Nick Hayes'
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Georgia and Russia on verge of all-out war?

The intended audience for Russia's actions in Georgia was neither its friends, the Ossetians, nor its enemies, in this case the Georgian government.  The real target for Putin's message is the Bush administration and its advocates of the expansion of NATO eastward into the new nations formed out of the former Soviet Republics.  The second targeted audience consists of the heads of government in the formerly Soviet Republics and especially the government of Ukraine.  For both audiences, the message is clear - Would the West, or even could the West defend these territories.  Is the eastward expansion of NATO worth the political costs and risks?

All politics is local.  In the case of today's war in the Caucasus, Putin has played to his home audience.  Think back on Reagan's "liberation" of Grenada.  This war is Putin's Grenada.

For more comments and background on the war in Georgia, go to my commentary (link below) with q & a on MPR's Midday with Gary Eichten for Monday, August 11, 2008.  An interview (link below) with me by Doug Stone in regard to the events in Georgia can also be found at www.MinnPost.com  for Tuesday, August 12. You can also find my comments (link below) on the twentieth anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia on Midday on the Monday, August 4 of the previous week.  To download my programs on MPR programs, go to www.mpr.org and click the tab for Midday.     

audio link to Nick Hayes on Midday-August11
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/08/11/midday1/

interview with Nick Hayes
http://www.minnpost.com/stories/2008/08/13/2943/dealing_with_russia_
whats_ahead_for_democracy_and_diplomacy

audio link to Nick Hayes on Middway-August 4
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/08/04/midday1/
 

A New President for Russia

On the eve of the end of the Putin  Presidency, a political bombshell has come out.  Boris Nemtsov, a former First Deputy Prime Minister (1997-1998) and Vladimir Milov, for Deputy Minister of Energy (2002) recently published Putin – The Bottom Line: An Independent Expert Report.   The Kremlin blocked its publisher from access to mass distribution of the report.  Even if the Kremlin preempted its distribution to a large audience, sources say the existence of the report put the Kremlin in panic mode.  Read the report as an equivalent to the release of the Pentagon Papers  and, to continue the Nixon and Watergate Era analogies, the confirmation that there was a “deep throat” and whistle blower buried somewhere inside the secretive inner circles of the Kremlin.

audio link to Nick Hayes on Midday-May 6 http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/05/06/midday1/

Link to Report on Putin

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