Monday, February 12, 2007. Issue 3594. Page 10.

President Hillary and Russia

By Richard Lourie

Many Russian observers are looking ahead to a win by Senator Hillary Clinton in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. For some this is a cause for worry. Political analyst Sergei Markov fears her victory will result in stepped-up criticism of Russia's failures in human rights and democratization, thereby increasing friction. Sergei Rogov, director of the Institute of the U.S.A. and Canada, said "relations between Russia and the United States will continue to worsen," but that it won't be Clinton's fault because there is "no principal difference between Republicans and Democrats."

Some Russians assume that Hillary Clinton's views on Russia are similar to those of her husband, former President Bill Clinton. And many believe the United States' error in the 1990s was to treat Russia as if it lost the Cold War. The United States managed both to meddle in Russian internal affairs and treat it with benign neglect. Oligarchs robbed the country blind, President Boris Yeltsin was blind drunk and the United States turned a blind eye. Worse, even though the first President Bush's secretary of state, James Baker, promised that NATO would not move "an inch" to the east, Russia will be effectively encircled by NATO from the Baltic to the Black Sea if Ukraine is admitted.