John Gray’s views of Russia, cited by Mark Brady (below), got my attention. Gray’s claim that Russia is reverting to the power politics of the 19th century strikes me as right.

Those of us who hoped for better after 1991 were naïve. However, as Gray implies, Russia’s government, while authoritarian and ruthless, is not the same as the Soviet Union’s was. Russia is not closed off from the rest of the world, its economy is not so primitive that people stand in line for hours for food, its government no longer survives by fabricating lies repeated by academics around the world, and its citizens are no longer shot for trying to escape the country. It’s just another nation-state now, one of many ruled by a big, ugly government.