Russians Pine for Old Soviet Union

At NYT, "20 Years After Soviet Fall, Some Look Back Longingly."



The article notes that "Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, called the fall of the Soviet Union the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”."



That's a wistfulness for great power status tempered by some Great Russian Nationalism. I doubt too many Russians are all that nostalgic for communism. Stability and economic security in general mean more that the stale old Soviet ideology.



Recall as well that Foreign Policy had that big 20 year retrospective on the fall of the Soviet Union, "Revolution Road." It's worth a look.

Moral Revolution and the Collapse of the Soviet Union

The cover story, by Leon Aron, at the June/July Foreign Policy, "Everything You Think You Know About the Collapse of the Soviet Union Is Wrong."

I think that title is over-promising, actually. The key explanatory innovation is the role of moral ideas in overthrowing the old order. Aron writes, for example:

LIKE VIRTUALLY ALL modern revolutions, the latest Russian one was started by a hesitant liberalization "from above" -- and its rationale extended well beyond the necessity to correct the economy or make the international environment more benign. The core of Gorbachev's enterprise was undeniably idealistic: He wanted to build a more moral Soviet Union.

For though economic betterment was their banner, there is little doubt that Gorbachev and his supporters first set out to right moral, rather than economic, wrongs. Most of what they said publicly in the early days of perestroika now seems no more than an expression of their anguish over the spiritual decline and corrosive effects of the Stalinist past. It was the beginning of a desperate search for answers to the big questions with which every great revolution starts: What is a good, dignified life? What constitutes a just social and economic order? What is a decent and legitimate state? What should such a state's relationship with civil society be?

"A new moral atmosphere is taking shape in the country," Gorbachev told the Central Committee at the January 1987 meeting where he declared glasnost -- openness -- and democratization to be the foundation of his perestroika, or restructuring, of Soviet society. "A reappraisal of values and their creative rethinking is under way." Later, recalling his feeling that "we couldn't go on like that any longer, and we had to change life radically, break away from the past malpractices," he called it his "moral position."

At least from an ideational perspective, the argument is familiar. I'm reminded of the edited volume from Richard Ned Lebow and Thomas Risse-Kappen, International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War, published in 1995. Ideas are contrasted with material interests as a mobilizing factor in historical change. So Leon's argument builds on themes that have been common in international relations literature for some time. Aron's book on this is forthcoming, and looks interesting: Roads to the Temple: Truth, Memory, Ideas, and Ideals in the Making of the Russian Revolution, 1987-1991.

Chasing the Dying Memories of Soviet Trauma

There's a retrospective on the fall of the Soviet Union at the new Foreign Policy. I'll be reading and posting more from it, but this essay from Orlando Figes is fascinating, "Don't Go There":

In November 2004, Nona Panova was being interviewed by a researcher from the Russian human rights organization Memorial, working under my direction on an oral history project about private life in the Stalin era. Nona, a 75-year-old woman whose father had been arrested during the purges of the 1930s, had been talking for several hours about her upbringing in St. Petersburg and her family when she saw the tape recorder with its microphone. The conversation went like this:Panova: So that's how it was.… [Notices the tape recorder and shows signs of panic.] Are you recording this? But I'll be arrested! They'll put me into jail!

Interviewer: Who'll put you in jail?

Panova: Someone will.… I've told you so much; there's so much I've said.…

Interviewer: [Laughs.] Yes, and it was very interesting, but tell me, who today would want to put you in jail?

Panova: But did you really make a recording?

Interviewer: Yes, don't you remember? I warned you at the start that our conversation would be recorded.

Panova: Then that's it. It's all over for me -- they'll arrest me.

More at the link. Ms. Panova thought she'd be killed. Here's another part this was gripping:

For years, what the world knew about the Soviet Union was limited entirely to the public sphere. Apart from a few memoirs by great writers caught up in the repressions of the 1930s, particularly Evgenia Ginzburg and Nadezhda Mandelstam, there was little from a personal perspective coming out of those years. More representative testimonies began to emerge only in the glasnost period, when victims of Stalin's repression were encouraged to come forward with their stories. Organizations like Memorial helped them look for information about their missing relatives, took interviews, and organized archives from the mass of documents, letters, photographs, and artifacts that people brought into their offices in plastic bags and boxes following the Soviet regime's collapse.

And yet even these documents were difficult to interpret. Take diaries, usually regarded as the most direct expression of an individual's private thoughts and emotions. Diarists of the 1930s and 1940s, however, faced serious obstacles. When a person was arrested, the first thing to be confiscated was the diary, which was likely to be used as incriminating evidence. Many diaries that came to light during the glasnost years express conformist political ideas. Should we take their words at face value, as expressions of a genuine yearning to belong to the Soviet collective, which was no doubt felt by many people insecure about their place in the system? Or should it be assumed that fear drove more to hide themselves behind a mask? Two major finds have been translated from Russian: the 1930s diary of Stepan Podlubny, a kulak son fashioning a Soviet identity for himself in a factory school, which was published in Germany as Tagebuch aus Moskau (1996) by historian Jochen Hellbeck; and Nina Lugovskaya's schoolgirl diary from the same decade, published in English as I Want to Live (2006). For Hellbeck, the Podlubny diary shows how the individual was practically unable to think outside the terms defined by Soviet politics. In this vision of the "Soviet subject" -- developed by Hellbeck from several newly discovered Stalin-era diaries in Revolution on My Mind (2006) -- there is little space for private life at all, if we take that to depend on independent thought. Yet the Lugovskaya example shows that even a schoolgirl subjected to the full array of propaganda about the "radiant Soviet future" was not only capable of dissenting, pessimistic, and even "anti-Soviet" thoughts, but eager to confess them to her diary as an expression of her individuality.

Living in fear as a direct result of communist totalitarian control. This is where today's progressives seek to return. They're communists, and just take a look across the radical left establishment today. To simply speak out against the PC commissars is to risk a termination of employment, personals attacks, threats of violence, or even possible jail time in country's like Canada and the Netherlands. Progressives are communists. Like Soviet citizens under Stalin, there is no dissenting from the progressive line without threat to life and liberty.

Political Scientist Michael McFaul Tapped as Ambassador to Russia

A professor of political science at Stanford University and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. McFaul had an obligatory essay back in 1992, widely assigned on graduate syllabi: "A Tale of Two Worlds: Core and Periphery in the Post-Cold War Era." This is quite an accomplishment for him. At New York Times: "Policy Adviser to Become U.S. Ambassador to Russia":

WASHINGTON — President Obama has decided to send the architect of his so-called Russia reset policy to Moscow as the next United States ambassador there, seeking to further bolster an improved relationship as both countries head into a potentially volatile election season.

Mr. Obama plans to nominate Michael McFaul, his top White House adviser on Russia policy, for the post, according to administration officials who declined to be identified before the formal announcement. Mr. Obama told the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, of his choice during a meeting in France last week, officials said.

In selecting Mr. McFaul, Mr. Obama is breaking with recent tradition in Moscow, where all but one of eight American ambassadors over the last 30 years have been career diplomats. But in choosing someone from his own inner circle, Mr. Obama underscored his determination to keep Russian-American relations a centerpiece of his foreign policy after his early push to reset the relationship following years of growing tension.

“Mike, as the guy who really helped the president establish the reset, is the perfect person to go to Moscow to make sure there’s no lapse in momentum in the relationship,” one of the administration officials said ...

Although not a diplomat, Mr. McFaul, 47, is widely considered one of the foremost American voices on Russia, with deep contacts in Moscow. He was a Rhodes scholar who first traveled to the Soviet Union in 1983 and lived there at several points over the next decade. A Stanford University professor and Hoover Institution fellow, he is the author or editor of more than 20 books, establishing a reputation as a vocal advocate of Russian democracy and sharp critic of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin’s crackdown on dissent.

Mr. McFaul’s friendly ties with neoconservatives at times have generated suspicions among his fellow Democrats, but since joining the White House he has also occasionally been at odds with fellow democracy advocates who have been critical of the reset policy.

He's a good guy. Amazing Obama's not sending some ACORN communist to Mosow.

Who Was Worse, Hitler or Stalin?

At New York Review, "Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Killed More?":

In the second half of the twentieth century, Americans were taught to see both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as the greatest of evils. Hitler was worse, because his regime propagated the unprecedented horror of the Holocaust, the attempt to eradicate an entire people on racial grounds. Yet Stalin was also worse, because his regime killed far, far more people, tens of millions it was often claimed, in the endless wastes of the Gulag. For decades, and even today, this confidence about the difference between the two regimes—quality versus quantity—has set the ground rules for the politics of memory. Even historians of the Holocaust generally take for granted that Stalin killed more people than Hitler, thus placing themselves under greater pressure to stress the special character of the Holocaust, since this is what made the Nazi regime worse than the Stalinist one.

Discussion of numbers can blunt our sense of the horrific personal character of each killing and the irreducible tragedy of each death. As anyone who has lost a loved one knows, the difference between zero and one is an infinity. Though we have a harder time grasping this, the same is true for the difference between, say, 780,862 and 780,863—which happens to be the best estimate of the number of people murdered at Treblinka. Large numbers matter because they are an accumulation of small numbers: that is, precious individual lives. Today, after two decades of access to Eastern European archives, and thanks to the work of German, Russian, Israeli, and other scholars, we can resolve the question of numbers. The total number of noncombatants killed by the Germans—about 11 million—is roughly what we had thought. The total number of civilians killed by the Soviets, however, is considerably less than we had believed. We know now that the Germans killed more people than the Soviets did. That said, the issue of quality is more complex than was once thought. Mass murder in the Soviet Union sometimes involved motivations, especially national and ethnic ones, that can be disconcertingly close to Nazi motivations.

Ultimately, folks'll have to assess this essay themselves, given the nature of the discussion. The author, Timothy Snyder, isn't as clear as he should be, given that he's claiming the Nazis killed more than the Soviets. But the basic gist is that the Soviet numbers have been revised downward. And does it matter at this point, despite the discussion of the marginal enormity of one more single death out of the 100s of thousands or even millions? Only God knows the suffering of each of the families that lost loved ones. It becomes a metaphysical thing, at some point. And despite the author's numerical exegesis, I'm not convinced that Stalin's modernization planning and ruthless political liquidation programs are of the same kind of totalitarianism that resulted in the Holocaust. It's all depressing, and if folks recall Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism, the permissive causes (especially anti-Semitism) were found all across Europe following the turn of the 20th century. Beyond this, I'm leaving it to the experts. At least in reflecting on these things, the last thing that comes to mind is the GOP's budget balancing programs today. Progressive Democrats are hoisting signs emblazoned with STALIN, HITLER, WALKER. And the effect --- beyond sheer stupidity --- is simply to illustrate how fleeting is the left's legitimacy and its grip on the social welfare state in early-21st century America.

Dozens Killed in Moscow Suicide Bombing

So far, 31 people reported killed (at BBC and Memeorandum).

And at Atlas Shrugs, "Islamic Terror Attack: Homicide Bomber Kills At Least 31 Human Beings UPDATE: Bomb Packed with Shrapnel." Plus, at Wall Street Journal, "Deadly Explosion Rocks Moscow Airport":

A suicide attacker detonated a bomb at Russia's busiest airport Monday, killing at least 31 people and wounding more than 100 others, authorities said.

The 4:32 p.m. blast near the international arrivals area of Moscow's Domodedovo airport was the country's worst terrorist attack since twin bombings left 40 dead in the Moscow subway last March.

President Dmitry Medvedev convened an emergency meeting of top law-enforcement officials and ordered airport and other transportation security tightened across the country. He said the "preliminary" indications were that it was a terrorist attack.

Officials at Domodedovo, south of the capital, said the airport was still functioning. Some international flights were diverted to other Moscow airports, where security was also tightened.

The blast took place outside a security zone near the baggage claim area, near the Asia Kafe, where people await arriving passengers, Interfax news agency said, quoting the Federal Customs Service.

Russian news agencies quoted security officials as saying the bomb, laced with metal pieces to increase its power to kill, was detonated in the crowd of people meeting arriving passengers. The blast was equal to seven kilograms (15 pounds) of TNT, the reports said.

ADDED: The New York Times reports that this video "appears to show the smoke and flames in the terminal and then the bodies of victims of the blast":

Obama Administration Slams Russia for New Khodorkovsky Verdict

At WSJ, "White House Criticizes Moscow Court":

The Obama administration, in an unusual public rebuke, condemned a Moscow court for finding oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his former partner guilty of embezzling, saying it appears to be “an abusive use of the legal system for improper ends.”

A Russian court has found Mr. Khodorkovsky, who once controlled the oil giant OAO Yukos, and business partner Platon Lebedev guilty of embezzling and laundering tens of billions of dollars. The case is seen as an effort by the Russian government to stifle Mr. Khodorkovsky’s political ambitions.

The Obama administration, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have condemned the verdict, and said it raises questions about Russia’s commitment to the rule of law.

And at Telegraph UK, "Analysis: Khodorkovsky verdict confirms Putin's grip on power":

The political reality is that powerful people are determined to keep Mr Khodorkovsky behind bars.

Lindsey Graham Announces Opposition to START Treaty

Graham's extremely displeased with the Democrats' sleazy lame duck politics.

The story's at CBS News and Memeorandum. It's politics, and I'm loving how this has Nicole Belle tied up in knots, at the neo-communist Crooks and Liars.

Why America's Enemies Love Obama's New START Treaty

From the Center for Security Policy:

PREVIOUSLY: "Obama Evokes Reagan in Push for New Start Treaty," and "Trust Russia on START?"

Obama Evokes Reagan in Push for New Start Treaty

It's no surprise that President Obama pumped up the new START in his Saturday address:

Did you listen? It's interesting, since the president's main argument is that the new START is essential to verify the Russian arsenal. The president evokes Reagan's famous dictum, "trust, but verify." But if anyone's breaking Reagan's rule, it's Obama himself. The Russians don't follow the same strategic norms as we do, something I discussed earlier, "Trust Russia on START?" In fact, according to Keith Payne and Tom Scheber:

... compared to those of its predecessor, the 1991 START, New START’s verification measures are extremely weak. Among many problems, it abandons the mobile-missile verification regime of START I, including the provision for continuous monitoring at final-assembly plants for Russian mobile missiles. It virtually guarantees that we will not get useful performance data from Russian ballistic-missile flight tests, leaving us with limited insight into the performance characteristics of new Russian weapons — including such basic items as range and warhead payload. It shifts much of the burden of verification to aged National Technical Means satellites and other sensors, and allows Russia’s deployed mobile missiles to be concealed. Several Republican members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee rightly concluded that “verification in this treaty is very weak.” Sen. Kit Bond (R., Mo.) observed, “This is one that turns President Reagan’s theory of trust but verify on its head. We will trust them even though we can’t verify it.”

And that's not all. Obama is attempting to build an arms control legacy on the scale of Reagan's, and of course he's been playing politics with existing treaties in an effort to hammer through his own vision. As Heritage reported this week:

It is ironic that the Administration is citing the need for verification as justification for treaty ratification—after all, the present verification problem was created by the Administration. The White House did not take the advantage of a five-year extension possible under START I and instead insisted on negotiating a separate agreement. At that time, the Administration justified its approach by saying that it was more important to get the treaty right rather than get the treaty soon. The Senate considered the original START for nearly a year. The Moscow Treaty, which was far less complex than New START, was before the Senate for nearly nine months. The Obama Administration took more than 12 months to negotiate New START but has sought approval from the Senate in less than five. The rush to ratification undermines the important role of “advice and consent” that the Senate must exercise on any treaty of this magnitude.

The Administration’s claim for the urgent need to pass New START and initiate its verification provisions blatantly contradicts the Administration’s own public statements about the absence of any Russian military threat to the United States or U.S. allies. New START would increase U.S. reductions relative to Russia, and “concessions to Russian demands make it difficult to support Senate approval of the new treaty,” according to Ambassador James Woolsey.

Treaties such as New START, a major nuclear arms agreement, require more scrutiny than others. The Senate needs access to the negotiating record that includes all draft versions of New START, memoranda, notes, and communications between U.S. and Russian negotiators. This record is critical to clear up questions on key provisions in the treaty and specifically, how the Russians interpret them. The Senate is constitutionally mandated to give due diligence in its consideration of New START. This responsibility is not consistent with the rushed process the White House is seeking.

And, so, what the rush? Obama claims that it's been 11 months, 18 congressional hearings, and the administration's responded to over 1000 questions. Yeah. So what? Rushing the new START is Obama's method to ram home a flawed pact. And apparently he's calling out some age-old arms control veterans -- realists, such as Henry A. Kissinger, James A. Baker III and Brent Scowcroft --- to lend gravitas to a White House as inept as it is insipient.

Leftist Group Demagogues START Debate With New 'Daisy Girl' Ad

It's from the American Values Network, a hard-left progressive faith group:

Burns Strider, the group's founder, was a former aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and was a faith advisor to the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. In other words, this is a Democratic ad blitz using the most outlandish fearmongering imaginable. The original "Daisy Girl" ran at the height of the Cold War. It came in response to Barry Goldwater's bellicose comments on the use of nuclear weapons against the Soviets. There's little of that kind of rhetoric in today's GOP --- and we're not on brink of a nuclear holocaust --- and the ad's claims on inspections under the new START are entirely dependent on Moscow's compliance and transparency. When Obama signed the treaty in April, our Czech allies dissed it as "appeasing Russia." See my previous entry: "Trust Russia on START?"

RELATED: "George Voinovich Hammers Obama's 'Political Expediency' on New START Treaty."

Trust Russia on START?

START II never entered into force. Yet, the U.S. went ahead and decommissioned the LGM-118A Peacekeeper, citing underperformance with missile range objectives:

Time exposure shot of testing of the Peacekeeper re-entry vehicles at the Kwajalein Atoll, all eight fired from one missile. With live warheads, each would have the explosive power of twenty Hiroshima-sized (Little Boy) nuclear weapons.

*****

The Russians, on the other hand, also covered in START II, continued to deploy the SS-18 Satan, historically one of the most devastating ICBMs in the Russian nuclear arsenal. And again, while START II was not ratified and nor entered into force, the norms that motivated the treaty apparently had little affect on Russian strategic behavior. The SS-18 Satan is a MIRV'd reentry missile. It remains the backbone of the Russian strategic arsenal. Previously, the SS-18 was thought to have destabilized the U.S.-Soviet deterrence structure, since the enormous size of the missile, along with the multiple warheads, threatened a successful first strike against U.S. land-based missile silos. And this history matters, as symbolism and memory are powerful elements of the Russian identity. To make matter worse, the Obama-negotiated New START doesn't actually call for a large quantitative reductions in deployed missiles (and that's just for START-ers). The U.S., frankly, would be placed at the mercy of Russian compliance with a renewed inspection regime. We are, then, to trust Moscow, not only with numerical ceilings, but with access for the inspection regime? It's asking a lot.

George Voinovich Hammers Obama's 'Political Expediency' on New START Treaty

Senator Richard Lugar's in the news tonight for rebuking the opposition among fellow Republicans to President Obama's START negotiations with Moscow.

But note that START ratification is one of the big progressive goals for the "lame duck" Congress, and to hear lefties it's like Republicans opponents of nuclear arms control are tantamount to newborn baby haters. Of course, no one --- no reasonable, sensitive person --- hates newborn babies, so it's important to move beyond progressive emotion and think hard about how U.S. interests are ill served by Obama's inept "reset" agenda with Russia. To that effect, see "Voinovich on New START: Political Expediency Should Never Be An Excuse To Rush To Judgment":

RELATED: At Weekly Standard, "Russian Opposition, Senate GOP Hammer Obama's Reset Policy."

Assassination Politics: 'Russian Spy' Anna Fermanova Busted for High-Tech Arms Smuggling

Anna Fermanova, a Russian immigrant cosmetologist, was arrested last week for "attempting to smuggle high-tech night vision scopes from the United States to Russia."



See, "A young Russian beautician, Anna Fermanova, has been arrested in Texas as part of the American investigation into suspected foreign spies, it has emerged." (HAT TIP: GrEaT sAtAn"S gIrLfRiEnD.) See also, "Anna Fermanova’s high-tech scopes are used for assassination, say experts."

Video games train the kids for war.

Army chic in high-fashion stores.

Law and order's done their job.

Prisons filled while the rich still rob.

Assassination politics.

Violence rules within' our nation's midst.

Well ignorance is their power tool.

You'll only know what they want you to know.

The television cannot lie.

Controlling media with smokescreen eyes.

Nuclear politicians picture show.

The acting's lousy but the blind don't know.

They scare us all with threats of war.

So we forget just how bad things are.

You taste the fear when you're all alone.

They gonna git'cha when you're on your own.

The silence of conspiracy.

Slaughtered on the altar of apathy.

You gotta wake up from your sleep.

'Cause meek inherits earth...six feet deep.

Open your eyes see the lies right in front of ya.

Open your eyes.....

"Open Your Eyes" (The Lords of the New Church:).

On This Day: Bolsheviks Murder Romanovs, July 17, 1918

"The shooting of the Romanov family, of the Russian Imperial House of Romanov, and those who chose to accompany them into exile, Dr. Eugene Botkin, Anna Demidova, Alexei Trupp, and Ivan Kharitonov took place in Yekaterinburg on July 17, 1918 on the orders of Vladimir Lenin."

And at Bob Belvedere's, "The House of Special Purpose."

RELATED: Claire Berlinski, "A Hidden History of Evil":

It is widely understood that the Nazis’ ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle—led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains inexplicably indifferent and uncurious about the deadliest ideology in history.

Russian Spies on Facebook?

The social networking cold war, you might say.

Hot alleged Russian spy Anna Chapman is on Facebook.

A new era in espionage, that's for sure. See LAT, "Alleged Russian spy ring members led typical American lives":

Richard and Cynthia Murphy grew lettuce in a backyard garden, walked their daughters to the school bus each morning, and swapped Christmas cards with neighbors who had moved to Texas.

Their modest three-bedroom house sported maroon shutters and a wrap-around porch, and sat on a winding street in a well-heeled suburb across from Manhattan. They drove a green Honda Civic.

To all appearances, the Murphys were a typical, child-obsessed American family — not deep-cover Russian spies straight from a Cold War novel.

Their arrests, along with those of 9 other alleged Russian spies, has exposed a surprising side to modern espionage: The group led mundane lives far from the James Bond image. Instead of car chases and shootouts, they paid taxes, haggled over mortgages, and struggled to remember computer passwords.

As a result, the 11 — the biggest alleged spy ring every broken by the FBI — blended into American society for more than a decade. They joined neighbors at block parties, school picnics and bus stops. Four of the couples were married, and at least three had young children.

One suspect wrote columns for a Spanish-language newspaper in New York. Another ran an international consulting and management firm in Boston, while his wife sold high-priced real estate near Harvard University. Yet another drove a shiny blue BMW to his investment banking job in Seattle; he regularly updated his status on LinkedIn, a social networking site.

If their cover jobs were ordinary, their secret lives had a humdrum side that sometimes seems more like Woody Allen than John LeCarre.

One suspect, Anna Chapman, bought a Verizon cellphone in Brooklyn, N.Y., with a patently false address: 99 Fake Street. She also posted sultry photos of herself on Facebook and videos on YouTube. Another, Juan Lazaro, used a payoff from Moscow to pay nearly $8,000 in overdue county and city taxes, according to court documents.

Donald Howard Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley, the alleged spies in Boston, filed regular expense reports to Moscow Center, headquarters for Russia's foreign intelligence agency, called the SVR.

"Got from Ctr. 64500 dollars, income 13940, interest 76. Expenses: rent 8500, utilities 142, tel. 160, car lease 2180, insurance 432, gas 820, education 3600," plus medical, lawyers' fees, meals and gifts, mailboxes, computer supplies, and so on, they wrote in one, according to an FBI affidavit.

And the lettuce-growing Murphys of Montclair repeatedly argued with Moscow Center in encrypted computer messages last summer about who should legally own their $400,000 house — them or the SVR.

"From our perspective, purchase of the house was solely a natural progression of our prolonged stay here," the Murphy's explained, apparently after being reprimanded. "It was a convenient way to solve the housing issue, plus to 'do as the Romans do' in a society that values home ownership."

Murphy later whined to another spy about their bosses back in Moscow: "They don't understand what we go through over here."

The group allegedly attended one of Moscow's most elite spy schools before landing in America. Their mission was spelled out, somewhat awkwardly, in a 2009 message to the Murphy's from Moscow Center.

RTWT.

RELATED: Speaking of hot spies, maybe Donna Dixon will make a comeback.

Lech Kaczynski, President of Poland, Killed in Plane Crash in Russia

The current screencap at Drudge Report:

The Astute Bloggers have the full backround report, "POLAND'S PRESIDENT AND 132 OTHERS DIE IN PLANE CRASH ON WAY TO COMMEMORATE THE KATYN MASSACRE."

But see the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, "Putin to Head Investigation Into Polish President's Death." (Via Memeorandum.)

And here's the international political angle, at Time, "Plane Crash Kills Polish President: A Blow to Russia-Poland Relations":

The president of Poland was killed in a plane crash on Saturday in western Russia, setting off a new cycle of grievances between Russia and Poland on a day that was supposed to serve the cause of reconciliation between them. President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and some of his top security officials were among the 96 people killed in the crash. As the fuselage of the Soviet-made Tupelov airplane (operated by a Polish airliner) still smoldered in forest near the city of Smolensk, the grim irony of their deaths became clear to the stunned Polish nation: Their president had been on his way to Russia to commemorate the massacre of tens of thousands of Poles, who had been executed on the order of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1940 in those same forests in the region of Smolensk.

Blame for the crash has fallen on the pilot, who reportedly ignored warnings from air traffic control and tried to land on Saturday morning in dense fog, snagging the tail of his plane on a tree about a mile from the airport. "The pilot was advised to fly to Moscow or Minsk because of heavy fog, but he still decided to land. No one should have been landing in that fog," an air traffic control official told Reuters, indicating that recklessness may be behind the tragedy. Russian law enforcement officials said they had opened an investigation, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called to express his condolences to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who reportedly wept upon hearing of the catastrophe on Saturday.

And at CNN, "Polish President Killed in Plane Crash":

Obama's Dangerous Strategic Policy

There's a lot happening in nuclear policy and strategic issues this morning. LAT has the background analysis on the new START treaty, "U.S., Russia Sign Pact to Cut Nuclear Arsenals."

And Matthew Continetti has excerpts from Sarah Palin's speech today at SRLC, "Sarah Palin on the Obama Doctrine: Advance Copy":

In foreign policy, we’ve got the makings of the Obama Doctrine: coddling our enemies while alienating allies.

The administration eased sanctions on Cuba and sided with Chavez against Honduran democracy. They won’t bring up human rights with China because, quote, 'we know what they are going to say.' They offer tepid sanctions on North Korea and 'gold stars and cookies' for the Sudanese President. They send letters to Iranian mullahs but can barely muster a word of support for the Green Movement seeking freedom and women’s rights in Iran!

And President Obama, with all that vast nuclear expertise he acquired as a community organizer, a part-time senator, and a candidate for president, has accomplished nothing to date with Iran or North Korea.

Meanwhile, this administration alienates our friends. They treated Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai poorly and acted surprised when he reacted in kind. And they escalated a minor zoning decision into a major breach with Israel, our closest ally in the Middle East.

Folks, someone needs to remind the President: Jerusalem is not a settlement. Israel is our friend. And the critical nuclear concerns of our time are North Korea, who has nuclear weapons, and Iran, who wants them.

So, 'yes we can' kowtow to our enemies and publicly criticize our allies.

Yes, we can. But someone ought to tell the President and the Left that just because we can doesn’t mean we should.

Plus, Charles Krauthammer devastates Obama's revised nuclear strategy of limited use, "Nuclear Posturing, Obama-Style":

Under President Obama's new policy ... however, if the state that has just attacked us with biological or chemical weapons is "in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)," explained Gates, then "the U.S. pledges not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against it."

Imagine the scenario: Hundreds of thousands are lying dead in the streets of Boston after a massive anthrax or nerve gas attack. The president immediately calls in the lawyers to determine whether the attacking state is in compliance with the NPT. If it turns out that the attacker is up to date with its latest IAEA inspections, well, it gets immunity from nuclear retaliation. (Our response is then restricted to bullets, bombs and other conventional munitions.)

However, if the lawyers tell the president that the attacking state is NPT-noncompliant, we are free to blow the bastards to nuclear kingdom come.

This is quite insane. It's like saying that if a terrorist deliberately uses his car to mow down a hundred people waiting at a bus stop, the decision as to whether he gets (a) hanged or (b) 100 hours of community service hinges entirely on whether his car had passed emissions inspections.

More at the link.

And for background, see "Obama Limits When U.S. Would Use Nuclear Arms."

And here's the Pentagon's official "Nuclear Posture Review."

See also, Michelle's blog, and Memeorandum.

CARTOON CREDIT: Mike Lester.

Pentagon Developing Prompt Global Strike Weapons as 'Non-Nuclear Deterrent'

"Nuclear" and "deterrence" have rolled off my tongue so many times that this WaPo headline struck me as supremely odd: "U.S. looks to nonnuclear weapons to use as deterrent."

As the White House pushes for cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, the Pentagon is developing a weapon to help fill the gap: missiles armed with conventional warheads that could strike anywhere in the world in less than an hour.

U.S. military officials say the intercontinental ballistic missiles, known as Prompt Global Strike weapons, are a necessary new form of deterrence against terrorist networks and other adversaries. As envisioned, the conventional missiles would give the White House a fresh military option to consider in a crisis that would not result in a radioactive mushroom cloud.

The Prompt Global Strike program, which the Pentagon has been developing for several years, is already raising hackles in Moscow, where Russian officials predict it could trigger a nonnuclear arms race and complicate President Obama's long-term vision of ridding the world of nuclear weapons. U.S. military officials are also struggling to solve a separate major obstacle: the risk that Russia or China could mistake the launch of a conventional Prompt Global Strike missile for a nuclear one.

"World states will hardly accept a situation in which nuclear weapons disappear, but weapons that are no less destabilizing emerge in the hands of certain members of the international community," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters Tuesday in Moscow.

The White House says that development of Prompt Global Strike is not affected by the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev are scheduled to sign Thursday in Prague. Analysts say, however, that any conventional ballistic missiles would count the same as nuclear ones under the treaty, which places new limits on each country's stockpile.

At first "non-nuclear deterrence" sounded kinda impotent, but perhaps I was mistaken.

See, Noah Shachtman, "Hypersonic Cruise Missile: America's New Global Strike Weapon - The mission: Attack anywhere in the world in less than an hour. But is the Pentagon's bold program a critical new weapon for hitting elusive targets, or a good way to set off a nuclear war?":

A tip sets the plan in motion — a whispered warning of a North Korean nuclear launch, or of a shipment of biotoxins bound for a Hezbollah stronghold in Lebanon. Word races through the American intelligence network until it reaches U.S. Strategic Command headquarters, the Pentagon and, eventually, the White House. In the Pacific, a nuclear-powered Ohio class submarine surfaces, ready for the president's command to launch.

When the order comes, the sub shoots a 65-ton Trident II ballistic missile into the sky. Within 2 minutes, the missile is traveling at more than 20,000 ft. per second. Up and over the oceans and out of the atmosphere it soars for thousands of miles. At the top of its parabola, hanging in space, the Trident's four warheads separate and begin their screaming descent down toward the planet. Traveling as fast as 13,000 mph, the warheads are filled with scored tungsten rods with twice the strength of steel. Just above the target, the warheads detonate, showering the area with thousands of rods-each one up to 12 times as destructive as a .50-caliber bullet. Anything within 3000 sq. ft. of this whirling, metallic storm is obliterated.

If Pentagon strategists get their way, there will be no place on the planet to hide from such an assault. The plan is part of a program — in slow development since the 1990s, and now quickly coalescing in military circles — called Prompt Global Strike. It will begin with modified Tridents. But eventually, Prompt Global Strike could encompass new generations of aircraft and armaments five times faster than anything in the current American arsenal. One candidate: the X-51 hypersonic cruise missile, which is designed to hit Mach 5 — roughly 3600 mph. The goal, according to the U.S. Strategic Command's deputy commander Lt. Gen. C. Robert Kehler, is "to strike virtually anywhere on the face of the Earth within 60 minutes."

The question is whether such an attack can be deployed without triggering World War III: Those tungsten-armed Tridents look, and fly, exactly like the deadliest weapons in the American nuclear arsenal.

Whoa

Protests Topple Kyrgyzstan Government!

Reports are still tentative, but the government of President Kurmanbek Bakiev in Kyrgyzstan may be done. At CNN, "Protests Topple Kyrgyzstan's President, Opposition Claims."

And at ABC News, "Kyrgyzstan: Coup in a U.S.-Allied Country? Key Ally in Afghanistan War May Have Been Overthrown by Opposition Protestors":

Protests in Kyrgyzstan today were massive and frenzied. By the end of day, some reports said they had brought down the government of a crucially important U.S. ally.

The United States maintains an air base in Kyrgyzstan that is a key supply point for the war in nearby Afghanistan. President Obama's support for the now-ousted government long has angered the opposition.

This morning, when thousands of opposition protestors attacked the president of Kyrgyzstan's office, police used live ammunition to repel them. Hospitals filled quickly with the dead and wounded.

"Security forces were shooting with submachine guns," said one wounded protester being carried away in a stretcher. "Why are they shooting at the people?"

Protesters were armed as well, and they injured and killed several police officers. Some protestors even commandeered police vehicles.

"There will be blood for blood," a protestor vowed.

Tensions have been growing in Kyrgyzstan over what opposition supporters called increasingly repressive government policies. Arrests of opposition leaders overnight -- plus a 200 percent increase in utility prices -- sparked a violent backlash.

By this afternoon, the opposition had taken over television stations and began demanding that President Kurmanbek Bakiyev step down. He reportedly fled the capital in his jet tonight.

Kyrgyzstan, a mountainous country of five million people in Central Asia, is one of the poorest former Soviet republics, and has long been plagued by corruption and political division.

The United States has a "transit center" located at Manas International Airport in Kyrgyzstan, about 19 miles northwest of the capital of Bishkek. It is a major hub for the transit of personnel and equipment into Afghanistan. There are about 1,100 U.S., French and Spanish personnel located at the facility, with the overwhelming majority of them being American.

American flights to Kyrgyzstan have been rerouted.

Interesting story ... and will update ...