{"id":211205,"date":"2022-05-09T12:00:30","date_gmt":"2022-05-09T11:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=211205"},"modified":"2022-05-09T04:41:07","modified_gmt":"2022-05-09T03:41:07","slug":"vladimir-putin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/05\/vladimir-putin\/","title":{"rendered":"Vladimir Putin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Challenging War Journalism’s Putin Narrative –> Read Four of His Public Speeches<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

US President Joe Biden has spelled out his approach to Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin. Photo: AFP \/ Jim Watson and Grigory Dukor<\/p><\/div>\n

8 May 2022 – <\/em>Our political elites evidently have absorbed fully and deeply the proposition that \u201cignorance is bliss.\u201d\u00a0 The exhibits are too numerous to inventory. A singular current example with profound implication is the notion that Vladimir Putin is the quintessential brutal dictator \u2013 power mad, ruthless and with only a tenuous grip on reality. Indeed, it has become commonplace to equate him with Hitler \u2013 as done by such leading lights of America\u2019s stellar elites such as Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi \u2013 as well as \u2018opinion makers\u2019 galore. Even 203 noble Nobels lend their collective brains and celebrity credentials to an \u2018open letter\u2019 whose first sentence pairs Russia\u2019s attack on Ukraine with Hitler\u2019s assault on Poland in September 1939. These are only the most striking examples of the shortfalls in what passes for general education after 16 years of obligatory residence in American classrooms.<\/p>\n

These words are not meant as a defense brief for Putin or Russia\u2019s actions in Ukraine. That is a separate matter. The intent is simply to point out the high risks of making security policy on portentous matters in cultivated ignorance. Sadly, the argument that those who make those decisions should know literally what they are talking about is widely deemed as radical \u2013 itself as great a menace as whatever dragons are hovering around us. In Putin\u2019s case, there is absolutely no excuse. He has presented his views on how Russia visualizes its place in the world, relations with the West and the contours\/rules of a desired international system more comprehensively, historically informed, and coherently than has any national leader I know of. Shouted declarations \u201cwe\u2019re number ONE and always will be\u201d are not his style. The point is that you may be troubled by his conclusions, question his sincerity, suspect\u00a0hidden strains of thought and character, or\u00a0denounce certain actions.\u00a0However, doing so has no credibility unless one has engaged the man based on what is available \u2013 not on cartoon sketches. So, too, should we recognize that this is not a one-man show. that it behooves us to consider the more complex reality that is Russian governance and politics.<\/p>\n

For that reason, I have appended 4 of Putin\u2019s lengthy public speeches for your attention. Also, a long interview\/memoir by Jack Matlock \u2013 the United States\u2019 ambassador to Moscow during the crucial years that saw and end to Cold War I. If you are inclined to scan them, your knowledge of the subject already would exceed that of Pelosi, HRC, Biden, Blinken and even Michael McFaul whose atrociously accented, fractured spoken Russian suggests that were he to as much as fix his eye on the Putin manuscripts, he\u2019d struggle through a few paragraphs before intoning that that there is an unmistakable echo of\u00a0Mein Kempf<\/em>. And if you are acquainted with any of the 203 noble Nobels you might consider passing on to them the speeches so as to remind them that dedication to intellectual integrity is meant to be universally applied.<\/p>\n

Vladimir Putin is a formidable personality who leads a great country that has been experiencing an historic transformation. We will have to deal with him and with it, one way or another. Simply shouting to the skies: \u201cgenocidal killer<\/em>\u201d is dangerous, counter-productive \u2013 and, frankly, childish.<\/p>\n

******************<\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s Speeches in English:<\/strong><\/h3>\n

* Putin\u2019s Opening Speech At Davos World Economic Forum 2009<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

* Address by President of the Russian Federation 2014<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

* Russian President Putin\u2019s Speech At The World Economic Forum 2021<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

* The Ambassadorial Series: Deans of U.S.-Russia Diplomacy Transcript of the Ambassador Jack F. Matlock Interview<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

________________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Michael Brenner is professor of international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh; a senior fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations, SAIS-Johns Hopkins (Washington, D.C.), contributor to research and consulting projects on Euro-American security and economic issues. Publishes and teaches in the fields of <\/em>US<\/em> foreign policy, Euro-American relations, and the European Union. <\/em>mbren@pitt.edu<\/a> – <\/em><\/strong>More<\/a>\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vladimir Putin is a formidable personality who leads a great country that has been experiencing an historic transformation. We will have to deal with him and with it, one way or another. Simply shouting to the skies: \u201cgenocidal killer\u201d is dangerous, counter-productive \u2013 and, frankly, childish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":125356,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[180],"tags":[867,504,253,278,70],"class_list":["post-211205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brics","tag-anglo-america","tag-international-relations","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}