Putin Declares Himself Dictator With The Navalny Verdict

Alexei Navalny’s five-year prison sentence on fabricated charges removes Vladimir Putin’s last political opponent from the scene. Navalny was charged with stealing a small amount of money during the course of giving pro-bono legal advice to a regional government on the sale of timber.

Navalny, the charismatic anti-corruption blogger and activist, was one of the key organizers of anti-Putin demonstrations following the disputed parliamentary and presidential elections of December 2011 and March 2012. He had been a thorn in the side of the Putin machine by exposing its high-level corruption on his blog, which is followed by millions of Russians. He was indicted by Putin’s Investigative Committee – an extrajudicial body that works like the troikas of the Stalin era. Among those exposed by Navalny for the theft of billions were the very members of the Investigative Committee that indicted him. Navalny coined the term widely applied by the Russian people to Putin’s United Russia, as the “party of thieves and scoundrels.”

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Appease, Surrender, Abandon, and Get Nothing: Obama's NaivePolitik

Obama’s superior foreign-policy acumen has been part and parcel of the Beltway narrative. “I killed Osama and I Got Us Out of Iraq” were supposed to offset the awful economy. Pundits were sure that youth-lived-in-Indonesia and college-traveler-to-Pakistan Obama could easily dispatch provincial “businessman” Romney in the  final debate – a fitting climax to the President’s inevitable reelection. As Obama whispered to Putin’s envoy: “Tell Vladimir to wait until the election. Then I will be flexible,” he could not even imagine a loss to such a weak opponent.

The Benghazi tragedy of 9/11 shook the foundations of this narrative. For weeks, the administration kept changing its story, as if in a panic. On the eve of the final debate, foreign policy has moved to the front burner to decide an election that was supposed to be about the economy. The rough-and-tumble of the last debate will swell an audience waiting for blood.

Obama entered the first two debates with weak cards, but he was supposed to contest the final debate from a position of strength. All that has changed. Romney can produce a devastating laundry list of Obama’s foreign policy defeats to an audience that is actually listening. And Obama will not have Candy Crowley, unless Bob Shieffer wants to join her in the tank.


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Syria, China, Russia, Reset, Magnitsky

Sunday, July 22:
The forces of Syrian dictator Basher Assad shell rebel-occupied neighborhoods of Damascus. Four young female members of a punk rock band begin their fifth month in a Moscow jail. Somewhere in China a local party boss meets with disaffected factory workers. In Washington,  the full house prepares to vote on visa restriction for Russian officials for human rights abuses. These disparate events are part of a larger mosaic, which begins in Syria.

Basher Assad, like his father before him, symbolizes unconstrained dictators prepared to do anything, no matter how odious, to stay in power. Unconstrained dictators use their secret police, militias, and armies to arrest, torture, and kill opponents. They raze whole towns. They kill innocent women and children to send a message. They are indifferent to world outrage. If Assad falls, it will not be for lack of brutality and atrocity. He may resort to chemical weapons as a last resort.

Constrained dictators, such as Mubarak, Pinochet, and the Shah, face limits imposed by moral qualms or the international community. Small protests swell, and momentum for regime change builds. Failure to use overwhelming force and efforts to compromise only embolden protesters, and eventually the constrained dictator resigns either to flee the country or to face local justice.

Two other constrained dictatorships, Russia and China, want to keep Assad in power. Both shudder at a fellow totalitarian regime falling to a disorganized opposition. They will abandon him (with great fanfare) only when it is clear that he has lost. China and Russia have their own disaffected minorities, disgruntled workers, and ideological opponents. Their one-party states lack legitimacy, and they know it. They consider themselves under constant threat, fearing the single spark that brings millions to the streets. They must snuff out any spark  — a lone barefoot lawyer or an 18 year old girl throwing a rock at security forces  –  that could conceivably ignite a Tahrir Square.

Russia and China’s one-party dictatorships face different threats. China’s Communist Party (CPC) must firefight grievance demonstrations. Putin, on the other hand, must confront direct challenges to his legitimacy.


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