Russia's president, although the more accurate title would
be godfather -- made headlines last week with a speech in Munich that set a
new standard in anti-Americanism. He not only charged the United States with
the "hyper-use of force," "disdain for the basic principles of international
law" and having "overstepped its national borders in . . . the economic,
political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations."
He even blamed the spread of weapons of mass destruction, which the United
States has been combating with few allies and against constant Russian
resistance, on American "dominance" that "inevitably encourages" other
countries to acquire them. 

There is something amusing about criticism of the use of force by the man
who turned Chechnya into a smoldering ruin; about the invocation of
international law by the man who will not allow Scotland Yard to interrogate
the polonium-soaked thugs it suspects of murdering Alexander Litvinenko ,
yet another Putin opponent who met an untimely and unprosecuted death; about
the bullying of other countries decried by a man who cuts off energy
supplies to Ukraine, Georgia and Belarus in brazen acts of political and
economic extortion. 

Less amusing is the greater meaning of Putin's Munich speech. It marks
Russia's coming out. Flush with oil and gas revenue, the consolidation of
dictatorial authority at home and the capitulation of both domestic and
Western companies to his seizure of their assets, Putin issued his boldest
declaration yet that post-Soviet Russia is preparing to reassert itself on
the world stage. 

Perhaps the most important line in his speech was the least noted because it
seemed so innocuous. "I very often hear appeals by our partners, including
our European partners, to the effect that Russia should play an increasingly
active role in world affairs," he said. "It is hardly necessary to incite us
to do so." 

Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko once boasted that no conflict
anywhere on the globe could be settled without taking into account the
attitude and interests of the Soviet Union. Gromyko's description of Soviet
influence constitutes the best definition ever formulated of the term
"superpower." 

And we know how Putin, who has called the demise of the Soviet Union the
greatest political catastrophe of the 20th century, yearns for those
superpower days. At Munich, he could not even disguise his Cold War
nostalgia, asserting that "global security" was ensured by the "strategic
potential of two superpowers." 

Putin's bitter complaint is that today there remains only one superpower,
the behemoth that dominates a "unipolar world." He knows that Moscow lacks
the economic, military and even demographic means to challenge America as it
did in Soviet days. He speaks more modestly of coalitions of aggrieved
have-not countries that Russia might lead in countering American power. 

Hence his increasingly active foreign policy -- military partnerships with
China, nuclear cooperation with Iran, weapon supplies to Syria and
Venezuela, diplomatic support as well as arms for a genocidal Sudan,
friendly outreach to other potential partners of an anti-hegemonic (read:
anti-American) alliance. 

Is this a return to the Cold War? It is true that the ex-KGB agent
occasionally lets slip a classic Marxist anachronism such as "foreign
capital" (referring to Western oil companies) or the otherwise weird
adjective "vulgar" (describing the actions of the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe, which infuriated Putin by insisting upon a clean
election in Ukraine). He even intimated that he might undo one of the
unequivocal achievements of the late Cold War era, the so-called "zero
option" agreement of 1987, and restore a Soviet-style, medium-range
ballistic missile force. 

Nonetheless, Putin's aggressiveness does not signal a return to the Cold
War. He is too clever to be burdened by the absurdity of socialist economics
or Marxist politics. He is blissfully free of ideology, political philosophy
and economic theory. There is no existential dispute with the United States.


He is a more modest man: a mere mafia don, seizing the economic resources
and political power of a country for himself and his (mostly KGB) cronies.
And promoting his vision of the Russian national interest -- assertive and
expansionist -- by engaging in diplomacy that challenges the dominant power
in order to boost his own. 

He wants Gromyko's influence -- or at least some international
acknowledgment that Moscow must be reckoned with -- without the ideological
baggage. He does not want to bury us; he only wants to diminish us. It is
19th-century power politics at its most crude and elemental. Putin does not
want us as an enemy. But at Munich he told the world that, vis-a-vis
America, his Russia has gone from partner to adversary. 



Eurasia Daily Monitor, The Jamestown Foundation
February 13, 2007 -- Volume 4, Issue 31

WILL THE ORANGE TEAM RE-UNITE?
   
As Ukraine's parliament reconvened after the winter recess, the caucuses of
the pro-presidential Our Ukraine (NU) bloc and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc
announced they would act as a unified opposition. NU and Tymoshenko have at
least two common goals - early parliamentary elections and reversing last
year's constitutional reform. It is difficult to predict, however, whether
this unity will last for long, as many influential members of NU do not
trust Tymoshenko.
   
"I have united the opposition," Tymoshenko announced on television on
February 5. She said that the relevant agreement had been signed with the
NU. Details of the accord emerged on February 6, the first day of
parliament's work after winter vacations. The document, signed by Tymoshenko
and NU parliamentary faction leader Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, proclaims, "Our
joint opposition efforts will help to eradicate the criminal-oligarchic
government as soon as possible and revive Ukraine's democratic and European
development."
   
In order to achieve this, the opposition has proposed to jointly draft a new
constitution, disband parliament, and call new parliamentary elections. A
new constitution, the newly re-unified opposition believes, should put an
end to the redistribution of powers in the state in favor of parliament and
the Cabinet, which was started by the constitutional reform of 2004-2006.
President Viktor Yushchenko is institutionally weaker than his predecessor,
Leonid Kuchma, having comparatively few levers of influence on the Cabinet
of Ministers. "The role of parliament and the government is very strong at
the moment," Tymoshenko told television reporters on February 4.
"Dictatorship from the presidential office has effectively been transferred
to the Cabinet office."
   
Tymoshenko makes no secret of her presidential ambitions. She wants to
approach the presidential campaign of 2009 with a different constitution,
one that would make the president stronger again. Yushchenko is as unhappy
with constitutional reform as Tymoshenko, so it is logical that the two
should unite their efforts in order to reverse constitutional reform.
   
Yushchenko has welcomed the news. Speaking in Munich on February 9, he said
that the two blocs' reunification had been prompted by the growing strength
of the executive, which is dominated by the Party of Regions (PRU). "This is
a position that I respect," he said. The People's Movement of Ukraine
(Rukh), which is one of the biggest components of Our Ukraine, is also
positive about the unification of efforts with Tymoshenko, Rukh leader and
former foreign minister Borys Tarasyuk announced on February 6.
   
Not everybody in Our Ukraine is as positive about the agreement with
Tymoshenko as Yushchenko or Tarasyuk. Many NU members still hold Tymoshenko
responsible for the break-up of the first Orange government in September
2005. Her recent deal with the PRU, when the Tymoshenko bloc helped the PRU
override Yushchenko's veto on the controversial law on the Cabinet, has not
made her more popular among NU members, either (see EDM, January 17).
   
Those wary of a union of Tymoshenko reportedly include such influential NU
parliamentarians as the leader of the Union of Industrialists and
Entrepreneurs Anatoly Kinakh; the former deputy head of Yushchenko's office
Anatoly Matvienko; former justice minister Serhy Holovaty; and Yuriy
Yekhanurov, who replaced Tymoshenko as prime minister in 2005.
   
One of the opponents of the reunification with Tymoshenko, people's deputy
Pavlo Zhebrivsky, said on February 6 that the NU caucus did not authorize
Kyrylenko to sign the accord with Tymoshenko. Yekhanurov said on the
following day, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, that Tymoshenko's party should
rather unite with the United Social Democrats, who were close to former
president Kuchma. Their ideologies are similar, according to Yekhanurov.
   
NU and Tymoshenko have apparently not been discouraged by the skepticism
expressed by several senior Our Ukraine members. On February 9, Tymoshenko
and NU signed an accord calling on NU and Tymoshenko bloc members at the
local councils to closely cooperate. For NU, the document was signed by
Viktor Baloha, who formally chairs Yushchenko's People's Union-Our Ukraine
party and is the head of the presidential secretariat.
   
If the accords are not stillborn, a combined opposition consisting of Our
Ukraine and Tymoshenko's people will control 204 seats in the Ukrainian
parliament, 22 short of a majority. This number is enough to, for example,
put on the agenda a no-confidence motion against the parliamentary speaker.
>From February 5, NU started collecting signatures to dismiss Speaker
Oleksandr Moroz. NU believes that Moroz signed the new law on the Cabinet of
Ministers illegally (see EDM, February 9). It is the president who signs
laws, thereby putting them into force, according to the constitution; the
speaker may do so only in exceptional circumstances.
   
Tymoshenko on several earlier occasions spoke in favor of replacing Moroz in
the post of speaker. A clearly articulated commons position on Moroz may
become a litmus test for the unity of NU and the Tymoshenko bloc.
   
Inter TV, February 4; 1+1 TV, February 5; UNIAN, February 6;
Interfax-Ukraine, February 6-9)



--Pavel Korduban



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