CD remarks:
I think the Bush-Putin relationship is a good example here. The US and Russian governments bash each other regularly. Yet, their respective outgoing presidents appear to be friends, and go fishing. Both are perfectly aware that their public pronouncements are really a bunch of blah-blah directed to their electorates in their respective countries and do not really matter. What matters is not what they say in public, but what they say to each other in private, as in the backroom deal on Iran I still think likely took place.
JG ponders:
A perspicacious observation. Two implications: 1) both countries are more or less equally committed to integrating with and reproducing the global capitalist order, one as a slipping hegemony and the other as a (maybe) resurgent power, at least in its customary Eurasian sphere of influence, and 2) both regimes' devotion to said integration and reproduction is compromised by their having to play one or another variety of the "nationalist card" to satisfy domestic militarist-nativist-protectionist (or whatever) constituencies, which always has the dangerous potential to take on a life of its own and upset the apple cart.
Chris, from your sense of things, do Putin-Mevdevev-United Russia-Kremlin fear Dem rule moreso than Repub rule in the White House come Spring 2009? I kind of liked Perry Anderson's argument of several years ago that Russia prefers to deal with a US foreign policy apparatus that thinks and schemes in hard power/realist terms rather than "humanitarian intervention"/ liberal internationalist terms. Of course the now fading neo-cons were/are a weird stew of both 1) and 2)... DOSVEDANYA _________________________________________________________________ Climb to the top of the charts! Play the word scramble challenge with star power. http://club.live.com/star_shuffle.aspx?icid=starshuffle_wlmailtextlink_jan