[Marcus was good enough to remind me to post this here. I announced it over at RudiusMedia.com earlier today. -Ben]

Vibe.com has an interview with Robert Greene on his collaboration with 50 Cent for the book The 50th Law.

Essentially the hustler is a figure to me, thats very American. It goes back to the 19th Century. Its ingrained in our country. We've always kind of had that figure. But it kinda got taken to another level in urban America in the 20th century. Predominantly associated with the black hustler. The hustler is an entrepreneur. This book celebrates their mentality. These are people who are incredibly resourceful. They are incredibly inventive and creative. They just don't have the resources for anything that we consider worthy. But much of what they do is just as interesting as a business man or politician. Its working with the little you have, and making something out of it. The attitude, and the way they go about it fascinated me.

But Cassius and Brutus were the most gloriously conspicuous--precisely because their statues were not to be seen. Tacitus

In looking at this election cycle, pundits have been talking about the importance of authenticity. "It is fatal for a politician to look fake. They must show that they believe in something with conviction. The public has grown tired of professional politicians." But this is nothing new. The desire for authenticity in leaders comes and goes in cycles. John F. Kennedy benefited from this hunger and he also knew how to exploit it to maximum effect. He was not fake, but he could be a consummate actor when necessary. Andrew Jackson was perhaps our first great politician to use this dynamic to gain power. (In this vein, I recommend one of my favorite all-time books The Fall of Public Man, by Richard Sennett.)

Authenticity is a tricky thing. In dealing with people we know, it is hard to read through a person and see how deep their sincerity runs. Children learn how to play up their emotions for effect, and when we see people being emotional, we tend to think it is authentic. There are, however, certain give-away signs; we can often discern people who are fake by their body language and facial expressions--a Richard Nixon, or Mitt Romney come to mind. On the other hand, we can be easily duped by these same eyes. Ronald Reagan would be seem to be the archetype of the genuine politician, whether you liked him or not, but Reagan was an actor--schooled by years in Hollywood and television commercials in how to make sincerity count on camera, how to convey conviction. He was not necessarily fake, but an actor nonetheless.

It is hard to base a judgment of a political figure on such tricky things. And it is just as hard to win an election based primarily on appearing more authentic than the other side. Kennedy won the election partly by framing himself as new, fresh, more genuine than the stuffy figures of the Eisenhower era, but this framing was very strategic. He also benefited from the timing of his campaign--a moment of relative prosperity when people were yearning for change. Something was in the air. He exploited this.

In the end, in war, business or politics, it is strategy that will secure your victory, not the depth of your emotions or convictions. Authenticity or the appearance of it can certainly help (or hurt in some cases), but is never enough.

As I talked about it in Strategy 20 of the WAR book, politics is maneuver warfare: staking out positions and fighting for them. Taking positions that push you into corners might gain you some momentary success, as you come out fighting, but in the end, you have decreasing options and you end up tiring the public by doing the same thing, by being so predictable.

Franklin Roosevelt was the master of the game, although he had the advantage of dealing with much shorter campaign times. His goal was to seem overall like a strong leader, with definite convictions, but to never commit too tightly to anything early on in the campaign. He wanted positions that would allow him to react to inevitable changes in the news and exploit them. He wanted flexibility and at the same time he used his opponents' rigid, one-line ideas, to push them further into corners. He set a firm tone, took an overall stance (against big business, for the working man), but gave himself room to maneuver. He was amazingly fluid, striking back at his opponents or playing above the fray, depending on what was needed for the moment. He won four presidential campaigns.

With all this in mind, let us look at the three main Democratic candidates as they play maneuver warfare. First and least would have to be John Edwards. Like a boxer who comes to rely on one punch and finds himself boxed into a corner, John Edwards came out at the bell as the fighter for the middle class. This position may have looked good at the start, as he staked out solid positions. But it is a position that is too familiar from elections in the 80s or 90s. It does not wear well over time. It becomes a one-note campaign that may gain in stridency but wears down your patience and interest over the months of this primary slog. It is a defensive posture that ends up in a corner, where it will die.

Barack Obama has taken more of the JFK approach. His message has been remarkably consistent, backed up by his record. He is running a positive campaign, focused on uniting the country, and on the future. It is politics for a new generation, not predicated on the old wars of the baby boomers. He has not strayed from this and so it seems quite authentic. He has been admirably consistent. On specific issues he has come out with specific programs, all framed by a coherent philosophy. Because it is not tied to anything as rigid as being the defender of the middle class, he does not appear a one-note candidate and you do not grow bored of hearing his speeches. He can change the subject without veering from an overall tone.

The problem is that his strategy is very much dependent on circumstance. When times are good, people are in the mood for such an uplifting message. Then you can catch wind in your sails and even tack in certain directions, all carried away by your optimism. This worked brilliantly for Kennedy. In such times, people are more willing to take a risk on somebody new. (Bear in mind as well that Kennedy had more years in the Senate and had his World War II experiences to round out his resume.) It also helps in such circumstances to paint the other side as conservative, a force from the past, to play up what is uninspiring in their message. (It helps to have Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon as your main opponent.)

When world events were at a relative lull, Obama was in a good position. When the worsening economy began to take center stage, his message did not resonate as well, and his options shrank. And considering the volatile nature of the times we live in, it would have been better to bet on problems and difficult times up ahead. His message remains consistent, rings true, but has less and less appeal when future problems loom more than future possibilities. (It is not a question of him having altered his strategy, which he could and should not do, but the timing--a few more years in the Senate, and some patience.)

It is not too late to remedy this, but he is facing the tag-team of Master Triangulators. Triangulation is Dick Morris's name for something that Clinton did that is a variation on the old military strategy of according with the enemy, what I call Mirroring in the 48 Laws, and discuss as well in the Counterattack Strategy.

So much of marketing or politics involves separation--what makes you different from all the other politicians out there. Hillary has her years as First Lady, her solid seven-year record in the Senate, her famous husband. She can stand apart as the person with the most experience, the most battle-tested, and it is hard to take that away from her. Obama has successfully separated himself as the agent of change, a new face, somebody to break up the stale politics of Washington. A figure of hope. He also has his solid stance against the war.

The triangulation strategy means embracing Obama so tightly that he cannot get away anymore and separate himself. On the Iraq war--move Hillary in his direction, make her come out with new proclamations about getting out of Iraq that are parallel to his. Obfuscate her past votes on the war by focusing attention on the future. In one debate, she masterfully asked Obama to agree to the same commitment to end the war. On change, make the argument she would be the first woman president--an undeniable shift in the political landscape.

On the seamier side, bait Barack Obama into dirty fights about his own record and votes. If he avoids the bait, he starts to look a bit weak and as if he were hiding something. If he takes the bait, as he did in the past debate, he starts to look less and less like a different kind of politician, losing the one sterling quality that separated him from the others in this war over position.

It is a masterful bit of strategizing. If some of the dirt rubs off on Hillary, as it will, much of it will really settle on Bill, who is willing to be sullied at this point. Besides, she is not building her campaign on her purity and nobility in spirit. She is the tough lady, the Margaret Thatcher of the Democratic Party, who will get the job done. From her down moment in New Hampshire she has shown remarkable fluidity. She can play the underdog, the victim of sorts. She can also be the crusader. This flexibility does not come off as mere opportunism, as with a Mitt Romney, because it is anchored by her core message of being the candidate of experience. She has not tailored her message to each audience, like Romney, merely shifted tone to fit the circumstance.

For Obama, he has not lost yet. But he must not repeat the mistakes of the debate. He must strike a delicate balance of deflecting their accusations in a more diplomatic manner, showing a difference in feel and attitude. He is not a politician in their style. Let others on his team, surrogates if you will, make the case about his record on the Iraq War, or his votes in Illinois. Focus attention as much as he can on the future, on what he will do to change the dynamic in Washington and make the case that Hillary will bring more of the same stalemate by exactly the kind of partisan bickering she is trying to stir up. Anger does not play well on television. Being spirited and enthusiastic has great infecting power, but anger makes everyone uncomfortable. (In the televised debates of 1960, it was Nixon who seemed to lose his cool.)

The problem for the Democrats, as they face in each election, is where all of this positions the eventual winner once it is all over. John Kerry, for instance, left himself in a terrible position after winning the nomination. This is something to analyze in more detail when I look at the maneuvering of the Republicans and how it will play out for the general election.

One final note: much has been made of the unusualness of this campaign cycle. This generally refers to how volatile it has been, how there is no clear frontrunner in either party, how unpredictable it has all become. Attention is generally focused on the candidates. On the Democratic side, the voters have some good, solid choices and so their votes are evenly split. On the Republican side, the lack of a candidate to excite the public is why things go back and forth and no one can seem to win two primaries in a row.

My theory would be different. I would look at the voters instead of the candidates, the changed cultural landscape of America. We are a much more fragmented public than ever before. Our minds are barraged by so much information from so many directions. We find it harder and harder to focus on anything for very long. Because of this our loyalties to a brand, to a politician, to a rock group are much thinner. There are too many things competing for our attention. This makes us vulnerable to changes in the air, to circumstances altering our opinions, to wild viral swings.

This is not to say that some people do not feel very deeply attached to one candidate or the other, only that there are less people than before who feel this way and there are more of the undecideds, the ambivalents, etc. One candidate will win, and people will attach themselves to him or her, but this attachment is a bit tenuous. Politics is so much more complicated than before. It is time to re-read The Prince. Just a theory.

In the Machiavellian perspective, few events in public life are rarely what they seem to be. Power depends on appearances, on manipulating what the public sees. On seeming good, while doing what is necessary to gain and maintain power. Sometimes it is easy to see through the fog and pick out a political figure's motives or intentions. Other times it is quite complicated--what is really going on, we ask ourselves?

In the new media environment, the ability to create fog and confusion has been greatly enhanced. Stories and rumors can be planted with virtually no source behind them. The story will spread virally. Before people begin to question the validity of story A their attention is distracted by something else, story B or C; in the meantime story A takes root in people's minds in subtle ways. It is an added layer of uncertainty and doubt that makes it quite easy for the Karl Roves of the world to play all kinds of insinuation games.

To decipher events that seem hard to read, I sometimes rely on a strategy that comes from the Latin cui bono. It was first used in this context by Cicero and it literally translates, "for whose good, or benefit?" It means-- when you are trying to figure out the motives behind some murky action, look to see whom it really benefits in the end, and then work backwards. Self¬-interest rules the world.

Take for instance the recent article of Robert Novak: in it, he claims that various sources have reported to him that people in the Clinton camp are sitting on scandalous information about Barack Obama. This story, merely a week old, is now half¬-forgotten, but it represents a scary trend. The actual scandalous information is not revealed nor even hinted at. Nor is the source. Everything is left vague and open, its veracity depending on the reputation of Mr. Novak himself.

And so we ask here, cui bono? Clearly we can rule out Hillary herself. The story only hurts her in the short and long run, feeding into suspicions about the Clintons and their sometimes dubious political maneuverings. It is almost impossible to believe that someone from within her camp would reveal this to Novak (or anyone else) unless this person was trying to sabotage the Clinton campaign (a possibility, but a slim one).

It certainly benefits Barack Obama, as it allows him to change the subject from his tepid performance in the last debate, and to focus attention on Hillary's weakness--few people trust her. It allows Obama to play above the fray and point fingers at "politics as usual." But it is hard to imagine this originating from the Obama camp, in some disguised form. If the stratagem were ever revealed as such, it would ruin his reputation. It would not be worth the risk, or the potential benefit of a temporary point to make. This is far too dangerous and complicated a maneuver to be believable.

Finally, there are interests within the Republican Party itself. By cui bono standards this is the one that makes the most sense. (Cui bono is always a calculation of probabilities, never of certainties.) The greatest fear among Republicans is that they have to face a candidate like Hillary, with a united and angry party behind her. They need to inflict some wounds on her before she becomes a candidate. The Democrats must be weakened from within.

Planting stories like this will hurt Hillary's reputation. They will act like little pinpricks that over the course of the campaign start to inflict some damage. It might elevate Obama; in the process, if the race for the nomination became tight, the campaign could turn nasty. There is nothing like a nasty fight for the nomination that gives the opposing party fodder for the general election. It takes a Howard Dean to show the weaknesses of a John Kerry. If Obama wins the nomination, so much the better for the Republicans.

This story could be planted by a Republican and fed to Novak, with or without his knowledge. We will never know. It is the nature of such articles that they only feed uncertainty. And one side seems to benefit most from this uncertainty.

I was recently invited by Jarret Brachman, professor and head of research at West Point's Center of Combating Terrorism, to give a talk to his students in the department. Below is a transcription of the talk itself, which was given on November 13, 2007. In the days to come I will detail the response of students and teachers, the questions that came up, my impressions of West Point and of the students I met there, as well as talks with other members of the department.

All in all, it was a great experience. Professor Brachman is an expert on Al Qaeda's inner workings, particularly its use of technology and the Internet. He is only twenty-nine-years old and someone to keep an eye on, a rare sign of intelligence among the Inspector Clouseaus who determine our current policy on terrorism.

The Terrorist Dilemma: A Talk to West Point Cadets, 11/13/07

I want to begin today by talking about a general whom you have probably not heard of, unless you have read my book. His name is Frederich Ludwig, Prince of Hohenlohe. He was born in Prussia in 1746 and came from one of Germany's oldest and most aristocratic families. The Prince served in the military under the Prussian King Frederick the Great and slowly rose through the ranks.

The Prince was a great believer in the style of warfare created by Frederick the Great. This style was based on having an extremely disciplined army; on always assuming the offensive; and on certain creative maneuvers that the King had invented. Led by Frederick, the Prussians had emerged as the most feared and successful fighting force on the continent, and it stayed that way after Frederick's death in 1786.

In 1796, the Prince was made a general, at the age of 50, young by Prussian standards. In that same year, the 27-year-old Napoleon Bonaparte was also named general and commander of the French forces fighting in Italy. Over the next nine years, Napoleon would dominate Europe, all of this culminating with his stunning victories at Ulm and Austerlitz in 1805. To the Prince, Napoleon was merely lucky. He was matched against weak and decadent countries (Austria and Russia) that could not withstand his aggressive style of warfare. If he ever met the Prussians on the battlefield, he would be revealed as a military fraud. And with that in mind, the Prince secretly worked on a battle plan in case their two countries came to war.

Well, in 1806, the Prussian King finally declared war and in September of that year, the Prussian generals were asked to prepare a campaign against Napoleon. The Prince trotted out his carefully crafted battle plan. The other generals made their changes to the Prince's plan and finally they all agreed on it and presented it to the King. But as the Prussian troops were mobilizing, word reached the Prince and his fellow generals that Napoleon's swift moving army had already entered Prussian territory, coming in scattered directions that were hard to predict, and massing in the south of the country.

There was no time to react. The Prussians were forced to retreat. They would reassemble to the north and attack the flanks of Napoleon's army as it marched on Berlin. The Prince was put in charge of the rear guard, protecting the Prussian retreat. Only a few days later, a division under Napoleon himself caught up with Hohenlohe, near the town of Jena, and the first battle between these two powerful forces took place. It was like a meeting between the past and the future. The Prussians formed lines in parade fashion to advance, in a ritual that went back to Frederick's day. Napoleon's army scattered in all directions and sniped at the Prussians from rooftops, and behind houses. The Prussians were quickly overwhelmed by this totally chaotic form of battle and quickly succumbed. By the end of the day they were routed.

At almost the same time, a French division under Field Marshall Davout defeated a large Prussian force at Auerstadt and within days the entire Prussian military edifice crumbled, as one castle after another fell into French hands. It was one of the most stunning collapses in the history of warfare, a great power destroyed almost overnight.

After this battle, the Prince was totally disgraced and retreated to his ancestral castle. For the last 12 years of his life he tried to make sense of this ignominious fall. He blamed the other generals for slowing down the Prussian response to Napoleon's attack by their squabbling and their egos. He criticized the Prussian army for its breakdowns in discipline as it retreated. He credited Napoleon's spy system for giving them a beat up on the Prussian strategy and catching them by surprise. He maintained that the French form of warfare was unethical and gave them an unfair advantage because they were willing to fight dirty.

Now if you think about it, this is all rather astonishing. The Prince was no idiot. He was a great student of military history. He had been able to study the French army for nine years before meeting it in battle. He was able to witness it firsthand at Jena. All he had to do was open his eyes and think. And yet with all this evidence staring him in the face, and with years and some distance to analyze it, he continued to completely misread the essence of Napoleonic warfare. He could only come up with clichés, and the usual conventional excuses. His eyes could only focus on the tactics, the details; he could not see the forest for the trees.

In the aftermath of this debacle, another Prussian was trying to come to terms with the Napoleonic revolution in a much different way. You might have heard of him. His name was Carl von Clausewitz. At the age of 26 he had witnessed the collapse first hand, was captured and held by the French for several years. He and other reformers within the Prussian military, men like Scharnhorst and Gneisau, were determined to gain the right lesson from what had happened to Hohenlohe and the Prussian military. What von Clausewitz did in the wake of Jena-Auerstadt represents a defining moment in military theory and strategy. Based on analyzing Napoleon he came up with a method, one that would lead to all of his great discoveries.

Continue reading "The Terrorist Dilemma: A Talk to West Point Cadets"

Reading and watching the news lately has inspired a few strategic tidbits I would like to share.

Force them off the negative: It is always easier to argue from the negative side--criticizing other people's actions, dissecting their motives, etc. And that is why most people will opt for this. If they had to describe a positive vision of what they want in the world, or how they would accomplish a particular task, this would open them up to all kinds of attacks and criticisms. It takes effort and thought to establish a positive position. It takes less effort to work on what other people have done, and poke endless holes. It also makes you look tough and insightful, because people delight in hearing someone tear an idea apart.

Facing these negative-mongers in a debate or argument is infuriating. They can come at you from all angles. Hit you with sarcasm and snide comments, weave all kinds of abstractions that can make you look bad. If you lower yourself to their position, you end up like a boxer throwing punches into thin air. These opponents give you nothing to hit. (In war, it is always easier to hold ground than take ground.) Your task is to force them off this position by getting them to commit to some positive position. Now, you have a target. If they resist or refuse to do this, you can attack them for this resistance.

With the Iraq War, it is quite simple for President Bush to stand ground and shoot down all of his opponents by playing the doomsday card: quitting Iraq will mean all hell will break loose. The terrorists will come to America and unleash their jihad here. Bush's pose is not particularly effective over time, because we have grown so tired of it and it has been revealed to be totally devoid of content. But he holds on to it like a hedgehog because it works well with his base and saves him from a worse option--having to iterate his goals. The strategy here would be to force him on to the positive: what is his vision for Iraq now? How long exactly will he commit the troops? Is it open-ended? Force him to put some flesh on his nebulous talk of the future--the Iraq he is trying to establish.

Continue reading "Only the Dull and Stupid Fight Head-on: Some Strategic Thoughts"

• In Pimp by Iceberg Slim, almost the entire book is devoted to his life on the streets, to learning the game of pimping and mastering it. Then comes a riveting account of his time in prison, and finally, at the end, a fiery denunciation of his wasted years as a pimp. This moralizing ending has largely been ignored. Instead, the book has become a manual for how to be the ultimate pimp. In his other books, it is the con artist, the gang leader and hustler who holds our attention and draws our sympathy. We become absorbed in reading about the pressures of life on the streets and how each individual finds a way to get ahead, by any means necessary.
• In The Art of Seduction I describe the Rake character, a man who is amoral and faithless, but who is devastatingly seductive to women. History abounds with such examples. Lord Byron slept with his sister, ruined many a young girl with his heartlessness, treated his wife abominably, but the women kept flocking to him in great numbers. After Errol Flynn was acquitted of rape charges, even more women than before besieged him. The equivalent for men would be the Siren, the femme fatale.
• Shortly after the Don Imus incident, the media turned its artillery on hip hop and the nefarious effect of its lyrics and images on the youth of America. Why can't the music reflect something healthier, more wholesome? Why does it have to be so violent, so misogynistic? This soon faded away, as do other attempts to make the culture kinder and gentler. Missing from these discussions is the possibility that it is the violence and aggression that is a large part of its appeal. The brilliant strategy employed by hip-hop is to actually invite and welcome these occasional moralistic attacks--they deepen its appeal to disaffected youth.
• In the movie Posse from Hell, one of my favorite Westerns, a gang of outlaws commits some terrible crimes in a town and a posse is formed to hunt them down. The posse is led by the sheriff (played by Audie Murphy), a man with his own dubious past. Murphy has a hard time finding volunteers--the townspeople are lazy and fearful. He finally forms a small posse and it heads out to chase the criminals. Along the way, however, each member of the group reveals a character flaw--greed, cowardice, stupidity--and they are either killed or abandon the cause. Only two are left at the end, Murphy and an unlikely youth from the big city. Both of these men have their own issues. Finally, they find and kill the criminals, but the moral of the story is that all men are a mix of good and bad; those who deny this part of themselves are in fact worse than the criminals because they cannot be redeemed.
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We live in a moralizing culture that produces and holds up certain ideals. These ideals promote the angel in all of us. When someone is praised, it is for their philanthropic work, what they are giving back to the community, what makes them a decent leader and positive role model. In a Hollywood film, it is the moralistic ending that is supposed to resonate in our minds--love conquers all, the good and the decent reap their rewards, etc. In the public spotlight, whenever someone wants to impress us, they get dewy-eyed and talk of various virtues in themselves or loved ones.

It is not that this is completely false, that we are all devils and nothing more. But it creates ideals no one can live up to, and in fact produces resentment and accounts for our secret attraction to what is dark and animal in human nature--the shadow side in us all, that part of us that manipulates, inflicts pain, etc. And so this seeps out of us unconsciously. We fill our books and films with characters who do bad things. We love reading about the actions of con artists, pimps, hustlers. We may consciously swallow the happy, moralistic ending, but our real passion goes towards the villain in ways we cannot explain.

What really draws us to the con artist, the pimp, the hustler, the Rasputins and Lord Byrons is that they are more genuine than we are. Instead of living a double life in which they show their good sides and deny the darkness, they are authentically human. Just like children, who find it hard to disguise their cruel streak. Secretly, we wish we could be more like them and indulge this part of our character that starts to smell for being so underground.

So next time you hear a moralizer denouncing hip hop, or railing against some athlete of dubious character, or disparaging homosexuals, or ranting against amoral books about power, or whatever it is, just do a mental calculation: the strength of their denunciation equals the strength of their attraction. They are trying to push down the very dark side that is trying to rise to consciousness. They can only express this "yes" with "no." When you see a Hollywood film in which a criminal or dark character pushes the plot, but in the end a happy, moralistic ending is tacked on, focus on what dominates most of the film--the vivid descriptions of the dark sides that make us want to see the film. In other words, that dark side is finding unconscious expression.

Think of people's words as distracting devices. What is really true about a person is often communicated by what he or she doesn't say, by actions that mean something other than their conscious intentions. Disgust and fear can be disguised forms of attraction. This is a basic principle for any aspiring seducer.

Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of the Russia essays.

I am a contrarian by nature. When I hear anyone espouse an idea or a belief, my mind immediately floats to the opposite. "Perhaps what you are saying is in fact not true at all. I could see it from the opposite side, and so I will try it out." I don't know where this trait comes from; it is my form of mental warfare. I do it with my own ideas as well. Its value lies in making me test out opinions and never accept what others say is true. Better to think it through on your own. It is my personal counterweight to stupidity.

Before leaving for Russia I devoured articles on its political situation, particularly bios on President Putin. The prevailing opinion in the West is the following: Putin was a KGB apparatchik who had risen through the ranks. Consequently he is secretive and anti-democratic. He and his cronies are monopolizing political and economic power in Russia. The Russian people are tired of all the turmoil from the Yeltsin years and have been bought off by oil money flooding the country; they have been brainwashed, have fallen under the spell of yet another iron-fist ruler. Russia is now exercising its muscle on the world stage, turning into a bully in Eastern Europe. We have much to fear from an ascendant and anti-democratic Russia.

With some analysis of my own, and some reading between the lines, I was able to create the opposite viewpoint in my mind: Russia is an almost impossible country to govern. It is vast, comprising more ethnicities within its borders than any other state in the world. It has just emerged from one of the most radical changes in government in modern times. In the late 90s it was on the verge of chaos. Putin saved Russia from something far worse than a centralized government. He is struggling to reconstruct the country, working on his knowledge of Russian psychology and what the people need. His goal is to reestablish Russian prestige, and create the groundwork for a period of stability, some 20 years in which Russia could become an economic power.

Armed with this strategic viewpoint, I landed in Russia. My first interviews were with various newspapers. To my surprise, these journalists were quite critical of the government, and were rather taken aback by my moderate defense of Putin. This allowed for a lively exchange, since we were both caught off-guard. I was later to learn that many of the newspapers in Russia are what we would consider liberal. They do not like many of the maneuvers of President Putin, particularly his curtailing of press freedoms and government control of the main television stations.

Several days later I was on one of the most famous Russian radio programs, Radio Echo of Moscow, hosted by the head of the station, Alexei Venediktov. Alexei is quite a celebrity in the country. In the days of the fall of the Communist government, when almost everything was shut down, he continued to broadcast his show and provide a voice of reason. Alexei has long gray hair that sprouts in many directions. He reminded me of me of the March Hare in Alice in Wonderland.

Alexei is a staunch liberal. He was amused by my analysis of what was happening in Russia, particularly my critique of the Bush administration, and how it was playing into the hands of the Russian hardliners. I went through my ideas of what motivated Putin, the real reason for his various maneuvers. I said that it is easy at this point to look back and criticize, but if a strong hand had not intervened in 2000, Russia could very well be a lot worse off than now. Alexei treated much of what I had to say with great irony, since his audience already knew his own opinions. At the end of the interview he said that since I seemed so interested in Putin, perhaps I could take him back with me to the States and keep him there. I would do that, I replied, if he would return the favor by bringing Bush to Russia.

I was to encounter these "liberals" everywhere on my trip. They could be found in the strangest places. The official government liaison who lead me through the Duma for my meeting with Zhirinovsky (see last blog) managed to take me to the side and tell me she heard me on Radio Echo. She was surprised to hear my defense of Putin. She disliked him. His government had engaged in criminal activities. I was startled by the strength of her critique.

I was later told that these liberals can be found throughout the media, and are in the upper echelons of many of the television stations. They looked back fondly on the 90s when the press had incredible freedom. They are biding their time, and when a thaw comes in the relationship between the government and the media, perhaps when there is a new president, they will come out of the woodwork and express their opinions. Russians are used to waiting and to playing such double games.

The liberal position as I could understand it is more like the traditional use of the term in 19th century England--the government should only have a loose hand in social and economic affairs. In reality, however, they seemed to really only coalesce around their dislike for Putin and his heavy-handed approach to politics. They wanted the freedom to openly dissent and affect political life. In general, I did not find a single one among them who could really articulate a positive vision for Russia, or how they would have handled differently the many crises afflicting the country at the turn of millennium.

In truth, liberalism is a kind of repository for feelings of frustration, a safe place from which to criticize what is going on. The liberals seem oddly detached and naïve about power. (In many ways, they resemble liberals in America.) They are in the minority, but there are more of them in Russia than one might imagine, or that is reported in the Western press.

Accompanying me almost everywhere I went was my interpreter Andrey Isserov. Already at the age of 28 Andrey is a professor of History at a prestigious university, his specialty being early nineteenth century United States. His knowledge of Russian history is equally formidable--he could explain the story behind almost every important piece of Moscow architecture that we passed on our many drives through the city. He was not a pedant; his ideas on literature and culture were quite stimulating.

Continue reading "Experiments in Strategic Wisdom, Profiles in Stupidity - A Last Look at Russia"