Last weekend I was looking through the paper and I stumbled upon Parade's annual 10 World's Worst Dictators article. All the usual suspects were on there: Omar al-Bashir, Kim Jong-il, King Abdullah, etc. But every year Parade also gives a few "honorable mentions" of dictators they think are pretty bad but didn't quite make the top 10. I was surprised to find Russian president Vladimir Putin on the list for the first time. "WTF?" I thought. But it actually kind of makes sense. The Washington Post has blatently referred to him as an "aspiring dictator". He holds much more sway over his government than most elected officials do, and his government has been tied to a number of "questionable acts", the most recent of which was the poisoning of the ex Russian spy.
Russia as a country has changed much over the last decade or so, and Putin has been given a lot of credit for it. Gone is the RUssia of the early '90s, that was up to its neck in debt and sending the few military and economic assets it could muster into keeping the Georgians in line. Russia is now out of debt and taking a much more hardline stance on its foreign policy. Putin recently blasted US foreign policy, arguing that American aggression is driving countries to pursue nuclear weapons for their own self preservation. I'm sure a lot of people would agree with him. But now Putin has been buddying up with President Ahmadinejad of Iran.
Russia is essentially positioning itself with "rogue states" such as Iran in the middle east, and nowadays positioning yourself with Iran is almost directly positioning yourself against the United States. Russia has long sought after the oil reserves south of its border, Putin's really found his niche with Iran, while simultaneously putting himself in a position to undermine US efforts in the region.
So now that i've presented you with a wall o' text that you probably won't read, what do you think about this? Is this another potential Cold War? And what do you think of Putin?
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