9:42 AM 4/15/2016 - When will Russia break?
The Morning Vertical, April 15, 2016 When will Russia break? "This card — the inculcation of pride that “Russia is again a great country” — is the largest, maybe the only, one in the Kremlin deck and will need to be played again and again. In a recent essay, Robert Kaplan observes that Putin’s “foreign policy must become more creative and calculating… the more chaos he can generate abroad, the more valuable the autocratic stability he provides at home will appear.” Whether or not the Russian president really does hate the West, his survival depends on acting as if he does... A “European destiny” was the subtext of Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempt to open up the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. It sustained, fitfully, the government of Russian President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s. It was played with, then decisively ditched, in the 2000s by Vladimir Putin. Were he to fail, it has a chance of revival. Those who wish it would need courage and strength and support. Were the