A New Cold War? Western-hemispheric maneuvers

Original: A New Cold War? Western-hemispheric maneuvers

source: www.nationalreview.com
What does Russia docking in the Panama Canal this weekend mean? What should the Obama administration be thinking about it? National Review Online asked a group of Russian experts.
David Satter
The visits of Russian ships to Venezuela and the Panama Canal are part of a campaign of escalating Russian pressure — a campaign designed to prevent Ukraine and Georgia from being admitted into NATO. The inclusion of these two former Soviet republics in NATO does not threaten Russia militarily, but in the eyes of Russian leaders, the Westernization of Georgia and Ukraine is an extremely bad example for the Russian population.

Russia seeks a world in which it can impose its will in the territory of the former Soviet Union. Russian spokesmen (and “ r />— David Satter is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His most recent book is Darkness at Dawn: the Rise of the Russian Criminal State (Yale).


Fredo Arias-King
Russia has been provoking the United States and its allies recently for a variety of reasons, and this will likely escalate during an Obama administration. The question is, Will Obama react like a Carter or a Reagan?

As Jeane Kirkpatrick used to say, “People are policy.” Of the names mentioned so far as potential Obama advisers on Russia, most are promising, but some are worrying. Close to Obama are Zbigniew and Mark Brzezinski, who are no friends of Putin, and the academic Michael McFaul, who specialized in exposing the failures of Putinism.

However, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will likely bring Strobe Talbott — her husband’s “Russ etting the U.S. know that they a