Russia and ex-Soviet Union (English)

As the Arab Spring grinds on into autumn, the Russians are asking once again whether they should follow the policy “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”, says Eric Walberg

Muammar Al-Gaddafi’s demise is all but a done thing, carried out with a UN blessing, however dubious, and only belatedly opposed by Russia and China. Russian policy makers are now wondering if their quasi-principled condemnation of Western-backed regime change in Libya was not just Quixotic but downright stupid.

As the Western elite gathered in picturesque St Moritz to grapple with pressing world crises, the outsiders met in the bleak steppes of Central Asia, writes Eric Walberg

Last week’s 10th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in the Kazakh capital Astana highlighted how the major rivals to empire, led by Russia and China -- themselves rivals, are trying to fashion an alternative to US hegemony.

As Russia gears up for its election season this winter, Putin’s Popular Front and Rogozin’s nationalist front are playing an old Soviet melody and even borrowing a tune from revolutionaries in Cairo. Eric Walberg recognises the refrain

There are no hostages in the game of geopolitics. Russia’s reaction to the Bin Laden assassination reveals its own dilemma about how best to accommodate the West, says Eric Walberg

Russia has always looked on at events in the Middle East from afar, shut out of the action, and remains an onlooker today, absorbed by its own problems. Eric Walberg looks at the implications for Russia of the revolutions and no-so-revolutions sweeping the Middle East  

Russian politics is in turmoil as a result of the uprisings in the Arab world, in particular the Egyptian revolution. Those fed up with an increasingly autocratic political system hope that Russian citizens will be energised, while those who came out on top following the collapse of the Soviet Union are quick to dismiss any implications for the Russian political scene.

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Canadian Eric Walberg is known worldwide as a journalist specializing in the Middle East, Central Asia and Russia. A graduate of University of Toronto and Cambridge in economics, he has been writing on East-West relations since the 1980s.

He has lived in both the Soviet Union and Russia, and then Uzbekistan, as a UN adviser, writer, translator and lecturer. Presently a writer for the foremost Cairo newspaper, Al Ahram, he is also a regular contributor to Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, Global Research, Al-Jazeerah and Turkish Weekly, and is a commentator on Voice of the Cape radio.

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Eric's latest book The Canada Israel Nexus is available here http://www.claritypress.com/WalbergIV.html